Staying in the far North

Well, decision time has come and gone. We're staying in Alaska for another year. It was a hard decision to make. The opportunities of Montana versus the financial benefits of Alaska. We weighed and discussed and fought and discussed and cried and discussed. Part of what tipped the balance was that the Montana state ed office refused to give Dave an answer about whether or not he'd have to take more classes for his elementary admin license until he sent in fingerprints. Well, maybe in the rest of the US that is no big deal, but for us it would have been an $800 flight to Anchorage to get them done. And if we'd taken the time to do so, we would have lost the opportunity to have the job here, as it would have likely been hired out at the Anchorage job fair this weekend. We won't be staying in this village, but moving next door, so to speak, to the village of Chuathbaluk. It's pretty similar to this village, but Dave will be the Lead Teacher, which is sort of a teacher-administrator hybrid position that fills the void from when one principal serves many village schools. We'll still have Susan as our principal which is a nice continuity. I'm actually fairly tired of thinking about it all, so instead I'm going to give you photos of what we've been up to. In Craftyland, I made a wooden Waldorf-style sunburst toy for Julia. Any carpenter would look at my crooked cuts and sigh, but I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. I used a old fashioned hand saw to cut the sun points, and then I tracked down a jigsaw to cut the inner arcs. I should have tracked down the jigsaw first and saved myself the hassle of the hand saw, so lesson learned. I sanded it all down with very fine grade sandpaper, since that was all I had around. It took forever, but got the job done eventually. Then I used nontoxic watercolors to stain the wood and sealed it with a beeswax finish. I actually used a beeswax based lavender and peppermint headache soother balm, since it was all I had on hand, so the toy smells amazing. I used a piece of scrap wood, so I didn't have any dimension choice, but if I did, I'd make it a little wider. It is a bit tippy since it's only about an inch wide. 

 

I'm also working on a new knitting project. A friend asked me if I could re-create her hat, a vintage scandinavian pattern, which was starting to fall apart. I purchased some Cascade Yarns 220 Superwash Sport in colors that were fairly similar, and started to copy the pattern. The brim was a easy k1 p1, and the pattern above it wasn't too hard to copy. I just hope the decreases at the top are easy to decipher too.

High fashion in the north

Kiley giving Julia a ride in the kicksled

My mom sewed and smocked this adorable dress for Julia out of an old pillowcase embroidered by my great-grandma.

Oh, and two more teeth are coming in, left and right of the lower front two!