shoemaker and the elves

We went and saw the Shoemaker and the Elves today with the Tears of Joy Theater in downtown Portland. The kids and I see quite a few plays and musicals and such during school performances during the week. Seeing one on a Sunday afternoon was fun. Next door, the Oregon Symphony was playing Handel's Messiah and the streets around the Oregon Performing Arts buildings were packed with people dressed up for the holidays. There was a festive air and I was in one of my moods where I really enjoy seeing what people have chosen, who they are out in the world. The man who chose the yellow running shoes, for instance, and the woman who chose the long purple coat. Who is going to the symphony? Who has chosen the puppet show? Many of the people at the puppet show were families with children, often small children, but there were quite a few people there without children as well.

So I'll be honest, one of the reasons I chose to take the kids to the this show on a Sunday was because it has become increasingly difficult to work with the Tears of Joy Theater people as far as getting tickets to their school performances for homeschoolers. There are a few organizations like the Northwest Children's Theater and the Oregon Ballet Theater who make it very easy. I can call them up and order three tickets to see any of their shows during the day when they have a school performance. Other venues, like Do Jump and the Oregon Children's Theater, are willing to sell tickets to homeschoolers for their school performances, but there is a minimum number of tickets we have to buy, usually ten. And others, like the Tears of Joy Theater, used to let us buy tickets in groups of ten but have become increasingly rigid on this point and will now {mostly} only sell to the very largest homeschool organizations like Village Home.

I buy a lot of my tickets to different shows from a fellow homeschooling mom, but even she, who often buys in large quantities, was not able to buy tickets from Tears of Joy this time around. (I know, because I specifically asked about Shoemaker...) So she stopped trying. And I wonder if the people at Tears of Joy understand that there is a whole section of the population out here who has basically given up on seeing productions from them, whose kids are not going to see their puppet shows? I chose to spend the extra money to see the Shoemaker and the Elves this time because it's the holidays and because I really love that story and {I'll be honest again} because Tears of Joy has a tendency toward moralizing in the stories they choose, in my opinion, and I didn't think there would be very much room for that in Shoemaker.

And I was right. In fact, it was one of the first things that Samuel mentioned when we left the theater. He had, apparently, been trying to figure out which moral angle they would take with this story and was relieved that they had decided to just stick with the good deed and the thrilling gratitude. So the kids and I talked about the show and morals and the characters. Samuel, I would say, enjoyed the show and the characters the most of the three of us. Eva and I were not quite as taken with the elves as Samuel was (mischief making elves who even Santa had to let go...). And I have to say, after hearing Samuel go on and on about how much he enjoyed them and remembering how much he had laughed aloud at their antics during the show, I was doubly happy I had gotten the tickets for us. We ended our afternoon out with hot chocolate, coffee and snowman sugar cookies.

guinea pig love

Albert playing hospital/vet, no doubt.



Albert and Terrence and a pink plastic turtle, in the sink waiting for their bath.

hat knitting

I finished my hat! Here's a link to the pattern at Purl Bee. I modified it slightly by casting on 108 stitches and knitting at a gauge of 6 stitches/ inch (stocking stitch) rather than 4.75, with #3 needles for the ribbing (I did knit 1, purl 1 rib rather than knit 2, purl 2.) and #4 for the stockinette stitch part. I used roughly 1 1/4 skeins of Jojoland's sport weight cashmere, which, can I just say, has been fabulous to knit with. I think I might even have enough in the second skein to make a pair of matching fingerless gloves!



Here I am in the hat and here is the hat all laid out. It is *much* longer with the ribbing being 6 inches and the height of the rest of the hat being 7 inches.

summer upick chronicle

While moving around some papers near the phone today, I found the upick list that I kept from this past summer. It has on it the number of times I went to the upick and what I picked each time. Amounts picked can usually be assumed to be in flats (or 12 pints). I stopped keeping track of exactly when I went to each upick around about the time that I lost the list for the third time. There are a few dates written down to give a sense of what was in season when, but no more than that. I also kept track of how many pints I picked from our own blueberry bushes out front. This year we got 38 pints or roughly 40 pounds, which definitely cut down on the amount of times I picked blueberries at the upick.

So- all in all it looks like my kids and I went to a upick of some sort or other 21 times, mainly assorted berries, depending on the season, with some peaches thrown in at at the end. We skipped major apple picking this year and didn't end up picking any cherries, either, though I heard it was a good year for them out in the gorge for sure. We also went back to GM Farms to pick up pears and some apples that I used for canning.

