Original 1880s Embroidery Patterns: More Gifts for You

As promised, here is another set of 1880s embroidery patterns from the crinkly pattern sheet I bought recently.

Just like the first set, they are reproduced in high resolution for you. To use them, click on the images below. Depending on your browser, you can right-click on the image to get the full URL, and then paste it into a fresh window. IE behaves this way. In Chrome, just right click on the image and you can choose to see it full size. Then you can print them out.

As I mentioned last time, most of the designs here are for making little gifts welcome and useful during that period: penwipers for, well, wiping your pen nib clean of ink, covers for boxes or bags to contain cravats, veils, gloves, pin cushions, and even covers for match strikers. What's a match striker? Why, it's a sandpapery surface on which you strike your match to light a stove or lamp, the gas or candles, or the fire. I've a book from the 1930s with a kitty's back rendered in outline and the same phrase, "scratch my back".

By the way, so sorry that the images are showing up here sideways. I had to turn them in MS Paint, and for some reason while they show up fine on my computer, Blogger is setting them all cattywampus.

Here we go!

A match striker. Why doesn't the little girl want to pet her kitty? Perhaps because it has grown really big?

A Christmas version of "A Stitch in Time"; good for a novelty workbag,

Whether the butterfly lives with the needle and thread or not, both are engaging.

Hard to read, but the word says "Cravats". This could decorate a box or bag to contain that once-essential menswear and menswear-inspired item.

Care to keep your feather duster in a bag? Perhaps more sensible to put the dusting rags there. Much nicer than keeping them in an old shopping bag...

Here's an acceptably floral glove box design. Render it in embroidery, or paint perhaps.

Is this a humorous cover for a stained desktop? It would make a fun patch for jeans.

Ah, a doily to hold the shaving equipage, or to adorn the shaving towel.

Hard to read, but this is a pattern for the top of a veils container or bag.

I wonder how the mother, father, or grandparents who received their daughter's handiworked glasses case really felt about it, privately? "Specs" isn't my favorite term of all time. However, the design has its charm.

By the way, I bought this pattern sheet as well as another one from Curtis A. Grace here in Lexington. If you're interested in pattern sheets like this, do contact him. He also has fantastic paper dolls; I've even seen a set in his shop from the 19-teens, and it was large and great fun. He's not too active on Facebook, as you'll see, but if you message him, bet you can reach him.

A happy remainder to the Christmas season to you and yours, and Happy New Year!

Original 1880s Embroidery Patterns: Made for Gifts Then, A Gift to You Now

Today is, let's see, the fourth day of Christmas. We have no calling birds from Kentucky for you, but I do have a little something to warm this long holiday period. Recently I bought two large sheets of crinkly transfer paper with patterns that date to the 1880s. Such fun they are! Patterns for a laundry bag or laundry book, a penwiper, bits of holly, a Christmas wreath, children playing, flowers with faces.

Come and have peek into little crafty projects for items then very much a part of daily life. Save the patterns and enjoy them!

Here is what one of the full sheets looks like; it's put next to a book to give you a size relationship. The paper is somewhat thicker and sturdier than today's tissue paper. The maker and date are unclear, but the sheet appears to have been produced in New York.

The designs are printed backwards, do you notice?

(Yes, I am rereading Blue at the Mizzen. Just can't let go of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and 2014 will probably see me start the series all over again.)

Here are some of the designs below, reproduced in high resolution for you. To use them, click on the images below. Depending on your browser, you can right-click on the image to get the full URL, and then paste it into a fresh window. IE behaves this way. In Chrome, just right click on the image and you can choose to see it full size. Then you can print them out.

A great many designs during this period were reproduced in outline embroidery, with stem stitch and similar outline stitches in turkey red or sometimes yellows or blues.

A design for a handkerchief case.

Designs for a bag to hold buttons, a laundry list book, a penwiper, and a baby's ribbon bag.

A few seasonal designs.

A happy Christmas season to you! We've days and days of festival until the Magi visit on Twelfth Night.

Look for a few more designs to come your way...

Block Gingerbread, Mixed Peel, and Christmas Pudding: Ancient Treats Happy in Our Kitchen

Winter descended with a will last weekend, after a shot across the bow around Thanksgiving, when we had a fine dusting of snow to grace the festivities. This second bout was more an attempt at a broadside of sleet and ice. Thankfully most of it overshot us, although I hear that Virginia and points north were hit fairly roundly. We had just enough to slickify the roads and confine us indoors most of the time.

So we spent part of the weekend in the kitchen, cooking citrus peels, preparing a Christmas pudding batter, and making block gingerbread. At this juncture I am all about the block gingerbread: it's fascinating, and the more I test, the more interesting it becomes.

Christopher enjoys cooking very much and is getting to the point where I am turning over measurements to him, and he is learning to handle a wooden spoon stoveside. It's a joy to see him absorb his new skills, and to watch his face when he tastes the work of his mind and hands.

Christopher stirs the peel candying in the saucepan.

Noah, by contrast, thinks of it as advanced play with Mama's tools. My back turned for a moment, and Noah piled the flour bin, all the cookie cutters, and bowls onto the kitchen scale in a rickety pile to see what it might weigh, and what might happen next. Yep, he's an adventure in the kitchen, but unless he is rolling and patting and "testing" dough, he's not over-interested, so tribulations were thankfully few, because he trotted off to his Tinkertoys.

Sunday afternoon saw three productions. First we made mixed candied orange and lemon peel. Wonderful, and the syrup left over? Oh-my-goodness-I-am-hoarding-this-essence-of-citrus-grove-to-sweeten-my-tea-and-no-I-don't-want-to-share. If you get a chance, do make it. It's easy, you get to have orange fruit salad afterwards, and everything gets used except the seeds. What's not to love? Christopher said it was fantastico.

Mixed peel cooking.

The peel Christopher and I made to go into a traditional Christmas pudding, one of Isabella Beeton's recipes. I used Fashion-Era's copy of the recipe, from the 1928 version of the cookbook, though substituting butter for suet, which I do not care for. There is quite literally more than a pound of fruit in this recipe, and so it makes multiple puddings. Good. We have one for next weekend's Christmas tea, and one for our own delectation. Curte was somewhat anxious about this, as he stepped into the kitchen at one point and asked point-blank. The house was smelling very good.

The peel also went into the gingerbread, and the house still smells good, because I am still experimenting with it.

Yes, I cook on the floor and use my legs as a bowl vise.
Why do you ask?

Block Gingerbread, an Old, Old Treat Perfect for This Season

Lastly and most enticingly, we made what's known as block gingerbread. The unleavened gingerbread I made is far from bread; but more like very hard, very spicy cookies, the kind you dip in wine or coffee, and is a treat with hundreds of years of history behind it. Consisting of nothing more than flour, butter, spices, sugar, molasses, and if wanted, dried fruits*, the dough is pressed into squares with molded patterns on top, and baked in an extremely slow oven until -- well, ours are chewy crisp, but I imagine they should become quite hard. No leavening, not even eggs, in this recipe and earlier ones**. It was baked commercially and sold all over England, but the spicing and shapes remind me strongly of Europe, too, so I'd imagine similar breads were popular there.

A gingerbread cake with a cup of tea make for a civilized evening.
Yes, the tea is decaffeinated. Sigh.

I'd read about this block gingerbread in Ivan Day's mesmerizing Food History Jottings blog, and had determined to make it. This was our first opportunity.

*Even older recipes were based on nuts like almonds, or breadcrumbs.
**As time went on bakers started to use leaveners, like vinegar mixed with the molasses, or various leaveners like hartshorn and later baking soda, etc., until gingerbread turned into a fluffy sort of cake or quick bread.

The gingerbread cakes look like they will keep well, because there's really little to spoil***, and they taste divine: gingery, deeply complex with cardamom, coriander, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and more ginger, what England calls mixed spice. The only thing to get used to is the consistency, since today's soft or easily-snapped-crispy they are not.

They are perfect companions for coffee, or hot chocolate, or wine, and nuts and other after-dinner sweetmeats. Oranges, dates, that sort of thing. Besides, they're very pretty to look at. While not tasting or being at all like them, these gingerbread cakes remind me of beeswax, candles, port, and good Stilton.

***Indeed, Ivan Day transcribes one recipe, for almond-based gingerbread, that directs the maker to bake the gingerbreads hard, and they would keep "all the year".

