Craft Day

Last Saturday I took the materials for a couple of craft projects and paid a day-long visit to Columbia. Before Ellen, Arianna, and I worked on the crafts, we all visited Daniel at the Farmer's Market where he has sold home-brewed compost tea every Saturday morning for the last four months. UrbGard Compost Tea (short for Urban Gardener) has been an experimental, entrepreneurial venture to test the market for compost tea. There was a lot of educating involved as not that many folks are familiar with C.T., but he always sold a few gallons. A few shots of Daniel's "booth" at the market, explaining C.T. to customers, and the girls helping bottle up more tea:

Back home, the girls and I decorated watering cans. I brought them each a blank can with plenty of paints and markers and they did a great job decorating them:

The girls used their digital cameras to record their artwork for posterity:

And, yes, the watering cans worked even better after being decorated:

We took a break before the next project, during which Arianna beat me soundly (even with Daniel coaching me) in a game of Spit:

The next craft was using a product we called "gimp" when I went to summer camp 50+ years ago—plastic coated threads that can be braided into necklaces, bracelets, lanyards, and other indispensable objects d'art. I haven't made these since 1960 or so and was amazed I could still remember how—and that this product was still available at craft stores. The girls caught on quickly and were soon churning out all manner of beautiful items.

This is a lanyard I made out of gimp at church camp as a kid, which I somehow have held on to. The hook provides a starting place for the braid (we would attach the hook to our tennis shoe laces to start braiding) and served to hold wooden name tags, small crosses carved from cedar or braided from gimp, or whatever. Note the psychedelic green and orange color combo—shades of the 'Sixties:

To start the girls' braids we attached the hook to a drawer handle:

(Thanks to Jen for this pic and several others:)

And to Ellen for this one!

And a little home movie to conclude a great day of fun stuff: