— Mungo Jerry
In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.
— Sarah Dessen
Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.
— Deb Caletti
We got off to a bit of a slow start last week, but it started to pick up as it progressed. Monday was a kind of lazy, let’s binge Netflix kind of day. And for lunch it as a Gramie’s charcuterie board kind of day.
Tuesday I spent the better part of the day with my stitchery group at a pot luck garden party. But apparently the husband and the granddaughter have plenty of fun without me. They made themselves egg salad sandwiches for lunch, and went I got home they were having a whale of a time in the pool.
As promised, we did give the papier mâché a try. The shredded paper had been soaking for a couple of days, as the instructions I’d found online said to do. We drained the bowl and squeezed as much excess water out as we could, and mixed the pulp with some glue.
Actually, that was the really fun part. Squishing the sticky mess between our fingers. However, it was also kind of clumpy, and didn’t stick very well. In other words, it was a bust.
But never fear, Gramie had a contingency plan. I’d bought a couple of craft kits earlier in the week, one of which was something called Air Modeling Clay. To be honest, it was more like Modeling Foam, but it was still a lot of fun. So much fun she even persuaded Grappy to join in.
The granddaughter modeled a lot of food, but her favorite was her hamburger, complete with cheese on top of the patty and lettuce underneath. And I believe that’s an olive stuck to the top of it:
The foam like clay was actually a little difficult to work with. It was kind of stretchy, and really didn’t like to hold its shape. But it was workable if you were persistent. The hubby chose to make a monster:
I made a cat and a, um, worm-like creature, but my favorite was my dragon:
At one point the granddaughter got a little fed up with me spending more time taking pictures than crafting. The look says it all:
And when we were finished she had an art show:
Her section is the middle, and is comprised of a taco, her hamburger, I think that’s a tiny slice of pizza in front of the burger, on the plate is a donut (with sprinkles), behind which is a banana split. She also did a really cute representation of her cat, Muffy.
Sadly, this week she has day camp all week, so all I’m needed for is picking her up. But I’m already thinking ahead to the last week of summer and I’ve started lining things up to keep us amused.
I’ve bought a second tie dye kit, this one using liquid dye. And I’ve got a couple of things I bought online coming, specifically to use the dye on. And I’d like to pick up some proper clay. If we had fun with the foamy stuff, think what we could do with real clay! And we can always make more jewelry – she hasn’t seen half of the do-dads I have to make jewelry with.
I hope this week goes quickly. I’m kind of looking forward to my final week of crafting with the granddaughter.
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