1. strawberries at krugers (06/16/10)
2. strawberries at krugers with ellen
3. raspberries at the pumpkin patch on sauvie island with ellen
4. strawberries at baggenstos
5. strawberries at baggenstos with ellen, evan and gemma
6. sylvan blackberries, tayberries, red raspberries at west union gardens (07/02/10)
7. red raspberries at west union gardens
8. red raspberries at west union gardens (07/17/10)
9. blue berries at bonny slope
10. blue berries at bonny slope with esme and nicole
11. marion berries, boysenberries, red rapsberries at west union gardens
12. marion berries, red raspberries, black caps at west union gardens (07/21/10)
13. red raspberries, black caps, currants at west union gardens
14. red raspberries and peaches at sauvie island farms with ellen
15. peaches at gm farm with ellen
16. blackberries at west union gardens
17. fall red raspberries at west union gardens
18. yellow raspberries, black berries at west union gardens
19. yellow raspberries, black berries at west union gardens with ellen
20. yellow raspberries, black berries at west union gardens with my dad
21. apples, peaches? and maybe pears at josey farms, although my memory is mixing years for this one

I obviously love to go to the upick. It is one thing I miss during the cooler weather months and am happy to have some greens, carrots and onions still growing in my garden, in addition to various herbs that I can use here year round. I grew up in Wisconsin and the weather here is very mild to my Midwestern sensibilities. I also lived in California for nine years, which turned out to be way too warm for my taste. Portland weather is amazing to me and most of the time I'm happy with what's going on here. There is a small window in December and part of January when I dream of moving back to the snow, somewhere or other, but all of that dreaming stops when the flowers start to bloom here at the end of January and early February. Spring here is long and amazing. I start dreaming of the Midwest again during the summer when I sorely miss thunderstorms and the like. But you can see that the upick and the abundance of berries helps to balance things out a great deal. And on a night like tonight, when it is 60 degrees, misty with a touch of fog, my neighbor's holiday lights glowing in the darkness, it seems just about perfect, whatever the month or season.

match point

I've been on a bit of a Woody Allen kick for the last couple of months. Tonight I watched Match Point, after reading something about it being one of his top ten best movies and a big comeback for him after several let-downs in a row. I really enjoyed it. For a while I thought the subject matter was quite a bit different from some of the other movies of his that I have liked so much.

(It was even a little too much of a thriller for me at one point and I went and looked for a spoiler. I have no problem watching a movie like that after I know what is going to happen. Even then, it usually still turns out to be a bit on the intense side for me. It's been a while, too, since I decided it was fine if I looked ahead in books, movies, what have you. Gave myself permission, at it were. It is supposed to be fun, after all. I feel like I have enough not-knowing in regular life without it taking over in the fiction I read and watch. Unless I want it to, that is.)

...but then, the ending {in particular} really brought home some of the meaning-of-life (and is there meaning to life?) questions that had been posed during the movie- if seemingly briefly- and included some extra introspection about luck that I especially enjoyed. It got me thinking again about the Luck Factor that I read earlier this year.

card making project {3}

Eva and I made 20 holiday cards together and here they are at last!











We aren't going to send out any of these this time around, so if you know me and would like a holiday card, pick out your favorite from those pictured here and imagine me sending it to you in the mail. Then imagine you pulling your chosen card out of your mailbox in about a week or so and how much fun that would be!

early december

yesterday was an incredibly stressful day. today was *much* better. i took samuel and eva to the last art class in a series they have been attending wednesday mornings for the past several weeks. last week they did miniature natural worlds with plants, each building tiny houses and putting in fairy-sized pathways among the plants. this week they each made a geoboard. the project was complete with sawing, sanding, designing, hammering and finally rubber-banding. i was worried about it when we arrived late to the class and everyone who was already there had been sawing for a half hour already, but eventually everyone had their wooden square and the rest of the project proceeded well.

then we went out for lunch with good friends from the class and met another friend at the park for some lovely december sunshine. tonight eva and i made both {our annual} pomegranate granita (technically, a sorbet this year {again}) and meringue puff {cookies} for the tween holiday party we are attending tomorrow. the tween group is a new group for us and is specifically for the westside of portland. we went to a book club last month sponsored by another woman in the group. it's funny to me calling samuel a tween. not since my kids were preschoolers-although i don't remember using that term often, so maybe it goes back all the way to when i had toddlers?- did we have a specific label for one of my kid's age range. so tween it is. at least in this group.

incidentally, i doubled the granita recipe this year and used 4 pomegranates (for 2 cups pomegranate juice) and added that to 1 cup water combined with 1/2 cup sugar (cooked until dissolved) and put in the ice cream maker until done. you can make a true granita by pouring it into a bowl and setting it in the freezer. periodically go in and break up the forming chunks so that it doesn't freeze solid.

the meringue cookies are 4 egg whites with 1 cup sugar added 1/4 cup at a time after the egg whites have been beat to stiff peaks (but not dry- because they always say that, although to be honest, i have never actually seen dry peaks, that i know of...). when you have stiff peaks with the sugar, spoon onto parchment paper lined cookie sheets and cook- watch carefully- at 200 for an hour or so. remove before they darken, although it's not the end of the world if they darken. i'm going to experiment with drizzling chocolate onto them tomorrow after they have cooled. should be a fun experiment.