If you're wanting to recall the 17th century, or the Georgian, Regency, or Victorian eras all in one iconic morsel, why not try them? The only thing you'll want to prettify them is some sort of mold...a butter mold or spingerle mold will do, and I am just itching to sculpt my own in clay. Lacking a mold, you could try them just flat, cut with a cookie cutter. Oh, and you'll need time to bake them. They take hours in the oven, and of course you want to be there while they dry...for it's really drying more than baking.

Granted, our first batch is less than shapely: I got antsy, and after they'd baked an hour and seemed soft as ever, turned the oven *way* up to 250. D'oh...the dough softened and the features of the molded designs began to dissolve. Down went the temperature again to 200 for another hour and a half and they could have stayed in longer. I let them dry overnight before packing the cakes into an airtight tin.

Batch no. 1: Our ladies and gentlemen are dissolving into history, and the fish are melting. Still, you can tell they are designs of some sort.

Ivan Day's recipe, straight from Frederick Vine's Saleable Shop Goods (London, 1898) is commercial-sized. Have you 8 pounds of flour ready? Not being so obsessed that I wanted to eat gingerbread until Lent, I took the recipe down to 1/8th size.

Here it is. I go by weight, as being more accurate, but you could try the American measures, although they are rounded off and very wobbly, because pounds and ounces are measures of mass, while cups and teaspoons are measures of volume, and the two don't compare well.

Rich Block Gingerbread, 1/8th recipe

1 pound all-purpose flour (about 3 1/3 cups)
.18 pound butter (just shy of a half cup)
.18 pound sugar (just shy of half a cup)
.25 pound mixed peel (about 2/3 cup) (optional) (orange and lemon peel is what I used, super-finely chopped)
.25 ounce ginger (about 1/2 tablespoon, more or less)
.18 ounce mixed spice (about 1 tsp)*
dark molasses, enough to create a dough

*Mixed spice: Mix up one part each of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, coriander, and two parts mace. Your "parts" could be tablespoons or teaspoons, just so the proportions are retained. From BBC Good Foods.

Please note: I added more spice this time. Commercial makers would have been careful of costs. I wanted a truly strong result, to remind me of the oh-so-powerful Pfeffernuesse I knew in Germany.

Method

In a nice deep bowl, work the flour into the butter until it's entirely incorporated: no lurking butter bits, please. I used my very cold hands to mix everything. Work in the sugar, peel, and spices. Hand work again.

Now, bit by bit, pour in enough dark molasses to make a stiff dough. I suspect I used more than a half a cup, but how much you will use will depend on how damp the weather is, and the properties of your flour. Again, I used my hands, because I could feel the dough coming together into a ball, and getting soft enough that I knew it would both roll and take a pattern from a mold.

If you have made pie crust before, your hands will know when the dough is getting to be moldable. Unlike pie crust, there is less butter here -- the dough is not "short" and fatty -- and of course the cookies will dry hard, so you can work this dough a bit.

If you haven't made pie crust, here's what you might look for. I am no expert on this recipe, but I do know doughs pretty well. You want the dough to hold its shape in your hand. It should not want to crack and crumble, a sign that it's too dry. Nor should it be sticky from too much molasses. If it's sticky it will stick to the mold, not peel out.

Now, the original recipe says to let it sit a bit. What's a bit? I left it an hour, baked a first batch and left the remainder overnight. Further reading of Food History Jottings and Ivan Day's website confirmed what I suspected, that this dough can sit and mature, the spices becoming ever more mingled and deep.

Now it's time to press the gingerbread onto the blocks. This is what the original directions called for. You don't roll out the dough and attempt to press the gingerbread molds down on top. No. Instead, you roll the dough onto the gingerbread blocks, and cut away the excess, like so:

Lightly floured molds, rolling pin and gingerbread all ready.

Rolling the gingerbread down onto the mold.

Approximate thickness I made my gingerbread blocks.

I guessed on the thickness, and spent a deal of time examining Ivan Day's productions on both his blog and his site.

Cut around the edge of the mold. Slowly peel the bread block off of the mold.

Cutting the gingerbread block to shape.

Peeling the gingerbread block from the mold.

Carefully transfer the cake to a barely greased cookie tray, or better yet, a tray covered with a Silpat.

"Dock" the gingerbread cake: poke holes in the top to deter any puffs. Mine didn't puff at all: there was nothing for the molasses to react to, such as baking soda. Commercial gingerbread makers used to have a special tool for docking, but I used a fork.

