October's End

The above photos were taken by my daughter for a visual arts project at school around the theme of "together we can." She visited my after-school knitting club and tried to capture how learning to knit often involves one-on-one instruction-- sometimes with "teaching hands" and "learning hands" wrapped up together with yarn and needles. This knitting club has been one of the bright spots of my October.

October also brought several challenges. This entire school year has been a rocky ride that has eaten up what used to be little bits of free time. I used to blog several times a week! Lately, I only seem to manage a few posts per month.

All of October's challenges, however, were not daunting. Some of the pleasant opportunities were:

• Taking a weekend trip to Birmingham for the Writing and Illustrating for Kids conference of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (Sarah Campbell, a writing buddy and fellow traveler from Jackson, wrote a wonderful description of the conference here;
  
• Learning how to cook Chicken Tikka Masala, Baighan Bartha, Naan, and Aloo Gobi Masala with some good friends;
• Reading Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder with my daughter and thinking about "common magic;"
  
• Watching both of my children participate and progress in their Tae-Kwan-Do classes;
• Reveling in rain after a long time without.

With less than three days left in this month, I'm anticipating:

• Enjoying cooler, more fall-like temperatures;
• Carving two, large pumpkins and three, small pumpkins to welcome hallowed haints and saints;
• Strolling through the neighborhood in search of fall colors peeking out here and there.

Alliteration

Cinnamon swirls and simmering sauce on Sunday!

It may be a strange alliteration, but it describes what I've been doing this afternoon (with help from the children) in baking and cooking endeavors. Homemade cinnamon rolls and a huge batch of tomato sauce from scratch simmering on the stove.

Round Again

Round

Summer Concentrated

From yesterday's farmer's market, we gathered fresh edamame, lady peas, peaches, figs, and golden and green zucchini. My son bought an already treasured cactus, and my daughter bought a sedum for our butterfly garden.

We made progress on summer reading. My daughter and I are reading Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli together. This book surprised me with its sophistication and treatment of some serious issues. It surprised my daughter, too, because she didn't even want to read it at the beginning of the summer. Now, it has both of us laughing and crying and thinking and talking. It is a transformative book and deserves a post of its own for my Tiger Tales library blog.

My son and I read another chapter from Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. He loves the relationship between Gregor and his two year old sister Boots. It is a page-turner that makes me want to keep reading to the end, but I'll wait to share it with my son.

Friends came over in the afternoon for a skirt sew-along. The girls sewed while the boys ran through the sewing room in various warrior costumes of power and might. We took a break from sewing and saving the universe to eat popsicles and to look at a frightened bat hiding beneath the deck umbrella.

From our own garden, we harvested basil for a double batch of pesto making. Nothing tastes more like summer to me than fresh pesto and tomatoes.

Everyone finished the day with some reading in bed. The first thing my son said to me when we got up this morning was, "I stayed up until 8:33 pm reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid!" I love that.

Perfect Summer Salad Recipe

1 cup knitting with morning tea
2 cups shopping for local veggies at the farmer's market
dash of sewing a wonky log cabin
1 cup shelling crowder peas
1/2 cup swimming at the pool
1/2 cup eating shelled peas with zucchini, fish, and rice
1 teaspoon watching creatures in the lamplight

After adding each ingredient, mix well and read a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or a blog. Do it again the next day changing up the ingredients here and there. Enjoy!