Church sketch 5

Sometimes I think people expect everyone to use a particular mouth filter — certain things are acceptable or not acceptable to feel, think, or say. It’s not quite voicelessness — you’re allowed to speak — as long as you speak within the accepted parameters. Sometimes it feels like being silent would be better.

Jesus said that out of the heart the mouth speaks. I don’t want or need a heart filter — my heart is what it is, and filtering changes nothing. I trust him that my heart is a new creation, made righteous, clean, blameless — and that he will complete that work.

(These were thoughts on the way to church, that I sketched once we’d sat down.)

Our current sermon series is about heaven, and today’s focus was on relationships.

(I’d started randomly drawing a chorister, and then as Scott joked about how some in the congregation might wish they could still be married in heaven, others were glad they wouldn’t be, I thought of that Meat Loaf song… “And now I’m praying for the end of time, so I can end my time with you.”)

Another chocolate cake

I am on a quest for a naturally sweetened whole wheat chocolate layer cake. The ones I have tried before have been on the heavy and dry side.

This one, while not the fluffy delight a cake mix always turns out, was moist, rich, chocolatey, and smooth. Still heavy and dense, but not badly so. It reminded me of a chocolate mousse cake. I would make it again… but I would still like to find a fluffy one! I know, I need to get some sucanat and give that a try… and maybe see if I could find whole wheat pastry flour — ultra grain is as close as we can get at our local stores.

I made it with this swiss meringue buttercream, sweetened with maple syrup and turbinado sugar, except I used butter instead of shortening. Absolutely fantastic. The only problem was there wasn’t quite enough — I think one and a half recipes would do better next time.

I was disappointed with the chocolate ice cream — sometimes I am sensitive to a different taste in the raw milk and cream we get — not quite sure how to describe it other than “grassy” or “redolent of barnyard.” Mark couldn’t tell — but he didn’t think it was chocolatey enough.

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Church sketch 4

Some days it seems the songs evoke more images than the rest of the service does. This one should also have “If this life I lose” between “Where you go I’ll go” and “I will follow you.”

Daniel faithfully praying is a thread uniting the book.

Church sketch 2 and 3

These first two were from last week. We were looking at Ezra, and the folks already living in the land were telling the returned exiles that they also sought God and sacrificed to him and wanted to help with the work. Perhaps they were lying, and were mostly motivated to take over, to gain some kind of upper hand. Perhaps they had adopted God along with their own pantheon, instead of worshiping him alone. For whatever reason, the returned exiles said the existing folks had no part in God and no part in the work.

A stylized portrait of friends, and of Amy and me held in God’s invisible hand, and some of the lyrics to one of the songs we sang that morning.

Amy loves Sunday school. She’s learning some Bible verses and stories. She gets to do some fun crafts and games. They’re pretty creative with it all. They encourage the kids to bring their Bible to Sunday school — it’s one of several things they can do that earns them the right to put a marble in the jar. When the jar is full, all the kids get a little prize. Really, not a big deal. I’m just not a big fan of reward systems — when the reward is external, it’s empty — it may jumpstart a good habit, but it doesn’t help sustain a good habit (at least not longer than the reward system is in place) and it can interfere with intrinsic motivation. Think about how grades derail the joy and purpose of learning. Things worth doing have their own reward built in. The intrinsic reward of having a Bible is being able to read it and refer to it, and thereby to gain knowledge and wisdom of God and of people.

Today was Parent – Child Dedication day — several families came forward with their babies to show their intention to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and the congregation gets to show their commitment to help these families in that task. It’s like baptism — and totally unlike it at the same time. The church gave each family a parenting book. From a previous conversation with the pastor about parenting resources, I’m guessing the book is Shepherding a Child’s Heart, which admittedly has some good points, such as a big emphasis on relationship, but has some big problems, too, such as claiming (against good exegesis) that the Bible mandates spanking, and assuming rebellion where it’s highly unlikely to exist. It actually doesn’t advocate paddling — instead it describes in great detail how spanking with the hand is to be executed. I just drew a paddle because it’s easier and conveys the point more obviously.

I want to add that I really appreciated the emphasis, throughout the sermon, on relationship-building in the home. When authentic and warm relationship is really and truly the aim, I think it can sort of redeem the spanking and such. At least I hope so, and it seems that way in at least some families.

A little one with her parents and the congregation, in the hand of God.

Church sketch

Recently a friend linked to Makoto Fujimura’s essay on Visual Theology, which led me to John Hendrix’s Drawings in church. I have no idea how Hendrix can create something so comprehensive and cohesive during a sermon, without knowing all the bits ahead of time. Anyway, I decided to swap my usual knitting for my sketchbook this week, and here is the sum total of my churchy doodling from today.

A few lines from a song:

A newcomer’s lunch was announced… along with some form of the word “assimilation;” they of course meant it as helping folks fit in, feel welcome, get a sense of belonging, but I was thinking of the Borg.

The sermon text was Daniel 9:20-27, in which archangel Gabriel interrupts Daniel’s prayer of repentance — personal and on behalf of his nation — to tell him that God will act, that there will be an end to sin and an end to the exile — Jesus himself is both.

Scott (our pastor) interprets this passage from the perspective of Dispensationalism. We’re more on the Covenant Theology side of things, but we’re also quite interested in N. T. Wright’s historical perspective.

