Michaelmas celebration

Today we celebrated Michaelmas with the local Waldorf community.

Michaelmas is named for Saint Michael, one of the four archangels, he is the angle of courage, the angle of the fight against evil. This celebration, as I understand it, invites us to take courage for the long dark winter ahead from saint Michael. I must confess that while I have for years now celebrated many of the festivals significant to the seasons and certain holidays especially in the Waldorf tradition, this was my first Michaelmas, so for a more in depth explanation of this wonderful celebration please look here

It was indeed a lovely celebration with every attention to detail

There were beautiful crafts for the children to do, weaving a fairy loom 

and making wet felted comet balls

 what really got my children, truly all the children, very engaged was the apple cider pressing. Everyone helped, first a few then everyone, and it was wonderful to see how quickly they got a system down. One would put the apples into the water, then many hands would wash them and put them into the dry tub. Once enough apples were cleaned, the children took turns adding the apples into the press, where they were first crushed by one the arm power of one of the children. Once the bucket underneath was full with the crushed apples, a lid was fixed to the bucket (and here I run out of proper vocabulary for this) and with  the help of a dasher of sort (?) and a horizontal cross bar, pressed by the children walking around the bucket pushing the bar (hope that made sense:)) And finally drinking the freshly pressed juice. It was wonderful the entire process, all we needed to complete the experience was to have just returned from the tree picking the apples ourselves 

Then came story time, a puppet show about Saint Michael and the dragon, it was made even more special by all the children following "mother nature", hand in hand, through a little forrest path to a shelter where the scene was set up for the play. The show was beautifully played and the children sat fully engaged  

with the story. Once the puppet story was finished and while singing a song together everyone helped move the benches to the side to make room for a big circle, if a thunderstorm had not just descended upon the roofs of the shelter we would have surely done the circle outside. We all learned two simple verses about St Michael which we all sang together, I had chills it was so beautiful. And as a completion, a dragon appeared which was then defeated by the courageous St Michael.

Then we shared a potluck dinner of yummy foods, while the rain drummed on the roof, and of course the children so full of excitement all ran into the rain, splashing in puddles running and jumping. It was a joy to behold. What childhood is all about.

I give thanks to all the beautiful families who helped put this wonderful celebration together. 

It was a lovely to participate.

It was lovely, truly lovely. Arranged with true intention, and this was felt by the children.

My favorite parts about Waldorf has always been the attention to natural beauty, to nature, to simplicity, the attention to the whole (be that a person or a process) and not least the reverence given to the task at hand, this festival represented all of those things, and I feel this goes a long way to help our children grow into sincere and caring adults, with a true connection to nature and world around them.

~thanks for coming by, and a beautiful rest of the weekend to you~

A woolen autumn creation

Today we set up our initial autumn table, this is always a work in progress and will evolve along with us and the season. I made this lovely woolen lady, she is my third attempt at needle felting a puppet, and first time using pipe cleaners. So clearly I am no expert, even so I thought I'd share the simple process that I used to make her.

First I shaped the pipe cleaners into this general stick person shape (I used 2 pipe cleaner folded in half)

and simply wrapped wool core around, first the head, and gently attached it with the needle 

then generously around the bottom half for the skirt. Then I wrapped the hands tightly and then the chest, all in a very casual way, felting it with the needle to keep in place

then I added color, first to the arms by tightly wrapping around the pipe cleaners, then a thin layer around the skirt, gently felting with the needle

and then around the chest, all the time shaping as best I as I could with the needle.

Once I was happy with the base, I added details, such as the apron, which I added directly onto the skirt

and the shawl which I made first and then added to the puppet, I simply rolled a tuft of wool between my hands and added a general shawl shape and attached with the needle

Then I added a piece of wool for hair and simply attached across the middle, and then tied into pigtails, I may work on creating buns instead, but did it this way because for me it was easier. I am still learning every time I create anything in wool and hair is still challenging for me unless I do a braid, pig or pony tail

and here she is, holding an acorn she just picked from the forrest floor

We also made some more woolen acorns and added them to the nature table along with the pumpkins which we made the other day

a homemade lantern, and acorns as well as the buckeyes from the other day

and finally a lovely bouquet of the flowers we find in nature just now

~Thanks for stopping over, and have a wonderful evening~