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Fill Your Bookshelf, Fill Your Mind

1 Nov

Recently, I took a look at the news, and took a look at our bookshelves. One made me feel hopeless, and one filled me with hope. The books that we are reading, especially the read-aloud books, spark so many conversations, and become examples we can point to when a 7-year-old is trying to grasp big concepts, even when we shield him from the specifics of the front page headlines.

I used the Common Sense Media book reviews to gather books that share a wide range of experiences, so many of which overlap with our own lives, goals, struggles and dreams. A Different Pond shows what father-son time looks like for a refugee family trying to make ends meet in America. Harriet Gets Carried Away is the story of a wildy imaginative girl who has unexpected adventures from the grocery story to Antarctica, all while her two dads wait to place their order at the deli counter. El Chupacabras is a bilingual story that has us all shouting “una tortita de cabra” or, “a goat pancake!”

Common Sense Media book reviews go into detail about the occurrences in the book. They measure content categories including: Educational Value, Positive Role Models & Representation, Violence & Scariness, Consumerism, Sexy Stuff, Language, and Drinking & Drugs. Additionally, they seem to seek out books that feature a wide range of characters, including sensitive boys, powerful girls, neurodivergent kids, gay parents, single-parent households, people of color, immigrants and many more. All that to say, the stories are amazing and it works a lot better than just looking at the library bookshelves and grabbing a few with interesting titles. Plus, if you get them on inter-library loan, you can put them on hold at home and then just pick them up at the library desk a couple days later.

Here’s a sampling of books we got recently from the library (some coming via the inter-library loan system):

  • Interstellar Cinderella by Deborah Underwood, age 3+
  • What if… by Samatha Bergner, illustrated by Mike Curato, age 4+
  • Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima, age 4+
  • El Chupacabras by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Crash McCreery, age 4+
  • The Word Collector by Peter H. Reynolds, age 4+
  • Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love, age 4+
  • The Princess In Black by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, illustrated by LeUyen Pham, age 5+
  • A Different Pond by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui, age 6+
  • Polly Diamond and the Magic Book by Alice Kuipers, age 6 +
  • Ruby Lu, Brave and True by Lenore Look, age 7+
  • A Boy Called Bat by Elana K. Arnold, age 7+

Originally published in Dirt Magazine, Sept/Oct 2018

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Who is this Raheli lady?

Raheli is a creative problem solver and fiber-lover in the Hudson Valley. She sews, knits, mends, spins, homesteads and writes, all while trying to get outside a little more often. (She/her) Read More…

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Class is over and socks are (mostly) darned. Thank Class is over and socks are (mostly) darned. Thank you to @fallkillcreativeworks for hosting me! @rachelharrietteb posted a few more photos.

The evolution of a sock darn - #mendmarch  Flux and Extra (days 5 and 6). I taught some darn good students today (😉😬) and now there will be some *extra* mending in the world, and something about how they fluxed into menders?? Uh, maybe a stretch @visiblemend but I am sticking with it.
#mendmarch day 4: FIX Oh look, I fixed my dress. A #mendmarch day 4: FIX
Oh look, I fixed my dress. After wearing it for a year or two with the hem unraveling in the back. It wasn’t unraveling quickly and I didn’t want to lose it to my mending pile... so I figured I would fix it someday... and I did. Yay! 

Dress is thrifted, and backdrop was hand-dyed by @thematerialsdesignco
Darning while talking to myself about my opinions Darning while talking to myself about my opinions about darning (aka: prep for my darning class at @fallkillcreativeworks, aka: kinda weird).
#mendmarch day 3 : cross - in the sense that the warp and weft *cross* over and under each other). But let’s be serious- this is really a photo of those tiny balls of gorgeous yarn that I got from @jbellvavra last year when she was cleaning out her sock yarn scraps. They are so 😍😍😍
Mending Kit: This is a bald-faced lie of a photo. Mending Kit: This is a bald-faced lie of a photo. Yes, these are *some* of my mending supplies and tools... but this desk is inside a whole room of fabric, thread, books, and one very cozy chair with lots of pins stuck in the armrests. But it’s hard to capture all that while actually showing what I use for mending. I mostly used embroidery needles, embroidery thread, scraps of fabric. I occasionally get a specialized item (the darning loom, heavy duty thread, the ripstop adhesive tape) but mostly, mending is about having a cute bag or tin to store your essential items. I mean, it’s about keeping it simple (so my supplies can fit in a cute bag and I can therefore mend anywhere). And by anywhere, I mean, the cozy chair by the fire. Sometimes I assemble my toolbox and serve as a Repair Coach at our Repair Cafe, but sadly it has been a year since it was safe to host one.
#mendmarch day 2: mending kit. Join along this month to work away at your mending pile! And I am teaching a darning class on Saturday - it’s virtual and you can find more info @fallkillcreativeworks (link in their profile).

Bags are from @brooklynhaberdashery and @kzstevens, vintage tin, all my scissors went missing for a while (and which they always do) so they will probably appear later. I do use the pilot frixion pens a lot for erasable marks... and I am using a bag-magnet still in its package (which I didn’t even buy) as a pin cushion even though I have so many cuter pin cushions 🤷🏻‍♀️🤪
Hello #mendmarch! So delighted to see you again! M Hello #mendmarch! So delighted to see you again! My name is Raheli and I have been. mender for 20 years! I mend because even if clothes are sold for very little money, they still have a lot of value. Humans have touched our clothes at every step of their way, and I want to be a good steward of these garments that people made. 
And I love the way mending, for me, becomes a practice of breaking down the Perfection that is presented as our ideal. My clothes get worn and marked by wear, and that is Ok. They break and tear. And that is Ok. It is a constant reminder that I will do these same things - be marked by my years, be broken - and this is hard, but it’s ok, because I can also mend and heal.

I am wearing my mother’s vintage shirt (which needs a hem fix soon), a wool cardigan that was a gift from my husband (mended cuffs!),a hand-dyed scarf from @thematerialsdesignco and a necklace that belonged to my grandmother. I am also wearing a thrifted (and mended) black dress, leggings that came from @dina.andretta by way of @molahandle, and a second cardigan (it’s damp and chilly today) passed along to me by @spreadablefats 😘 

I love that mending (and slow fashion in general) moves from commodity to community.
Look at these beauties! My cousin, @thematerialsde Look at these beauties! My cousin, @thematerialsdesignco is such a talented dyer! Can I wear napkins? Because I am going to wear the speckled napkins (on the left) as bandanas. Except there is also a scarf (purple) so I supposed I will wear that too. Once I stop petting them and making pretty arrangements. 😍 (although if I am being honest, there is a part of me that also wants to cut them up and stitch them into snails.  Or compasses. Must resist! 🤣🤪)
Mid-day photo shoot to commemorate the 53rd snow d Mid-day photo shoot to commemorate the 53rd snow day of 2021. 😉😂
Oh look. It’s snowing again. Oh look. It’s snowing again.
Today’s snail. Number 5. And my favorite so far. Today’s snail. Number 5. And my favorite so far. The white backing fabric used to be one of my grandmother’s cleaning rags. Not sure what it was before that, but maybe a summer shirt?
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