Now Available on Amazon.com!!

My first book Thank You for Giraffes, is now available on Amazon.com.

www.amazon.com

Search for it by title, or by my name, which was Vivian Husnik at the time it was published. It's a beautiful, high quality colorful book, which I illustrated with quilts. Price is $15.00.

If you would like to be notified when my two new books are available (Goodnight Toes, and The Mouse Yawned), please email me or post a comment!

A Good Day to Dye

The aforementioned beautiful weather yesterday turned cloudy, windy and cold. But Danny and I had decided to dye fabric so we donned our coats and dye we did. I had not dyed any fabric for months. I love doing it, every time I do I think, why haven't I done this in so long? It's messy of course, but I think I tend to overestimate how much work it really takes to get things going. Just mix up some soda ash solution, some urea water. So anyway, I just love it. I love the spontanaeity, the mystery of how it will turn out. I usually don't try for a specific outcome, just a general idea, and I'm usually happily surprised. Maybe it's the lack of precision I enjoy so much. In my work I have to be precise all the time, so I need to let loose! That, and I LOVE COLOR.

Danny loves color too. He is such an artist. Here's a picture he drew of a porcupine. I think it's so creative and has great use of color. I love children's artwork anyway, but it seems to me that usually at his age (6) kids are aiming for realism, and he seems to go for abstract.

The fabric we dyed is for a quilt inspired by the colors of the Caribbean Sea on my and Mark's honeymoon last month. It's going to be a snail's trail, or monkey wrench pattern. I need a lot more colors, but I ran out of fabric. An e-trip to Dharma Trading Company is overdue. I think I will break down and buy a few more colors of dye. I've tried to be a purist with only red, yellow and blue. But I need some lilac and tan colors for this quilt, and I can't seem to make good ones from scratch. Brown is really hard, always turns out too orange or too green, and purples turn out gray. At least I tried, I really did!

Nathan Stromberg

It's a gorgeous Minnesota early summer day and all of my neighbors are in their front yards. We don't see eachother for six months after we descend into the gloomy tunnel of winter. When the warmth returns, we venture out and catch up our friends' lives. People emerge with new babies that we didn't even know were gestating. Which is what happened today. My neighbor Kara was out holding her newborn Greta, so I had to go see! Her husband Nate was watching Ben, almost two, toddle around. I found out that they had another surprise--Nate just published a children's book with his father. His father Bob wrote the book, Miracle at Stinky Bay, based on a true father-son fishing story, and Nate illustrated it. This is the cover art. Isn't it beautiful?

I have been diligently working on a website on which I will sell Thank You for Giraffes, Goodnight Toes, and a third book that will be debuted (is that how you spell it?) on this blog very soon. It is titled The Mouse Yawned, and is illustrated by Stephen Richardson. I am planning to feature Nate's book on my site as well.

The universe is so cool, it just blows me away.

That's Ava, A-V-A

A few weeks ago I was doing a check up on a beautiful four year old girl. I asked her if she likes to eat fruits and vegetables. She told me, "Yeah, because if you only eat junk food you will just get little again." I had to think for a minute. . . . Junk food makes you little? I thought it makes you fat. Then, child psychologist that I am, I figured it out. Her parents must tell her that if she wants to grow up strong and heathy, she needs to eat good food. So, by four year old logic, if you eat unhealthy food, you will do the opposite, turn back into a baby.


I told her that I am writing a book for children and parents about staying healthy, and I asked her if I could put what she said into my book. She didn't skip a beat, just said, "That's Ava, A-V-A." Aren't kids amazing???

I thought I would use this story to re-post my favorite quilt, as it has gotten buried in old blogs.

On Mother's Day

Last Sunday was Mother's Day, and I got up at 6am to make gun turrets. Now, I could say what a sacrifice this was, but in truth early morning is my favorite time of day, especially when I don't have to go to work. On Mother's Days past I have patiently stayed in bed, pretending to sleep and waiting for my cold scrambled eggs and shells. But I knew the kids would sleep in, we'd stayed up late watching a movie, and I had too much to do. Oh yeah, back to those gun turrets.