Docking the gingerbread blocks with a fork.

Bake in a cool, that is, 200 degree Fahrenheit oven, until the gingerbread is rather hard, though chewy inside. I am guessing on the eventual hardness of the result. Ivan Day says nothing about this, but his oldest recipe transcriptions speak of the cakes being baked hard. This took me three hours on the second batch. After a day or two the cakes become harder. How long the hardening goes on, I don't know...to really keep long they'd have to be dry as bricks.

Remove the gingerbread cakes from the tray. Brush with a glaze of mixed water and powdered sugar, not much, just enough to shine the surface a bit. This is my guesstimate of what Frederick Vine's "Bun Wash" might be. What a title... Put the cakes onto a cookie rack to dry thoroughly overnight.

Finished gingerbread cakes. Oh look! The lady on the right must be Bruenhilde: see her floury, horned helmet?

Pack in an airtight tin. See how long they last!

Next time I am going to add a bit of fruit vinegar to the molasses, and let it cause some rising, then let the sponge age in the refrigerator for a few days before baking it. We'll see what changes this makes to the results.

So Where's That Blasted Gauze Cap?

It's coming along, it really is! As the project progressed, I found myself more interested in testing to see how the sewing process, and the results, would change depending on what seams I used. Why might an 18th century seamstress choose a particular seam? Next post will explain a great deal more, and who knows, it may show a finished cap.

Deutscher Pfannkuchen: A Gentle Dinner Treat for A Warm Evening

Last evening it was almost seventy degrees outside, and the neighbors were sitting under torches, chatting and watching the flames in their firepit. It was so balmy and cozy in the evening darkness that I thought to make a candlelit dinner equally gentle. So it was out with Great Aunt Alice's No. 8 cast-iron frying pan, a good hot oven, a quick stir of the ingredients, and the result into the oven to puff and scent the air. Ah, Deutscher Pfannkuchen, or German pancake, a light dish a bit like fallen soufflé -- but really, it's light! -- that's wonderful served with applesauce, some other fresh fruit, a little bread and a bit of cheese.

The boys arrived home from Mamaw's and Papaw's at the farm, and I had the candles lit and everything waiting. It was a good dinner. Herewith, the recipe, as dictated to me by my son, Christopher, here on the sofa with me the afternoon following:

Deutscher Pfannkuchen

Beat three eggs with three tablespoons flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 6 tablespoons milk. Pour the batter into a large, generously butter skillet and bake it in a hot over, 425 degrees F, for 8 minutes. Reduce the heat to moderately hot, 375 degrees F, and bake it for 8 minutes longer, or until the pancake puffs up above the side of the pan and turns a delicate brown.

Place the pancake on a platter, sprinkle it with the juice of 1/2 lemon, three tablespoons sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, and one 1/4 cup melted butter. Roll the pancake and dust it with powdered sugar.

Serve at once with applesauce if desired.

From one of my favorite cookbooks, Gourmet's Old Vienna Cookbook: Viennese Memoir. By Lillian Langseth-Christiansen. New York: 1959.

I did not roll up the pancake, but served it in pie-shaped slices, plus I omitted the butter and the powdered sugar.

Also, one winner has yet to contact me so I can send her the giveaway. Laura, please see

Winners! Big, Fun Double Giveaway.

Winners! Big, Fun Double Giveaway

We have winners of the Big, Fun Double Giveaway!  Will Jen Conrad and Laura Morrigan please contact me at zip zip inkspot (spaceless) at gmail? Then we can make arrangements for sending you your new fabric and notions.

Thank you most kindly to all who entered. Very much enjoyed reading about what each of you planned to do with the materials. Naturally, am adding a few more items to each stash, just for fun, and hope you enjoy them.

A Big, Fun Double Giveaway

Ooh, supplies!

A few days ago an order of wool crepe fabric arrived in the mail, the material for an upcoming dress. As a freebie, the package contained three two-yard cuts of fabric. It was certainly nice to receive, no doubt about that; however, none of the fabric suits my personal style.

Methought, here's a chance to give it to someone, or someones, who will use and enjoy it! One thing led to another and before a half hour was out I'd gone through the sewing closet and had pulled out lace and notions that have sat there unused, some for 7-8 years. Just for fun, I added in a few pieces of antique lace, since I love and collect it.

