The Clever Hen, open for business!

Winter is upon us.  Here in the Northwest the trees are barren, the skies cloudy, the garden is asleep.  The water for all our animals is frozen every morning, so we haul out warm water to thaw it out.  We begin our first week of winter break and hopefully will spend the days preparing of Christmas in our home and in our greater community on the Rez.  This year this has involved making several dozen sugar cookies and making a nearly forty fleecy gifts for the children who come to Kingdom Kids, which are now piled high in our guest room, aka Santa's workshop.  

I am delighted to share here that I have opened a little Etsy shop, The Clever Hen, for selling handknit items for all ages.  Over the years I have had so many friends and family members ask when I will begin to sell some of the things I make and I always shrug and end up deciding I haven't had time to knit what I wanted to knit and knit to sell.  Now that my little girls are a bit older and I squeeze in knitting during school hours and evenings, I took the plunge and listed a few of my favorite things in the shop that I actually reserved and began to dream about five years ago.  This has actually kept me so busy that I am just now catching up on all the private local orders I've had!  I've sold several custom knits to local friends this month and have a few more in the wings, not to mention a lot of exciting plans and ideas for the types of listings I want to create and list once there is a lull.  I am prepping an adult Anthropologie-copycat hat in a soft pink with satin ribbon (so pretty) and have a chunky cowl in mind after that. I am still working on sprucing up the shop with photos and announcements, and eventually will host a few giveaways, probably through my Instagram, so if you think you might be interested, go follow me over there!

I have made firm guidelines about which toys the girls are allowed to play with in a given week and they must ask to bring anything out besides the toys assigned for the week.  I was discovering that I either needed to pare our beautiful toys down a lot (which I hate to do because I LOVE high quality children's toys which is why we have several options) or create a loose system that avoids five different expansive play options all out in different rooms at one time in one afternoon.  Beyond the logistics of cleaning and tidiness, I was suspecting it would bring increased focus to their play and sure enough, that does seem to be true.  It is my sincere hope that having fewer toy choice at one time will make this winter survivable ... for me.  I am not yet really very good at keeping such a large house tidy while also balancing motherhood, homeschooling, and ministry. While I'm the first to acknowledge what a delightful problem that is to have... it's still a problem!  

So happy December to all of my friends who have found me here. Let me know you stopped by so I can visit you back!  Check out my shop and see what I've been working on!  

September is nice

  

 Back to school!  Busy as can be, I wake up early every morning and head to bed a little too late, just to stay on top of things right now.  The sky turns to dusk earlier and earlier so that by 8:30 the sun has set and it's quite dark, and I get so disoriented; surely it's time to turn in but there's still so much to do.  

Homeschooling two in these early years is surprisingly not much more work than one so far, especially since I spent a significant amount of time this summer preparing and planning.  We start school at 8,break for chores at 9, and are done with most everything by noon.  The mornings are jam-packed with a great variety of short lessons: Bible, poetry, memorization, drawing, spelling, math, literature, history, geography, natural science, a variety of music, penmanship, and other happy things.  Rosie loves to join in sometimes and other times she's making her own fun in the mud or on the swings or in the sensory bins I have put together for her.  Afternoons hold splashing in homemade mud puddles while swinging, knitting**, stripping bark from walking sticks ("Daddy's going to give it an oil finish if we get all the bark off!!"), cross-stitch, playing with frogs, digging in the dirt, a bit more pleasure reading... September is nice. 

Lyddie and Millie had their very first ballet class this week and couldn't have been more delighted.  Rosie will be well prepared when it comes to be her turn in a couple years since they have spent all kinds of time talking and teaching her what they learned.  And they are just the sweetest little ballerinas in their dearly loved leotards.  

** I am working on a little knit dress for Rosie that she picked out called Anakhoreo by Taiga Hilliard, who designed the Rio dress I made for Rosie when she was an infant, and which she was able to wear until she was probably three.  This is a very similar pattern but with a cable panel rather than a seed stitch panel.  Part of why I loved the Rio so much was the yarn - frog tree pediboo was delightful and totally held up like a dream.  This is just knit picks swish which I like - it's a good quality for the price, but which will probably not hold up as well and it definitely won't have the same soft drape as the Pediboo. But it will be sweet all the same!

pleasant surprises

  

