Category Archives: Crafting

See what I have been up to

Spring Planting

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Happy Spring! It certainly doesn’t feel like it around here – with sub-zero temperatures and five feet of snow on the lawn, but the calendar tells us Spring has arrived!

By now we should have started some seeds indoors… but it hasn’t happened yet. The cold weather and my poor results from attempts last year have deterred me from being adventurous with my seed selections this year. Buying small plants and seedlings is easier. Let the professionals start the hard and delicate part of planting seeds. Then, I will just carry on from there. I don’t have a hothouse for tomatoes or peppers. My soil is not ideal for some of the more particular crops. And I’m too impatient for Lufas or teeny seeds like daisies and other flowers. I’m excited to try – last year we geared up in February for the first fruits. Failure makes me cautious. You’ve heard me say that growing is God’s miracle, we just plant the seed! I should just leave Him to His job.

Photo by Nikola Jovanovic on Unsplash

I watched a cute little YouTube clip from a kid’s object lesson on this topic. I love how Nature is so good at teaching even the most straightforward lessons. Jesus used them often to help His students learn. I’ll link the video in case you need a Sunday school lesson…

Seeds are dormant, hard little creatures that sit around waiting to die… protectors the “Bible mom” calls them. Keeping everything safe until just the right time at just the right moment to bloom, explode and display all their blessings. Plants and seedlings, on the other hand, are vulnerable and out there. They start out delicate. And if they get good care… well, they can become the mighty oak!

Unfortunately, last year my seedlings didn’t grow well. I let the protectors down and the producers just didn’t catch and flourish into the big plants they were intended to be. The few my mom got did pretty well at her house… she got some fruit. I guess her conditions were better.

And so it is with us. We need to be in the right conditions to flourish and grow. We need to be in a good church body with good teaching. We need to be mentored, encouraged and coaxed to grow. We need to feel confident enough to break down that hard protective shell of seed and sprout into seedlings and vulnerable plants. We need to be watered and fed and protected from the outside when we lose our shells.

And we need to be that protector for others. Those of us that are parents are all too familiar with this. We raise our kids, giving them all the attention and allowances we can. Eventually, they sprout and produce their own fruit. (Eek… am I heading to grandma zone??) But it’s true! Time waits for no one. We have limited chances to do our best. Still… it’s never too late! Even sickly seedlings can pick up with a bit of sunlight, a little water and some good food. They may never be the strongest in the garden, but the fruit is possible!

Photo via Jenni Haikonen

So let’s learn from spring buds, shall we? Encourage. Help grow. Seek it for yourself. Plant yourself in good soil. Break down your hard seed shell and bloom!

Here’s that kid’s video clip. May have to look up the “Bible Mom” again. Seems like a nice lady! 🙂 Bible Mom Lesson

Chalking it Up

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Welcome back. I’ve been doing a little doodling this week. Okay, colouring. I guess I am just a kid at heart… back to the crayons. Actually, they were markers and coloured pencils. Are there any artists out there? Colouring is a great art form; some of us are better at it than others. I happened to pick up a beautiful set of pastel pencil crayons some time ago, thrifted, of course. And yet, I haven’t mastered the art of using them. And hence, this week’s muse: chalk. Pastels are a form of chalk.

Most of we’re probably exposed to blackboard chalk back in elementary school. Cleaning all those dusty brushes and hacking up a lung. Kids these days have it easy: their chalk is “dustless”. What am I saying? Whiteboards and computer screens have replaced all those items now. Chalkboards are reduced to upscale coffee cafes and artists who know how to use pastels. Technically the artist’s medium is not chalk (calcium carbonate) but a form of gypsum these days. Lucky for us, gypsum is less dusty.

Wanna delve into the technical? Here ya go: chalk and gypsum have both been mined since ancient times. Chalk has been found in cave paintings that date way back, while gypsum (calcium sulphate) has been used as a mortar for construction since, like, forever, and is even found in the Egyptian pyramids.

Similar and yet distinct, chalk is a base (an alkaline that neutralizes acids) that is composed of calcium and oxygen combined with carbon (CaCO3). At the same time, gypsum is a salt (the product of a base and acid reacting and both becoming neutralized), made up of calcium and oxygen combined with sulphur.

Both are believed to be formed in a similar fashion. Chalk is a limestone deposit created as plankton (tiny marine organisms) concentrate calcium in their bodies while living, then leach the calcium out after they die and settle onto ocean floors; over time, large deposits are formed, and as the seas recede, chalk “mountains” are built up for our collection.