Herewith, a giveaway, and just in time for the pleasant, though sometimes frenetic, period that we make gifts and treats for those we like, love, and esteem.

So, what do we have?

First, fabric: three two-yard cuts of a), a thin synthetic animal print, good for scarves, drapey top, or lined skirt; b) rich-colored synthetic floral with a black background; c) white jersey knit, soft, and almost opaque, good for baby clothes and tops.

Vintage and antique lace and some helpful notions. Much of the lace is in multi-yard amounts. Most is cotton, but there is a bit of synthetic thrown in. Some of the laces feature gaps through which ribbon can be run: those are good for Edwardian and 20s lingerie. The package of key-ring style rings? Heaven knows where that came from, but you can use them for their original purpose, or wrap thread around them and use them in sewing or crafting projects as handsome connectors. Then there are a couple of random zippers...

The lace, ah, the lace. This was collected years ago on a Tea Society to a pretty town in Southern Ohio, and was part of a very big bag of lace I found for $11. I have been using bits of that in all kinds of projects ever since, and alas, with this giveway, it's gone.

We have what may be the lace edging on a child's slip: fine cotton edging lace, attached to filet lace. Teens or 20s. A little damaged, as is often the case with fine-threaded lace, but repairable (believe me, I've done it), and good for any number of projects, although it's not enough for the bottom of an adult slip, alas. The yellowing will wash out if you very carefully wash it in Woolite or similar gentle soap. PLEASE never wash this lace in a machine or it will be destroyed.

Then we have a lace cuff, in Irish crochet. It's three-dimensional, and fun just to touch. Good for something, perhaps doll clothes? Or if you crochet, perhaps you'd like to copy it. Again, it will wash to a creamy white. Edwardian era.

Lastly, a series of vintage notions and tools. Some binding, some edging good for children's clothing, a full container of Bernina bobbins, and a tiny embroidery hoop. I have a Bernina I don't use, preferring to use my treadle or hand crank machines, so these bobbins have gone a-begging.

I will randomly divide all of this loot into two giveaway packages to go to two winners, and may yet add some surprise items. Patterns, perhaps, or natural-fiber fabric, or more lace, or what? Who knoweth the mind of a woman in clear-out mode?

If you wish to enter the giveaway, please leave a comment explaining what you might do with some of the items, and how you might disperse the rest, perhaps to a new seamstress or seamster, perhaps to a school or class, perhaps as gifts? Personally speaking, it gives me great joy to send on things to those who will appreciate them.

I will choose a winner on November 12...that's not too many days away.

Happy Thursday!

The Cat from Outer Space...

...and a golden eagle... Noah and Christopher celebrate Hallowe'en.

Our cat is holding up his flying saucer, which we made from cane (for hoops!), duct tape, and two trash bags, plus glow sticks for lighting. He's in his mask, has his jeweled collar with special powers of telepathy and the ability to fly, and is sitting on his tail. Ouch.

Here is our golden eagle, with beak mask and wings. Both boys have long preferred to dress in concepts applied sparingly, not all over.

After this picture, it was off we went, Christopher sitting in his wagon, crouched down under his flying saucer, and Noah leading the way. Once at a neighbor's door, Christopher walked down his gangway (the wagon handle), and followed Noah to the door, where they stammered out "Trick or Treat", looked pleased or embarassed depending on whether they knew the neighbor or not, and had to be reminded to thank the givers for the candy. Ah well, it's all good. Tasty, too.

Next time, it's back to the cap. I've been be-busied by household events, Cub Scouts, finishing a friend's Edwardian skirt for her, and everything else that makes life good and sometimes a little too much. Will look forward to the quiet of stitching a small thing.

A Dormeuse Cap, Part 2: Band and Caul Construction

Caul and band sewn and worn inside out.

Last time, I had showed you the toile of a dormeuse cap I am making up, sans any sort of gathering or pleating on the "wings". This post will lead you through the first part of cutting out and constructing the cap. My actual dormeuse design is more complex than the toile: it's a silk gauze version of the extant linen cap we saw in the last post. I will certainly add a ribbon around it to decorate it.