I am so amazed when I think about all the natural beauty we are surrounded with here in central Washington.  We can drive just a fairly short distance and reach oceans, mountains, plateaus and prairies, glaciers, river gorges, waterfalls, and more.  Today was a day off for Jesse so we hopped in the car and drove an hour and half to the Columbia River and planned to visit a museum I had known about but never really researched.  I was so pleasantly surprised by the experience!  Since we were able to get in free because our library provides a free family pass to the Maryhill Museum of Art (which meant I really wasn't sure if it would be that great since free doesn't always equal stunning), it was well worth the plan and if it was a bust we'd just head further down the Washington/Oregon border to some little hike or something.  No hike needed.... the art museum was incredible, housed in a mansion atop the Columbia Gorge, right above the river rushing by below.  The museum had a big variety of exhibits, but our favorites were the Native American articles from all over North America; Plateau tribes, Coastal tribes, California tribes, Southwest tribes, Inuit tribes.  The collection of baskets and baby boards and tools and photographs was beautiful and I wished I had more time in there but the kids were getting antsy.  I had no idea there was a pretty large collection of Rodin sculptures as well which was my other favorite.  Many of his plaster casts were there which was fun to think about - practice models for the marble work later.  There were also several Greek artifacts from several thousand years ago!  The grounds contain several outdoor sculptures and a picnic area, so we enjoyed relaxing in the grass and since I am recovering from a sinus infection, I rested while Jesse took the girls around to see the sculptures.  It was a sweet day and the girls were sad to leave. It was quiet and calm with no crowds, and we really only got through half of the museum or so, so another trip is in our future.

While I rested I worked on my newest knit:  a little short sleeved shirt (pattern: Sorello) for Millie in some gifted Fancy Image Yarn yarn from a sweet reader here.  Isn't the yarn stunning?!  I am thrilled by the bright vibrant colors as they unfold in each row and Millie says, "Oh mom!  Is that for me!!?"

front lines

I feel a little like I might be limping to the finish line of our ministry-laden March, but we are certain to finish it out in due course, right?  

There are things about working in ministry on the Rez that are really difficult to put into words but I know they must be real because I'm not the only one who experiences it.  Sometimes I think, "I really want to write about this" so I can share and hopefully encourage and challenge others to see God's faithfulness, but when I try to write, the thoughts and concepts are so tangled that I don't often know where to start. {And in my effort to be realistic, I also sometimes feel like I end up with a "downer" of a post, or that I'm going to sound really depressed when I'm not.  After gradually easing into the knowing of these things you kind of learn to live with the knowing of them without being constantly devastated by the brokenness it reveals.}

 Someone recently said to me, "I did not know what true spiritual warfare was until my first trip to the reservation."  Whew!  Sometimes I convince myself I am imagining the dark cloud of difficulty or even sorrow that gathers.  Sometimes the struggle is my own doing, consequences for choices I'm making about my sleep, my attitude, my habits.   Sometimes it's sorrow directly related to sorrow over things I carry now, things I know. Sometimes the struggle is clearly a direct attempt to discourage and disable: opposition.  

We know that as God's children we have an enemy.  We know that when we are engaging in the front lines of ministry the enemy would surely rather us not be successful.  We know that the enemy of our souls prowls like a lion seeking to devour.  We also know we have nothing to fear because of the lover of our souls.  Here on the Rez we are without a doubt on the front lines of the Kingdom of God.  Our lives intentionally center around serving and loving "the least of these" within a people group that is so marginalized that many people talk about them in the past tense. "When the Indians lived..."  "The Indians did..."  

I believe God protects our church family mightily from deep darkness all around.  I believe He completely controls the suffering His children encounter and experience.  I believe He means all of the things we walk through to be for our good - no, not an abstract version of "good"-  He has in mind the deepest, most beautiful healing of our selves.

Bear in mind that as I write these things I am thinking of children I have seen recently with suspicious bruises.  Of a child who never has adequate clothing for the weather.  Of a young mom I came in contact with today who told me her brother passed away in a fatal car wreck in her own car last week.  I'm thinking of children who haven't got any running water at their house; of a family with several precious children that didn't even have a door on their house for a significant part of last year; of a couple that lived in a tent last summer and now live in an RV with a leaky roof.  

I'm also thinking of how the Lord has met each of those scenarios with His love now and His promise of care for the future.  How the children I worry over have tasted the goodness of His love and safety through the church.  How the mother got a listening ear and got to see her young children having fun in a safe place today.  How the children without water have had showers and care at the home of some of our friends.  How the missing door was replaced by some of the men from our church, and how the man and woman in the RV can have a double understanding of what it is like to be cared for by the Lord, an understanding I may never fully grasp in this lifetime.  His healing touch is merciful and perfect in His time.   

I can say that all our experiences are meant for the healing of our souls because He promises it, not because I never doubt it.  Sometimes I can't touch that in my mind, sometimes my heart is too broken to land on the truth of His goodness, and then I do sob.  But soon the reminders come: This world is not our home.  This sorrow is fleeting.  Jesus knows our every weakness. Jesus loves the little children.  Jesus suffered first for us. Joy comes in the morning.  

"Come then, my beloved, my lovely one come.
For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone." (NJB Song of Solomon 2:10)

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I am working on Lyddie's Suzanne sweater in KnitPicks DK Swish.  Her chest measurement is small so I am knitting a smaller size but forgot to adjust the sleeve length and just had to rip it back to increase the length of the sleeve.  The multicolored yarn was a beautiful gift from a sweet reader here and I can't wait to plan a project for it - possibly a sweater for Millie next.