the vegetable orchestra

When we camp at Fransted we like to spend an afternoon in Littleton, NH. We go to Chutters, which has the world's longest candy counter, to stock up on necessities.


We go to the hippy-dippy store to look at hippy-dippy things.

We eat pizza and walk across the covered bridge.

And we go to The Village Book Store and spend a reaaaallly long time looking at the books and toys. This year we found one copy of Mary Griffith's The Unschooling Handbook, which we strategically reshelved, cover forward, in front of some workbooks.

This trip Timmy thought we should check out Storyland, so we did.

We're not always very well behaved, but we have an awful lot of fun.

Dagny: "Mom, you should hold his balls. Not THOSE balls!!"

Here's the view from our backyard.

Rowan and I like to go out and look at it when the sun is starting to go down. Last night a bunny joined us.

Rowan says hi!

Tomorrow we go on our first camping trip of the summer. We've gone to the same campground with Karen and Timmy for years and years. It has everything we want - a big, private site, a river where we can move rocks around and make dams, horseshoes, and candy bar bingo. And this year we'll be camping with little Timmy, who is delicious.



Also delicious will be the bananas we cook in the coals of our fire. They warm us up on the inside on cold New Hampshire nights.

Slice banana open lengthwise, being careful not to cut the bottom skin.
Stuff the resulting crack in the banana with marshmallows (we vegetarians substitute fluff) and the candy of your choice, broken into small pieces. Hershey bars are the original candy, but we've tried out just about everything. I like a Caramello bar.
Double wrap the banana with heavy duty foil.
Put the wrapped banana on the coals for somewhere around 15 minutes. Really, we usually cook them just as long as we can stand to wait for them.
Unwrap and eat with a spoon.

Yum.

The Traaseths were interviewed for Minnesota Public Radio. I think they did great, and the reporter sounded interested rather than skeptical, which was a nice change.

Rowan listened to some of the interview with me. We were talking about how some people just don't get it, and it's not an easy thing to explain to people who seem to not want to get it. Rowan said school is like a paint by number, with the lines all drawn and the colors all chosen. Unschooling is like a blank canvas, where you paint whatever you feel like.

I don't want to live a paint by number life. I'm glad my kids don't want to either.

Dagny's added some new things to her etsy shop. I love her monster bags.

Check out these Bent Objects. I'm going to have to bust out my pliers.

Unfortunate:

The Sneeze:

Dueling Jacks:

Happiness in our corner of the world.

Jon bought Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake recently. I read pretty much every book that comes into the house (ok, every book) so I grabbed this one, and he let me get away with reading it before he did.

Jon puts up very nicely with my love of books. He builds me lots of shelves. But he's never been all that interested in books or reading himself. With one exception: Jon loves Vonnegut. He has a huge red book with a bunch of stories in it that he got from our friend Peter. I don't ever remember him not having that book, and I know he's read it lots of times.

After reading Timequake I felt like I got a different perspective on Vonnegut. I'm not sure exactly why - I think it gave me more of a feeling of who Vonnegut was. So now I've jumped into Jon's big red book, and I'm enjoying it much more than I did 20-some years ago when I read it the first time. I like the random thoughts he inserts in little ways throughout his stories. He doesn't elaborate on them. They're just there, waiting to be noticed. Here's one from Cat's Cradle:

''Self-taught, are you?'' Julian Castle asked Newt.
''Isn't everybody?'' Newt inquired.
''Very good answer.'' Castle was respectful.

Mars is amazing! And I'll never see Calvin and Hobbes the same way again.

(Warning: a bit gross - I know my kids wouldn't have liked it when they were little.)

The weather's been keeping us outside, planting, raking, digging, and enjoying the sun and the dirt. When we're not outside, there's been lots and lots of crafting going on.

I got through making my poncho with a bit of difficulty. It has a few of what my friend Karen calls 'soul-holes', but I like it a lot. Reading the pattern was really confusing for me, but I decided to make another poncho and suddenly it all clicked. I had no trouble with the second one and finished it quickly. Rowan adopted it. It's soft and cozy and I'm glad she loves it.

Rowan's still really into the Bobbsey Twins. She recently got some old books - one from 1904 and one from 1907. Very cool. She also got a Bobbsey Twins coloring book from the 1950's. It's never been colored in and she's very happy with the drawings of the twins. We've looked up some other BT items, and she's been disappointed in the dolls. None of the ones we've seen are accurate. So Rowan decided to make her own. She got some dolls at the craft store, cut and styled their hair, and made them outfits. Here's how they came out:

Bert, Nan, Flossie, and Freddie hang out in our bedroom so I get to see them all the time, and they make me smile.

Today was Sheep Day at Soule Homestead. From the minute we got there Dagny had her eye on two women who were spinning. After a quick picnic we headed over to talk with them. Within minutes Dagny was happily spinning.

(I've got to give Rowan credit for the second picture, which I love!)

I think the juxtaposition of Julian's very cool, studded, patch-covered jacket and the old-fashioned art of spinning is neat.

The women were great. They were excited by Dagny's excitement. The woman in the picture runs spinning classes, which Dagny's going to check out. The other woman gave Dagny a gift - some beautiful fleece. It was a really amazing experience and lots of fun. I love to be around people who are doing something they love and want to share it.

Dagny's got an etsy! Check it out:

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5127498