Once a week, usually on Monday nights, we spend time as a family doing something fun, something enlightening, something warm and cozy. Last night the girls elected to have craft and story time...meaning they brought art supplies downstairs and sat around the table as I read to them from the scriptures as well as a book on Greek myths.
That way it was fun, enlightening, warm and cozy all at once.
Caroline made one of her dear, leggy paperdolls with a belted skirt, matching beads, and stylish side ponytail. Did you notice her tiny diary? I wonder what secrets lay within?
Good thing it has a lock on it.
Izzy came to the table with a needle and fabric and set about making this pretty heart.
It is very sweet with its cherry red dots and ruffled ribbon.
Sophie's rendering was...well, somewhat more complex than the others' but nonetheless befitting that of an accomplished young lady.
Note the debonair expression on the face of the gentleman, the cut and make of his garments, his aristocratic ways. His lodgings have the air of old money. Very old money. Is that a molting albatross overhead or a phoenix rising from the ashes?
Hard to say.
No doubt the layers of meaning in this piece, its symbolism and references demand a more serious study than I am able to offer at this moment.
But consider, for a moment, the detailed stitching on his trouser pocket and the outline of the mouse contained therein.
How awesome is that?
Listen, you can have your demure young ladies with their frozen expressions, their pretty poetry and painted tableaus. I'm sure they exist by the dozens. But someone who denotes not just a mouse in a pocket, but the evidence of its wiggling around?
That's who I want to hang out with at teatime, at all the suffocating garden parties and the balls.
