Sweet Juniper (All)

Halloween 2017: William Shakespeare

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I asked my daughter to write her own explanation of why she wanted to be William Shakespeare for Halloween. "When I went to camp last summer, I chose Shakespeare as my minor. Not because I was already interested in Shakespeare, though, but because I enjoy acting in plays and I thought I would get to act. And at first, I did not like the class much because we spent so much time talking about

Halloween 2017: The Ghost of Harry Houdini

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

The magician and escape artist Harry Houdini died in Detroit 91 years ago, on Halloween. Before his death, Houdini had added "spiritual debunker" to his resume; he was disgusted by mediums who used the same sort of trickery he employed on the stage---not to entertain---but to exploit bereaved parties into believing their loved ones could communicate with them from beyond the grave. Houdini

2016 Sweet Juniper Holiday Card by Claire Bédué

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Happy Holidays to you all out there. The Christmas holiday really crept up on us this year and we're busy sewing and hammering to get everything done in time. This year we are so happy to share the family portrait that French illustrator Claire Bédué created for our annual holiday card. Ice skating on the canals of Belle Isle is one of our favorite winter activities and Claire did an amazing

Halloween 2016: Half Pint

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Last summer she decided she wanted to be Laura from the Little House books for Halloween (after seeing a woman playing the role of Laura Ingalls Wilder at Greenfield Village). I am proud to say I had nothing to do with this costume: over a series of Saturday afternoons my wife and daughter made up their own pattern and cut this 19th-century calico into a dress. It's never been in my

The Twelve Labors of Little Hercules

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

He says he wants to be Hercules for Halloween, so I say let's start the lionskin. Lots of heroes wore lionskins, I tell him. Samson wrestled a lion with his bare hands. Gilgamesh killed lots of lions with his friend Enkidu and when Enkidu died he said, "I will grow my hair long for your sake, and wander the wilderness in the skin of a lion." Lionskins and long hair, those are things for heroes, I

2015 Sweet Juniper Holiday Card by Yinfan Huang

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

It has become our tradition to commission an artist every year to do a family portrait for our holiday card. Part of the fun is looking at the portfolios of so many amazingly talented illustrators out there and then working up the nerve to ask for the commission. I don't know where I first came across the work of Yinfan Huang, but I started following Yinfan on Instagram months ago and I

Eye of newt, and toe of frog

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

My daughter wanted to be a witch for Halloween. Not a striped-sock witch, she said. A real-looking witch. A creepy one. The classics are classic for a reason, I said (and got to work). We found a Victorian mourning jacket with puffed shoulders on eBay that was all ripped up and perfect for a witch. It was so creepy she didn't even want to try it on at first. I made a wrinkled leather

Werewolf in Sheep's Clothing

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

My son decided to be a werewolf for Halloween. So I made him this mask out of felted wool. Then I made him those arms out of felted wool. Then I made him wear his wool suit and take some pictures in front of a flowery wall. We go to all these fiber festivals every year and in the past there was nothing for me to look at unless the weird hippie who braintans his own sheepskins is

2014 Sweet Juniper Holiday Card by. . . sweet Juniper

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

This year our daughter asked if she could draw the family portrait for our holiday card. She worked very hard and we're proud as heck to share the result. Hiring a favorite illustrator to do a family portrait has become one of our favorite holiday traditions, and we feel lucky this one offered to do the job in 2014. She chose to draw her favorite moment of the holiday season, when we return

Halloween 2014: Cyrano de Bergerac

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

This past summer my son wanted to learn to fence. At six he was still too young for most of the area fencing classes and camps taught by people who actually know what they're doing, so all he had was me. We bought some used fencing gear, watched a ton of old swashbuckler movies, read a lot of really old fencing manuals, and poked at each other with practice foils just about every day all

Halloween 2014: The Big Friendly Giant

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

My daughter is a tiny thing. There's no use denying it. At school recitals and other events we see how the top of her head hardly reaches the chin of the next shortest kid in her class. She doesn't seem to mind too much and by now it's become a part of her personality. There are things she likes about being little. When she plays flag football with the hulking, sweaty boys in her class,

Literary Giants

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Hello all. Most of my blogging energy has been absorbed by another project for quite some time now. Otherwise things are pretty much the same here. I've really been enjoying the liberation that comes from never worrying about what the next blog post needs to be about and just making dozens of things that I haven't shared here. But if there are folks out there still interested, I may pop in from

Laura and Brady in the Shade of Our House (1994)

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

Photograph by Abelardo Morell. Check out his series Childhood.

Previous Week's Urchin

Nearly all of these urchins were discovered in the photography archives of the Library of Congress (and available without copyright restrictions online). Otherwise, urchin photos will be credited to the appropriate photographer with a link to its source (unless they come from my own collection of photographs from unknown photographers). If there is ever a copyright concern, do not hesitate to contact me.

