"Mom. I showed Jim the yellow chicken I knitted and you know what he said? He said he'd give me five dollars for it. Can you even BELIEVE that? He only offered me five dollars. Why did he do that? I worked on it for SO MANY WEEKS. I wouldn't sell it to him for less than...NINETY dollars."

Ah, the value of craft. It warms my knitter's heart that Wyatt fully grasps that crafts take time and energy, and that makers should be compensated well for their work. We will discuss market forces another time. Meanwhile, our neighbor, Jim, will have to hunt for a bargain chicken elsewhere.

This little yellow chicken was Wyatt's first knitting project at school. I (obviously) wasn't there to document the process, but this knitting project is even easier than the bunny. The steps are: (1) knit a square with yellow yarn, (2) sew the square on two sides to make a triangle., but leave a little space for stuffing, (3) stuff the chicken, (4) close the stuffing hole (5) get brown yarn and make one stitch for each eye, (6) get orange yarn and do three stitches for the beak.

Looking at crafts from a time, materials, and skills perspective with a child who understands how long it takes to make things means we start from the idea that handmade things should actually be expensive and possibly out of our price range. It means that when we see amazing things, like this wooden village with a candle-powered propeller that costs a small fortune, our conversation goes something like, "Wow! This village is amazing. Look at all the careful work that they did and all the details. We can't spend that much money, but it is really beautiful."

Crafts, cost and value reminds me of the trivets from last year. We're not working on anything nearly as complicated or time-consuming this year. I don't actually have a plan for homemade gifts yet, but every week that goes by means whatever we do will be that much more simple. We can always make some more paper lanterns.

Speaking of lanterns, over the weekend, we went to the German International School's Lantern Walk. It was lovely! While we were there, Wyatt made a lantern out of half of a plastic container that had holes punched in the side to attach a mini LED on a pipe cleaner and a beaded pipe cleaner handle. Some Elmer's glue, tissue paper, ribbon, and stickers made a beautiful, sturdy, and portable lantern.

I don't have a new recipe to share this week, but we recently tried two new (to us) products! The first is a gluten-free gochu jang from Sinto Gourmet. I've been looking for a gluten-free gochu jang for over a year, and this one is amazing. I found it in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods.

The second thing we tried was Beyond Meat burgers. Two out of the three of us thought they were amazing. I, however, was not a fan. I thought the burgers smelled weird out of the package, cooking did not improve the smell, and I could only eat half of mine. Neither Marc nor Wyatt noticed the smell and said they'd eat them all the time. The ingredient list, however, is pretty long and sciencey-processed-sounding, so "sometimes" might be a better call than "all the time."

I prepared the burgers according the the package instructions (down to using a thermometer to confirm they reached at least 165 degrees before I served them). We also really did them up fancy with condiments and toppings.