Gypsum’s origins are similar, but in addition to being comprised of the calcium produced by the deaths of millions of plankton, gypsum also contains some of the salt left behind as the ocean evaporated. Salty chalk.

National Gypsum Mining

After quarrying, each material is crushed, ground, washed and sifted. With gypsum, it must also be dehydrated in a process that involves high temperatures to reduce its water content from nearly 21% to about 5-6%; for that non-dusty classroom chalk, the material is mixed, again, with water (and coloured pigments, if desired; note most common chalk is green nowadays) and to produce more exotic pastels like my thrifted treasure, pigments as well as clays or oils are also added. For the former, the chalk is baked, while for the latter, it is air-dried.

Brain hurting yet? Thanks to todayifoundout.com for all that info.

I love how God gives us renewable products for our use. Nature is cool. Who would have thought dead sea creatures could make art… or hold our houses together? He celebrates our creativity as His beloved creations! Who else can boast that our “creations” are creative??

Wanna hear one more cool fact about chalk? Apparently, around Christmas, there is a tradition known as “chalking the door” where marks are chalked across the door of a home as a reminder that the Wisemen came to visit and worship the young Jesus — and we should do likewise when we enter other people’s abodes. It’s placed on the door frames to remind those who enter, that our homes are places of spiritual growth, and dedication to faith, and that we should be a blessing to all who enter! Chalk that one up my friends!

Reduce Reuse Refurbish and Repent

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Don’t you love the way your computer seems to “know” what you’ve been researching? You search up one little thing and you are bombarded with ads for that thing for the next two weeks. Or you happen to “like” a video or post, and your inbox is over run with similar posts and opposing views from like people…even those folks you haven’t heard from in awhile. Isn’t technology wonderful? Algorythms and secret formulas that lock you in to keep you engaged… Hopefully, mittonmusings.com is on your radar and we get the repeat customers!

“Flip”

Blatant plugs aside, my feeds have been filled with “furniture flips” lately. Or thrift finds that people refurbish and renew. Then these folks go on to make a financially significant side hustle… making thousands of dollars in seemingly quick and easy revenue. I don’t know if “flipping” is as easy as they make it out to be on television … but there it is, tempting me to try. I love to thrift, but I don’t have that knack that some people seem to have. They easily see the beauty and potential in long forgotten objects. I want to, though. I love to see things made “anew”. Plus, I don’t like to see things simply tossed in the trash because they are no longer “fashionable”. Hence the hoard of craft supplies in my basement. I’ll use them someday. I will. And they will be beautiful….

I got thinking aobut that little prefix: “re”. Reuse, recycle, refurbish, renew… and repent. According to dictionary.com, that little prefix is defined as:

a prefix, occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition, or with the meaning “back” or “backward” to indicate withdrawal or backward motion:regenerate; refurbish; retype; retrace; revert.

Which makes sense when we are talking about redo or refurbish. We can even “recycle” lots of things over and over again. But does “repent” have the same prefix? Maybe not. Still, for the sake of argument, let’s decide for the moment that it does. Or maybe it revolves around the second half of the definition and one must move back before moving forward. That sounds a lot like how I repent. Or maybe how we should repent. We do something we shouldn’t and for a second, we need to step back and take ownership. They say that we have to “name it and claim it” in order to change our behaviours for good. In order to move on with clean slates.

It’s like that piece of furniture or house we want to renovate. Sometimes you have to strip off the old paint and pull off the wallpaper to really get to what’s underneath. Only then can you start afresh and move forward. Do you see it? I used to have to remind my kids about this. “Saying Sorry” means very little unless you actually change your behaviour. True, sometimes the “saying sorry” is the first step in stripping off the old, but true change only occurs when you keep going forward.

Then there is the “again and again” factor. Ever fall into the trap of “here you go, God – I’m done with this or that”, but then we take it back again and recoil into our same worries, sins and destructive behaviours. It’s tough. I graciously acknowledge that this is the hardest part of our faith journeys. The one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, day to day journey that leads us heavenward. But….

But. The reason I love “flipping” videos so much is the before and after. The “new” from the old is sometimes so different, the transformation is breath taking. And so it is with us, my friends. As we become new creatures in Christ, the old is (sometimes slowly) stripped away, revealing the true beauty that we were designed and destined to become. Here’s to one more step forward… and a little “re” now and then.