My 11 year old son Peter had a big project due the following day, about the HMS Hood battleship. I mean battlecruiser. He had been working hard on the written report, and his dad had cut the hull of the ship out of wood. Together Peter and I had been adding to the hull, but Sunday was crunch day. We had most of it figured out, except for the gun turrets. I finally hit on the idea of making them out of homemade play dough with wooden skewers for the guns. But I knew they'd need a while to dry, thus started making the dough at 6am. So I shaped 4 turrets and got them drying in the oven.

Once the kids were up, shipbuilding began in earnest. I had bought a drill but couldn't figure out how to get a bit into it. I was about to curse in frustration, when my neighbor, a furniture builder, rang the doorbell. His son had pink eye, and he wondered if I would write a prescription for him. I said only if he would teach me how to use the drill.

We took a mid-afternoon break to visit my mom in her nursing home. She is only 67, but has been debilitated with multiple sclerosis. Here we are with my mom, my sister and her kids.

So we were drilling, cutting, gluing, spray painting most of the afternoon. We had gone to a junk store and gotten all kinds of dooleydads and diddlybobbers that looked like miniature battlecruiser parts, also used a lot of styrofoam, wooden dowels, wire. Mid afternoon, we glued the turrets on, even though they were a bit gooey on one side. In the evening, we had to tip the ship on its side to paint the hull red, and the turrets fell off. So they went back into the oven for a while, and were re-glued in the morning.

The next morning. . . . TADA!!! Didn't it turn out great? Peter was so proud, and his teachers and classmates were very impressed.

Prom!

It's a mom's right to brag, isn't it? Tonight my daughter Liana and her boyfriend of 2 years, Eric, went to prom! Don't they look fabulous? They are both juniors. Probably most parents would be concerned about such a long term relationship in kids so young. They are planning to go to college together and eventually get married. Of course there is so much life ahead of them and who knows. But I'm not worried, because they are best friends. They seem to know eachother better than most married couples I know, and they support eachother through all the challenges they face. They admire and respect eachother, they never put eachother down. When they disagree, they talk it out and find a solution. Eric is doting and loving and would protect Liana to the ends of the earth. I couldn't ask for more, if they were 27 instead of 17.

Goodnight Toes

About 17 years ago I was a new mother, a new doctor, and I was drenched in anxiety and having panic attacks. My therapist taught me a technique called progressive relaxation, where you concentrate on relaxing different parts of your body. This helped me a lot, and when my kids had trouble falling asleep, I tried it on them. Which led to my latest book, Goodnight Toes. Progressive relaxation for the toddler set.

I thought I would give you a teaser, like they do on the news--"Did you think that bubonic plague was a just a disease of the Middle Ages? Well, think again. The deadly spores of bubonic plague may be germinating in your own refrigerator. . . . Tune in at 10."

So here's my teaser, the first and last verses of Goodnight Toes:

Goodnight toes. Goodnight toes.
I'll cover you up as the sun goes down.
We squished in the mud and ran through the grass,
But the day has at last come to an end.
Goodnight toes. Wiggle and stretch.
We're cozy in bed for a little rest.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Goodnight eyes. Goodnight eyes.
Can you imagine what lies ahead?
At morning's first light we'll begin to explore
Rainforests and mountains, meet a dinosaur.
Goodnight eyes, close heavy lids.
We'll see in our dreams all the fun things we did.

Book Covers

I finally found these images, saved on a disc after my computer crash of 2006. Goodnight Toes is my next book, and is being illustrated by my good friend and amazing artist, Julie Annette Meyer, in oil paintings. The model for the paintings is my daughter Cara. I'm noticing that this picture is a little fuzzy, I'll have to scan in a new one soon. We are hoping to have it out by this Christmas.