Bronze Award Project

Thalia decided to earn her Bronze Award while in Junior Girl Scouts this year. The Bronze Award is the highest award given to a Junior Scout.

To earn it she needed to earn a Sign, a leadership award, and 2 badges related to her project. She then needed to spend 15 hours on a project that would benefit the community.

Thalia decided to earn the Sign of the Star, mostly because it was fairly easy to earn solo (the Bronze Award and Signs are often earned as a troop).

She had earned the Junior Aid award back in Ohio when she helped run a Brownie meeting.

The two badges she earned were Pet Care, and Yarn and Fabric Arts.

Then she was ready to start her project -- making blankets for cats in shelters. She would've preferred to actually work directly with the animals, but is too young to do so. I thought this was sort of creative in that she came up with a way to do something for the animals in spite of her youth.

She ended up making fleece blankets -- the kind that take 2 layers of fleece with fringes tied together. The shelter specified that they would like the blankets to be 14 inches square. Frankly, this was the toughest part of the entire project -- getting the specifications for the blankets. During this part of the project Thalia learned that nonprofit organizations are often understaffed and may not return phone calls until you call them several times.



We had the fleece with multi-colored cats on it already (I had bought it when Thalia was a toddler, thinking I would make a jacket for her). We waited for a sale at JoAnn's to get some solids for $2.99 per yard, and also found some large pieces for cheap in the remnant bin. We're all about the cheap materials here.

She ended up making 14 blankets. Our cats tested them out, and thought they were great. For the record, after we finally got the cats off of them she washed the blankets before actually taking them to the shelter.

At the end of the year her troop had a candle ceremony for the 3 girls who had earned their Bronze Award. And the leader mentioned it, then, in the Court of Awards that was held jointly with the Brownies and Cadettes -- the leader thinks Girl Scouts needs to make more of a fuss about the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards. But, hey, if we started counting the ways Girl Scouts could be better we'd be here all day, right? So let's be happy we had a nice troop in a decent Council.

Thalia has now officially bridged to Cadettes, so we're poised to start on the Silver Award. Yeehaw. Or maybe "aaack" would be more appropriate. I feel like I just figured out how to "do" Juniors, and now it all changes.

Busy Times

We've had house guests. So that's part of the reason for the break in blogging.

Also, we got a new cat a few weeks ago. After spending several weeks wrapping us around her little paw, when she was sure of our adoration, she revealed her true identity of Demon Kitty. She attacked our other cat. Viciously. So, much time lately has been spent toting cats to the vet. Older cat now gets ointment in his eye and antibiotics. Demon Kitty has been checked out for any physical problems -- there are none, by the way, so that means she has no excuse for her behavior.

In Which I Find Something Worthwhile About Prima Latina

I have often moaned and complained about Latina Christiana and Prima Latina, all volumes of which we tossed out in favor of other Latin programs that didn't cause such weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

BUT

Thalia's choir was singing in a concert. And it was pretty cool when AnnaBeth and I recognized the song:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
Dominus Deus Sabbaoth.
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria Tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.

We sort of giggled and chanted along quietly.

Afterwards I said something to Thalia about how handy it was that she already knew the words to that one.

"Yeah, and we'd even learned the correct pronunciation.' It was pretty apparent from the tone of her voice that this did NOT mean that she had any desire whatsoever to touch those books again. Additionally, she's into classical pronunciation now, thank you very much.

But, hey, at least all those weeks of Prima Latina weren't a total waste.

Trivia

So far today I've gotten up early, had some Green Magma to drink, then scrubbed the kitchen floor while listening to classical music.

After that I ate pecan shortbread chocolate chunk cookies, fried bacon, ate the bacon, fried bread in the bacon grease, then ate that, all while mindlessly reading Internet forums.

Which way will the day go -- back on track for the healthy, productive lifestyle? Or diving further into the depths of junk food and drivel?

Ruffles, and Red, White and Blue

AnnaBeth's choir director asked that they wear red, white and blue to their next performance. Well, okay. Except that the only red clothing she has is Christmas related, and it's (finally) too warm for that sort of thing. And the only blue she has is denim, which really isn't so much "blue" as it is "denim".

So we decided to make a new skirt. And I figured that AnnaBeth wanted something a little flouncier than an A-line or simple gathered skirt. After much consultation she decided she liked Ottobre 3/2006 #35, which is an extravaganza of ruffles. She thought perhaps we should make some ruffles blue and some red, but I thought it might be nice to find some printed fabric.

A trip to JoAnn's yielded patriotic Hello Kitty (who knew?), as well as some white fabric with stars sprinkled across it.

This is what happens when you cross a need for red, white, and blue with a need for lots of frills:




I had purchased some red ribbon to sew on some of the outer, blue ruffles, but AnnaBeth decided against that. I think she was right, since that would've added too much weight to those ruffles.

