Another Sewing day and a young boy 's holiday activities too

This morning Grace studied the pattern we thought would work best with the red floral fabric and she then cut out the required pieces prior to tracing the correct size onto tracing paper. She was very thoughtful as she did this so I guessed that all was not well with this choice. Sure enough, she draped the fabric around her waist trying to swish and swirl with limited success. The three pleats front and back were not going to give the desired effect with the fabric also being too heavy. So, on one hand we have the desired slim line bodice and a "wrong" skirt while on the other hand we have the perfect skirt and "wrong" bodice.

I tried without success to see if it was possible for me to marry the two patterns. We took a break while I racked my brain trying to solve the problem. Eventually I suggested driving to another sewing shop to see if we could get the perfect pattern.

 Of course there was no perfect pattern! Grace, however, spotted this lovely fabric and, after discussion a compromise was agreed. We would use pattern number two with the perfect skirt but not so perfect bodice. With this third lot of fabric, plus bodice lining purchased we returned home. Enough sewing for the day.

While all this was going on Isaac and Artha were fully occupied on a project of their own, the building of a Bird House. They had been working on it for two days and today the building and painting was to be finished. They didn't have design issues such as we were having and work noises of nails being hammered in and conversations about cutting the perch and screwing on the floor came through the wide open door. Work was suspended for an hour during high tide when the went to the park next door to see how many bream were swimming upstream and was it worth getting out the fishing rods.

When it became too hot - 33C early in Spring - a lunch break was taken followed by the two of them watching TV in two different rooms with the elder one falling asleep and the younger one struggling to stay awake.

Reading familiar books

After our return from the shop Grace talked to her ipod for ages, facetime is her explanation, while I made myself a desperately needed coffee. Of course, as soon as the young man realised it might be possible to get my attention he brought out his reading books for a reading lesson! How could I put him off? 

"New" book read without help

While Isaac read some familiar books I drank my coffee and placed some "new" books in front of him ready for some teaching. My teaching was not needed as he simply picked up the next one, and the next one, reading them successfully for himself. He is now accepting the idea that he does not need to "know" every word and can work tricky ones out making links to words or parts of words he knows. He is in a system where a Prep student learns lists of "sight" words for a year before reading books. He comes from a family of real readers and has extensive book knowledge, preferring to have "Chapter" books with complicated plots as his bedtime story but has been affected by the "You're too young to learn to read" attitude held by some educators in this State. The introduction of competitive NAPLAN has at least nibbled away at that attitude.

After reading nine books Isaac asked me to teach him to play the piano! Out came the Learn to Play book, numbers on three fingers of each hand and he was soon happily playing the first four lessons.

He often plays his own gentle tunes and I have made overtures to him about teaching him to play however he really has not had enough motivation to have lessons until this year. Unfortunately we haven't been able to find a suitable teacher at a suitable time slot so far. Note to self: Contact Music teacher again tomorrow.

Satisfied with his day, Isaac had a shower and waited for his parents to come home to dinner while I looked at the ironing baskets overflowing and decided to leave them or another day. 

A glass of wine was looking good.