A week off

This week has been half term break for many UK schools, so that means there have been holiday care activities going on around the place. Willem had asked if he could go to ‘Camp Activate’ (day camp at our local leisure centre) so I took the opportunity to get some space to get some work done let Willem socialise and spend a week playing with a group of kids during the day Monday to Friday this week.

So this means we have had a week off from home educating.

Now before you envisage me spending the week sitting around catching up on DVDs I have been meaning to watch or even repeating my reading retreat experience, let me assure you I have actually been doing a bit of work instead. Of course, in my usual fashion I ended up stressing that I would utilise all this time properly and would end up not achieving nearly as much as I should. I wish I had read this great post from Steady Mom before the week started! But I have managed to get a few things ticked off the to-do list. One was to read various ebooks that I had been meaning to catch up with, all to do with Home Education. Now that it has been a little bit over a year since we withdrew Willem from school, I am taking time to assess what we have been doing and formulate a plan for going forward with this whole Home Education thing. Let’s just say that my approach and ideas have changed over the past year (and yes I will write a post about it all soon).

The other thing I have been doing is finally getting my press up and running again. For when I am not writing a blog, home educating the kid and doing all the other stuff I do, I make books, and I print stuff.

My studio - looks uncannily like a garage because ... it is a garage.

It took me a morning to get everything squared away and sorted, and then I started printing cards. Much if not most of the letterpress you see about the place now (like most of the stuff you find on the lovely Oh So Beautiful Paper! blog) is made with polymer plates. However I use old-fashioned moveable type: individual metal letters that I set by hand. I am hoping to do some work with polymer plates next year, but metal type will probably remain my love. I find it so rewarding to do, and there is something about the craftmanship of it all that is good for the soul.

I am still experimenting and trying to get inks right at the moment so my work this week has mainly been ‘mucking about’, but rather than waste the opportunity I printed a few cards and did some other stuff.

That’s not to say I haven’t do some more serious stuff – we created an art book not long ago – Steve took the photos, I printed the text on the press, and then we hand bound it. It’s rather gorgeous if I do say so myself

I often read other ‘Mommy Blogs’ and am awe at how crafty some of these people are, and the craft they do with their kids. I don’t sew (no really, I don’t sew – I had a sewing machine, I had classes, I just can’t), I am still to get around to learning how to knit, I don’t paint or draw. But I have my press, and while Willem is still resisting the urge to be my print-monkey, he sometimes comes in and helps out, even if for only a little while. So maybe I might not be doing lots of fun craft with him right now, I hope that he is learning, from seeing our example, that there is reward and even joy to be had in finding a craft that you love and doing the best you can with it.