Do You Hang?

Do you hang your clothes on a line?  We do.  We always do.  Even in winter we hang our outers on hangers on the shower rod to dry.  But come the first truly sunny nice day with a breeze out they go.
It's a lost art, I think.  I usually have my camera with me and will tip toe up as close as I dare to take a picture of someone's wash on a line.  It's not out there much anymore.  I don't know why, if you hang outside the breeze takes the wrinkles right out which eliminates ironing.

Which brings me to a clothes hanging lesson, which, if you do it you would already know so I guess I'm preaching to the choir.  I can hear my mother saying, "how you hang them is how they're going to look when you take them down so do it right."  And if you hang everything, even towels and inners, well, I wouldn't on a straight line like mine!  Not a pretty sight!

 Shirts go upside down, never from the cuffs.  Pin them at the side seam not placket to placket.

Share.  Hold hands. Buddy up, whatever you call it, shirts share a clothespin.  I don't know why, don't ask me.  I was told by my mother a million years ago to do it this way so I do.  And I always do what my mommy said.

 Jeans and slacks go upside down. The leaving moisture will pull the wrinkles out.  If my mother could see this she would tell me to go out there and turn the pockets out so they dry better.  My little act of defiance is to not do that.  Ooohhhh I can see her now giving me the look.

 I smile when I see someone's wash hanging out.  It's a good thing.

These are the books I read to the kids this week.  The first three are just the things I would have chosen myself when I was a kid and I'm still doing it.  History.

This one is a trip through time with one recipe for blackberry fool.  Starting 300 years ago with milking the cow for cream, whisking it with branches tied together, picking the berries and keeping it cool in a hole dug into the side of a hill.   Then watching as innovation makes the job a little easier.  A wire wisk, a hand beater, a hand mixer.  Picking the berries to buying at a farmer's market to buying at a store.  Holes in the side of a hill to refrigerators.   But always at the end, licking the bowl.

If you were going to leave your home, never to return and emigrate to a new and strange land and you could only take what you could carry, what would you take?  Miss Bridie could have chosen a chiming clock or a porcelain figurine, but she chose a shovel.  This is the story of how that shovel served Miss Bridie her whole life.

Queen Victoria was hot and wanted to go swimming but it wouldn't do for her subjects to see anything but her face and her hands. She couldn't get from the shore to the water!  Her Albert invented a bathing machine.  It looks like a chicken coop (in fact when she stopped using it, the little hut did become a chicken coop) with a door in the back and front.  She would go in the back, take off her clothes, put on her bathing ensemble and walk out the front door right into the water where she could submerge!  This one really took the kids by surprise.  There are great author notes and a picture of the real thing at the end.

These next two were for the Kindergarteners 

The Adventures of Beekle, The Unimaginary Friend won the Caldecott prize for this year.  All little ones have imaginary friends.  Beekle didn't have a friend to be his.  He goes out looking for one.  It's sweet that the only one who CAN see him throughout the book is that little dog next to him on the cover.  The kids loved the ending.

This was really fun!  Sadie wants to mail an elephant to her Great-Aunt Josephine who "lives almost completely alone and could really use the company."  You will discover the key word here is 'almost.'
She has the elephant on a leash and starts by trying to buy enough stamps to mail him.  Then commandeers an biplane, then convinces a crocodile, then robber monkeys help.  In the end she gets that elephant to Great-Aunt Josephine.  There are hidden hamsters on each page and the last page of all was very funny.   We all loved this one!