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Tsia has been home from school for much of this week with a cold and a fever. Todd stayed home with her for two days while I had some meetings and urgent business to attend to, but on Wednesday it was my turn. We spent some time in the morning learning to braid, and after lunch I set up my sewing machine because she's has been begging to learn. She did really well and then lost interest after approximately five minutes, as expected. (We had a similar experience when she asked me to teach her to knit last weekend--these things will take time, so I'll let her set the agenda. It's not like I'm in a hurry for her to start sewing samples for me or anything.)

In the afternoon I needed make a couple of phone calls and reply to some emails, so I set her up with paper, scissors, and glue and asked her to stay busy for a little while. She did very well, and it wasn't until I finished and looked down at the paper she had taped to the front of my shirt that I realized she had still found a way to voice her displeasure:



Fortunately, the fever is gone and she can return to school. And I can continue to do what I regularly do. Which is being BORING, I guess.

you may have heard

We made a happy textile-related announcement over at Oliver + S yesterday.

I'm excited to tell you more about it after it debuts at Quilt Market next month.

April flowers

Headed from one meeting to another early this morning, I had the pleasure of taking a shortcut through Central Park. I saw a pair of cardinals, robins hunting for worms, loads of flowers, and even the boat pond is open--which is great because Tsia and I have our wooden toy sailboats at the ready and have been toting them along every Sunday morning in the hopes that we'll get to launch them. At last, we can!

Sadly, all the real daffodils are finished blooming for the year, but I've been playing around with making them out of construction paper, just to make them last a little bit longer. Also some primroses--or my rendition of a primrose, anyway.


They're quite easy to make, and I got the idea from some simple paper flowers that Tsia's class made in art class. The cutting and gluing of this fancier (and smaller) version are a bit fussy for little hands, so they're more of an adult paper craft, but patient and dexterous kids could certainly make a go of them.

Here is a quick and dirty template of the shapes I used, with dotted lines to indicate folds. I think you can probably figure out how to do it yourself, right? Especially with a few photos to help:






Happy spring!