Comfortable challenges

A challenge is something that will stretch your powers, with the likelihood of confirming them; you want to take on a challenge because you have confidence enough that you can succeed. A threat is a task that seems beyond your powers to accomplish or cope with.
John Holt How Children Learn

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Recently I stopped by a Julie's Pictures blog, who sets herself yearly challenges. Her first one was to walk for at least one mile from home everyday and record what she saw. Her friend, Fiona, just started a challenge to stitch a small picture everyday – they are so simple, yet interesting and visually pleasing.

I admire and respect their dedication, but recently I came to realise that for now I’m unable to commit myself to one year long daily challenges. I set myself simpler goals, like trying to make Russian pirozhki following these two Russian recipes: with apples and meat.

Recently I also joined Everyday Matters group, which has weekly drawing challenges. There is a list of 193 previous ones and so I’m trying to complete one old one alongside each new one. Here is the watercolour painting of autumn leaves for the challenge number 34.

Simple drawstring bag

Maybe one day I'll make a prettier reversible patchwork one

The best guides

Parenting is a process of mutual growth, in which parents and children grow in different levels through their interactions and through the elements they bring into one another’s lives.
Rahima Baldwin Dancy You are Your Child’s First Teacher
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Few months ago I pulled out my husbands discarded photos and made a collage from one of them. While making it I contemplated the important influence other people have on our lives and our personal development. And how the best teachers and guides are often the ones, whose intention isn’t to teach us or to lead us down a certain path. Because their intentions are far removed from directing us, we are able to freely journey next to them; to choose the lessons we accept, reserve for later or reject; to grow at the pace comfortable to us.

My dear daughter, thank you for changing my life.

Missing Posts

I keep on having problems with Bloglines lately, which often result in me missing few posts on various blogs. So I'm trying to migrate my list of blogs to Google Reader. Hopefully it will act a bit better (?)

to New York

My dear husband is going to New York for work (28 Oct - 5 Nov) and we are going with him. At first I was just glad that we’ll have a chance to spend some time together, though he may have to work on weekend, and I won’t have to do any housework for a week. I’ve been to New York before, but I mostly remember feeling constantly cold, as it was windy and wet and I didn’t have appropriate clothes. So we spent past weekend looking for some warmer clothes and shoes for our trip.

And now that I’m not worried about being cold and after looking at all the wonderful places we can explore I feel really excited: Museum of Arts & Design, Central Park Zoo, the Met, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum. And we’ll be in US for Halloween (isn’t it the coolest holiday?), so maybe we’ll go to the Halloween Celebration at the American Museum of Natural History. Looking at their website I’m starting to suspect that we can just spend the whole week there and I know that the Little Girl will enjoy looking at the butterflies more than paintings, so I may have to narrow down the things I want to see. Anyone has any advice on what shouldn’t be missed? Any suggestions for child friendly restaurants and places we should try? Actually every time I go to America I end up overdosing on sugar or salt (or both), because I can’t resist trying things I heard about, like Cheerios, Wendy’s, and all sorts of donuts and bagels; so maybe I should be asking for healthy food suggestions.

Since it’s gloomy and cold outside here as well, we went to our Natural History Museum. I think she was highly impressed by the giant animatronic model of T. Rex, but everything else wasn't very interesting. New York museum sounds like more fun, since it has some live exhibits.

(She just wouldn't stay still, so this is the least blurry photo I have)

Procrastionation & masking fluid

I’m still procrastinating on starting any new craft projects, but I got few more supplies today and there are many ideas slowly brewing inside my head and beginning to feel closer to their realisation.

In meantime my friend brought me some tulips, so I enjoyed sketching them.

Tried using the masking fluid for the first time – interesting - now that I have a better understanding of how it works I really want to try again, maybe I’ll sketch a cityscape.

Few more discoveries in London

Today, taking the advantage of the warm and sunny weather, I took us to TATE Modern to look at the installation/sculptures in the Turbine Hall. The experience was super enjoyable, because we could touch them. I don't think it is possible to fully understand and fall in love with most sculptures until one can touch them and trace their outlines not only with the eyesight, but with the hands. I didn’t end up taking any pictures of the actual installation and TATE doesn’t seem to have any info about it on their website. Strange.

Next we headed across the bridge to have tea with our hardworking and rarely seen breadwinner and to visit the real goal of the expedition – Fabric & Trimming sale at the Craft Central. I got some fabric and probably would’ve bought even more if I had some time to think about all the wonderful things I can make, but the Little Girl was getting tired and we headed to the King’s Cross/St Pancras station. It wasn’t the closest one, but they have lifts and I wanted to avoid having to carry the pram with not so light child down the stairs.

It was also interesting to see bits of the area that I don’t know very well. On the way to the station I noticed Exmouth Market and will add it to my list of potential London spots to visit.
Ironically the lift at home wasn’t working, so we had to walk up the stairs anyway.