At last!

One Monday, I impulsively decided THIS was the day to buy or make shelves. After finding nothing suitable ready-made, I sat down in the bathroom section of Lowe’s to sketch and plan, while Amy enjoyed looking at all the plumbing fixtures.

Many weeks later, here are the shelves.

A Lowe’s employee cut the plywood for me — some pieces a bit too long, some a bit too short, most with gaps in the cut edges and knot holes on one side or both.

First there was wood filler. Then there was sanding. And more of both.

Then there was attempting to nail the things together. The nails liked to go just crooked enough to burst out the sides. There was much nail removal, much re-application of the hammer and the glue.

There was gluing and trimming extra bits to the two shelves that were too short.

Then there was painting. And re-nailing the unit that fell apart. And re-nailing the other unit that fell apart. And adding back braces to those two units. And more painting. And finding that the second partial can of bathroom paint was not in fact the exact same shade as the first can, although I have no idea how that happened.

Then, penultimately, there was the sawing off of the edges of the two shelves that were just a hair too long, and refusing to paint the newly-cut edges.

Finally, toting them downstairs and installing the shelves and their contents. Woo-hoo! More accessible, easy to use, easy to organize, storage for Amy stuff!

Cake balls

I made cake and ice cream this weekend.

The chocolate ice cream (the first of the two in our Fannie Farmer cookbook) was actually too chocolatey, believe it or not. The toasted coconut ice cream was fantastic. And the swiss meringue buttercream was a thing of beauty. Rather sweeter than it needs to be, but beautifully creamy, glossy, substantial.

The cake, on the other hand, was disappointing. It was lighter than my last attempt at a naturally-sweetened chocolate cake (in which my only substitution was to use milk instead of coconut milk). Maybe the two eggs I added (borrowed from another buttermilk chocolate cake recipe) helped. But not very chocolatey, and still rather dry. Maybe I over-stirred it, maybe I baked it too long, or maybe it’s just not a moist and fluffy cake. Next time I may try the other recipe, subbing this recipe’s maple syrup for that one’s sugar, or else trying turbinado or some other natural dry sweetener.

After eating about two-thirds of the cake as it was, I decided to make cake balls with the rest.

First, I scraped off the icing, and crumbled the cake.

Next, mixed in the icing along with some extra cocoa powder.

Formed balls, and drizzled them with chocolate chips melted in a pyrex bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stuck them in the fridge to solidify.

This was an excellent use of dry cake and good icing.

A doll for school

I made this doll for the fundraising auction for Amy’s Montessori school. I hope she gets some high bids!

She is made from two t-shirts, thrifted yarn and fabric, fabric leftover from quilting, new thread and stuffing, and a zipper rescued from a thrifted shirt.

I’ve never drafted long sleeves before — and it worked! I don’t think I’d know how to do them non-puffy, but I’ve sewn enough sleeves from patterns that I know the general shape of the cap, and it was good enough for this project, AND Amy loves puffy sleeves. (I used a piece of yarn to measure the armscye, and then laid it out in the shape of a sleeve cap and traced it.)

Her face is simple like a Waldorf doll’s face, to foster greater flexibility and creativity in play. A true Waldorf doll would not even be smiling, but have a simple barely-curved mouth.

Because her head is fairly flat, the Waldorf-style wig didn’t lie quite right — I chose to stitch down the hair in back to keep it smooth — and to better hide the knots from the facial embroidery.

Her head, arms, legs, and body are all separate pieces. The legs were stuffed first and sewn into the body. When the body and head were stuffed, they were sewn together. Then the arms were added. I learned about this kind of arm from the Waldorf doll we got for Amy when she was younger.

I’ve never ruffled an appliqué before — sure was challenging, although it might well have been easier than ironing under the edges of a regular appliqué. The heart came out a little wonky but is still cute.

I attached the zipper with the kind of stitch that you can use to invisibly close the opening of a stuffed item. It’s visible on the inside in this case, but invisible on the outside. And the bodice lining is whip-stitched to the gathers of the skirt, a technique I learned from making Amy’s baptismal dress.

Mamatography Week 7

This week’s pictures for Mamatography. I only have four this week — got off track until Saturday, and then didn’t get around to taking one today. For any of you other Mamatographers, I often have these posts password-protected when they include pictures of my little girl. Luschka emailed the password out to the group a while ago, after first including an incorrect password in a group email, but if any of you have misplaced it I’d be happy to send it to you again.

Big fat fluffy flakes — my favorite kind of snow. Not much fell, and it’s disappearing already. The mild winter has been nice in some ways, but I find myself missing deep snow.

Latest in my series of wine-bottle accessories. This is a little red dress and floral headband. It’s kind of hard to make a dress look flattering on a bottle! I think the next attempt will have a fuller skirt to add more shape.

I made some labels for them, with a little space to write the price. They didn’t come out as clear as I’d have liked — probably partly due to using GIMP instead of PhotoShop, and partly because I was printing on scrapbooking card stock. Shaina has the hat and scarf set and the red dress set on display in her fitness studio; thanks, Shaina!

Making quesadillas last night for our lunch today. They’re certainly not hot and gooey the next day, but they’re still very tasty cold, and easier to cut.