Cowbell

You can find our first collection of songs to download from the series here.

The books from our series which come with CDs of amazing original music (for which Judith and I do not take any credit): Sunny, Snowy & Chinook and Foggy, will soon be sold out and the next print run won't come with CDs, so we are putting them up for you to download for free.

This is a collection of music produced by cowbell (Brady Cranfield), who is also my lovely husband. We are very grateful to him and to everyone who contributed music to the books. These songs feature lyrics and vocals by Miko Hoffman, Larissa Loyva, Nicholas Krgovich, Dan Bejar, Kathy Slade, and Chris Harris.

We'll try to put up the full CDs soon with some artwork from the books, we're just quite, extremely busy so it may take a little time.

Hello, Summer

Windy & Sunny posters

The fantastics over at buy olympia have made two of our favourite prints available online as posters. The prints are on 6 x 6 inches on gloss paper and are suitable for framing.

We have Windy and the chickens from Windy

and this photo from Sunny available — they're quite cheap & cheerful, too. They have loads of other pretty children's books and all types of printed matter at buy olympia, too, so you may want to visit their shop. All images © Judith & me.

Marine alphabet (& a free printable poster)

Today Foggy & Cloud teach you the International Marine Alphabet (also known as flag semaphore). You can learn more about semaphore from Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday or read this excellent student project by Susan Laflin.

You may download and print this mini-poster to help you with your messages. This is taken from the inside dust-jacket of Foggy.

(I made an extra colourway for fun, so you can download the blue one here and the yellow poster here). As usual, all rights from the Windy series reserved © Judith and Robin. Happy signaling.

The pineapple bird

Ooh, ok, I think this is a pretty good one. We found a video on youtube called Jim Henson on Making Muppets, 1969, from Iowa Public Television. Jim Henson shows children how to make puppets from household objects like socks, potatoes, spoons and tennis balls. It is great!

Augs and I watched it together and then gathered up some materials and made a handful of puppets and little movies.

The dish mop lion, Auggie was very excited to make a pink scarf for the lion because "he was cold".

Wooden spoon puppet.

The pineapple bird. I put on the eyes and Auggie did the nose with a sharpie. By the way, he was horrified by the feeling of his finger in the potato, so we poked a pencil in the bottom and he could  hold that instead. I don't have a picture, though — this is my finger. The pineapple bird is the only one who received a name from the Augs, he is special.

I had a bunch of yarn and old knitting swatches out, so these plastic spoon guys have scraps of yarn and a knitting swatch taped on as hair (or hat?). I cut out circles and rectangles out of sticky labels from my studio and gave them to Augs for the faces to colour and place. He was incredibly careful about placing them evenly on the face — he really likes some things to be straight and even. This is an aside, but I was very slightly concerned about how careful he is with crafts, as I don't want him to feel pressured while he makes things — however, yesterday he created a new technique of covering his hands in different colours of ink, yelling "sputz, sputz, sputz" (and also, "look at my fancy nails") and making crazy fingerprint paintings, so I think he's not turning into too much of a perfectionist and it's all ok. Phew.

My favourite part of this guy are the pieces of tape Auggie put over each eye — they are "goggles". Ha!

Star shoelaces

Found at my cobbler's.

When I was Small

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