I have read available accounts of cap-making online. Most useful so far have been "How to Make a Cap", by Sue Felshin, on the 18thCNewEnglandLife site, and The Mantua Maker's "Cap Research". The Felshin article dates to the early 2000s, but is thorough and acknowledges when it departs in construction methods from extant caps. It also helps that I have an antique lace cap in my collection. To all appearances it dates to the early 19th century, but the methods used to make it are nonetheless good to know.

cap-kikiepa-109422-m186520

I am sewing the cap using part of the arsenal of 18th century stitches: backstitch, fell stitch, whipstitch, stroked gathering. I am using whichever stitch seems to make most sense for the seam/hem, rather than following a given pattern.

The fabric for this cap is Indian silk gauze from Puresilks.us. It's lovely stuff. It is sewn with Gutermann cotton thread. I should probably use silk filament thread for this but did not want to separate threads from my silk DeVere Silks filament floss; that's not much fun to do.

Cutting Out the Cap Pieces

Here are the basic pattern pieces. The wings, top, are in plain form, without extra fabric for gathers or pleating. A quarter of an inch of allowance is accounted for, though.

It was a pretty, sunny morning when I cut out the silk gauze for the cap. Miss Blueberry Muffin agrees. The gauze had been heavily starched and pressed before cutting, which made cutting easier and has prevented any fraying.

Muffin really is a muffin, isn't she? She spilleth over, despite being on a strict diet. Of course, she is stockily built; her legs are short and paws are broad. She is built for snow and cold: wait until you see her winter coat!

Okay, back to the cap. Here below are the pattern pieces, cut into silk gauze. The four long narrow pieces are the wings. They have not been shaped yet. One long side is the selvage. It appears a little wavy due to the starching, but has been straightened pretty well. You can see how sheer the gauze is. for the carpet pattern shows right through. It's a knitted wool carpet, by the way. Neat!

Constructing the Caul and Band

The image below shows the band, top, and the caul, bottom. You will notice that the caul as cut out is wider than the pattern. I cut it wider so as to have more to gather into the band, for a more capacious fit.

First, I found the center of the band, and marked it with the pin, for later reference.

Second, I turned up a 1/4" channel on the straight portion of the caul by folding over the bottom of the caul twice, and whipped it closed. Tapes will go through the channel and be pulled shut to pull the caul into a rounded shape that will fit the back of the head.

Here is a closer view of the gathering channel.

Next, I found the center of the top of the arch on the caul, measured out about 2 inches from each side, and gathered them tightly up. I held the gathers in place with a pin.

After that, I found the center of the top of the caul again and matched it to the center pin mark on the band. I pinned the two together.

Then I took one end of the band, and pinned it to one bottom end of the caul, leaving about one quarter inch sticking out beyond the end, Then I found the other end of the band, and pinned it to the other bottom end of the caul, again leaving the band sticking out a quarter of an inch.

The next step was to make as narrow a hem as possible on the ends of the band, so they would be flush with the end of the caul. Sorry that I don't have a picture of that!

Then the band and caul were eased together so that the sides of the band were smooth and all of the gathering was kept to the top center of the caul.

Using black thread, I basted the caul and band together, leaving a quarter-inch seam allowance.

You can see that I basted right over the gathered portion of the caul.

The seam was then sewn for real using a small spaced backstitch. The valley of each gather in the gathered portion was sewn down so as not to squash the gathers. I did not sew all the way to the end of the caul: I left a little room for each end of the channel. Once two tiny 1/8" wide cotton tapes are added to the inside of each end of the channel, then I'll close the space up.

Now we have the back and band for the cap. After the wings are sewn on, I will go back and grade all the allowances and then fell them carefully down.

Here is what we have so far, from the back. Remember that the tapes aren't yet in the gathering channel on the caul. When in, pulled close and tied, the caul will puff and the cap fit more closely.

Here's what we have from the side, again. I've worn it inside out to show the seam allowances. They will be graded, remember, and felled down.

Next post, we will create the wings to fit to the front of the cap, and sew them on. That's been fun to figure out, surprisingly. I did it one way, saw that the results were less refined than hoped, rethought and redid the them and had better resuts, but because I didn't write down my process carefully beforehand, forgot a key construction method, so I am on my third try. Let's hope it's the charm.

Before I leave you, some fun. School is closed for fall break, so the boys have played more or less peacefully this morning. A few minutes ago I could hear Noah's feet as he padded up the stairs. He was coming to show me his new invention: a video camera for filming horsey's football game. Horsey is cantering out of view, helped by Christopher, but here is Noah, filming.