This really weighs a ton -- it's got 2 layers. The under skirt is supposed to be white batiste with 2 frills on the bottom. I used white for the upper part, but the starry fabric for the frills. I hemmed the frills with my serger set for a narrow rolled hem, one using red thread and the other using blue. It came out looking sort of like ribbons:





That white fabric was stuffed in a drawer with a price tag of 47 cents per yard. I think it originally belonged to my mother-in-law's mother, who had purchased it way back when. You know, back before we called it "stash" and instead called it "sort of odd hoarding behavior, possibly brought on by surviving the Great Depression".

I'd thought I was being clever by ignoring Ottobre's directions about the size of the elastic in the waist -- I thought they wanted it way too small. But, no, they were right -- the skirt is so heavy that it drags right down onto her hips. But it seems to work in spite of my larger elastic.

I finished it this morning. She's worn in non-stop today. I hope it lasts until her performance, and doesn't end up mud caked or ripped by then.

"Stitch It Together" Try-It for Brownies

Honestly, this would've been an easier Try-It for us to do at home, but that can't be said for everyone in AnnaBeth's Brownie troop. So, it ended up as a troop project. The girls made doll quilts.

We were instructed to get fabric and cut out 6 squares of 8" by 8", and a backing of 16" by 24" (yes, quick math show that this isn't really correct, as you have seam allowances, but I guess the woman in charge decided it was the easiest way to explain it to everyone, or maybe she didn't feel like doing the math herself -- I never know in these situations). We also purchased some buttons.

Those who were unable to purchase their own fabric had some provided for them.

We happened into a sale at JoAnn's on quilting fabric and buttons.




(Picture is yellow because it was taken on the dining room table in winter.)

At the meetings the girls sewed on the buttons on one square (task #2, Button Collage) and embroidered designs on another square or 2 (task #3, Embroidery). Did I mention that there are about 20 girls in our troop? So, that's 20 kids in 1st through 3rd grade who are trying to figure out how to sew on buttons and how to embroider (and we didn't have hoops, which added to the challenge). And, yeah, we have heavy parental involvement, but an amazing number of the parents have little idea how to sew on a button or how to embroider. It was ... intense. The troop provided the needles, thrjead, scissors, and embroidery floss (I think the floss was donated by someone who had gobs of DMC that the labels had fallen off of; actually, AnnaBeth took some of our from home so she knew she had a color she liked).

After decorating some of the squares with buttons and embroidery, the girls brought all 6 squares to the sewing machines. What sewing machines? Why, the ones lugged in by some of the moms. I took my old Viking, which is absolutely awesome for this task since it has a "low gear" in which you CANNOT sew quickly no matter how much you stomp on the pedal (another plus is its nice carrying case, but a minus is that it weighs about as much as my car). Working closely with the sewing machine mavens, each girl sewed together at least some of her squares. Well, if she wanted to. If she was really timid, she was welcome to just watch while being talked through what was going on. At least, the kids who were with me got talked through it -- my experience teaching Thalia and AnnaBeth to sew merged with my years of library reference work teaching university freshmen how to use the online card catalog, and I was in the ZONE about explaining what we were doing and why. (task #6, Patch It All Together) The seams were ironed flat by the adults; someone had brought in an iron, and a little ironing station was set up.

The troop provided batting. The completed 6 squares were laid on top of the batting and the backing, and sewn together (sometimes by Brownies, sometimes not) leaving a gap for turning. All quilts were turned, and the girls were given needles and thread to whip the gap closed (task #5, Sew What?)

Okay, admittedly some of these tasks aren't spot on how they're written in the Try-It book, but we took at least 3 meetings to do this, and the kids really did work quite a bit on stitching skills.




A finished product.

Thalia thought it was such a cool concept that she got some fabric to make one, too.

And One Finished for Me

Long ago I became interested in A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille. I found the online discussion of the book tantalizing. A new look at homeschooling! Woohoo! It sounded like it was changing lives.

But, of course, I was too cheap to actually purchase a copy of the book. I found out what I could about the contents and the author, and had to be satisfied with that.

A few weeks ago I happened to look up Thomas Jefferson Education in our library's catalog. Hey, they had it! I placed a hold, and eagerly awaited its arrival.

And last week it finally came! And I got to read it! And it was ... really mediocre. Sigh. All my hopes for revolutionary thought were dashed. It was nothing new, packaged in a book that seemed like a cross between an extremely long magazine article, and a brochure for George Wythe College, which is the non-accredited school the author runs.

So. Set a good example for your kids by studying and learning new things. Classics are good. not that he ever defines what he means by classics. Mentors are good. Apparently we should all strive to become statesmen, although I don't recall that he ever explained what that meant, either. George Wythe College is (according to DeMille) a sparkling example of higher education.

I did get a kick out of this quote from page 125: "We are inundated with information, but most of it does us very little good." Umm, yep, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on this book.