2013 Sweet Juniper Holiday Card by Phoebe Wahl

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

This year we had the pleasure of working with the talented Phoebe Wahl [portfolio, blog, tumblr, etsy] who created this custom family portrait for our annual holiday card. We've been fans of her work for a long time and we were thrilled when she agreed to do a painting for us. Her illustrations capture so much of the magic to be found in family, the outdoors, and the doing of simple things. She

Up North: Seen (summer & winter)

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

1. Like most Michiganders we try to go up north every year and this past summer we rented a little farmhouse in one of the nicest corners of the state and we liked it so much we rented it again for the Thanksgiving weekend and headed up into the snow for an early and cozy little glimpse of the winter to come. It was a treat to see all the heavily-touristed areas more subdued. We walked (and

Mary Christmas, Age 3

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

"Mary Christmas, nearly 4 years old. Picks cranberries sometimes. She is now picking up berries spilled at the barrels by Grandfather. Grandpa says, 'I make her pick sometimes, yes.' Location: Falmouth - Week's Bog, Massachusetts."

1911. Attributed to photographer Lewis Hine based on provenance.

Previous Week's Urchin

Northwoods Thanksgiving

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

We rented a little farmhouse up north for the Thanksgiving holiday and when we arrived there was already a foot of snow on the ground and it snowed all day while we cooked and sat around the wood-burning stove. The snow was pure and untrammeled around the house until we got there. We left ten thousand footprints and a menagerie of melting snow creatures in the yard. Previous Photo This

The Colonial Homestead, Millersburg, Ohio (and other shops in Amish Country)

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Over the past year, an ambitious young Amish woodworker (and tool collector) named Dan Raber has stripped a nondescript storefront in downtown Millersburg, Ohio down to its bare elements and transformed it into a store selling home goods and tools with the strange and wonderful idea that customers looking to equip a colonial-era homestead could find everything they need within its walls.

Halloween 2013: Anubis and King Tut

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

The kids decided to go with an ancient Egyptian theme this year. I loved the idea of taking a Halloween classic like a mummy costume and adding a bit of craftsmanship and educational quality to it (while keeping it super creepy, of course). After they made their choice in September we started reading all the books we could find about mummies and we reread old books I loved as a kid like The

Street Urchin Ghosts, Early 20th Century

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

When Halloween arrives, the street urchins don't mess around.

[real photo postcard, found on eBay]

Previous Week's Urchin

My Daddy Don't Go to Work, by Madeena Spray Nolan (1978)

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Attention West Michigan Folks

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I always feel awkward promoting stuff, but here goes: I will be giving a talk at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts next Wednesday (October 9, 2013) at 7:00 p.m. to launch the Kalamazoo Art League's 59th lecture season. I'm excited and honored to have the opportunity to do something like this in my beautiful hometown and would love to meet anyone who's interested in coming down there to hear it.

Mishemokwa

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

They were both wearing shirts of that orange only hunters, convicts, and ten-year-old boys can get away with. I didn't know much about them---just what you can glean from conversations between strangers overheard on a boat. The mother of one (or both) of them was wearing a Harley Davidson t-shirt and denim shorts that were maybe a little too short and she was just dating the bald-headed park

Sailing Kid-Made Ships

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

When I first saw this pinterest thing my first thought was What kind of idiot forms a social media site based entirely on violating others' copyrights? My second thought was I hope this goes away soon, just like twitter. I guess twitter never actually went away, but by ignoring it completely I can at least pretend that it did. Is twitter still out there? Didn't people realize their lives were not

Sweater dress for a newborn

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Just look at this knit dress my wife made for our friend who had her first baby girl this past summer. I do think the only time I've ever seen my wife sad is when she can't think of any pregnant ladies who she can knit for. She also knit a little bunny to poke out of one of the pockets: And our daughter made that little card to go with it. Previous Project: Custom

If dogs had a church in Rome. . .

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

. . .then this one would surely be a saint. Previous Photo This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

On Why to Make Handcrafted Toys

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

"At a party filled with the denizens of the mainstream of Human Progress, I was once introduced to the smiling ensemble with a good deal of gratifying enthusiasm as 'the fellow who makes toys.' There was a moment's hesitation while the smiles were quietly reinforced, and then ones tanned. good-natured smile asked with much interest, 'That's nice, but why?' Did I make a lot of money at it? Was

Back to School Project: Favorite-Animal Lunchboxes

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

My wife puts a note in our daughter's lunch every day. Our eldest still has some anxiety with school, and the notes are always designed to help her conquer some of her challenges, to let her know how proud we are of her. They are really sweet. This year my son is going to school every day for the first time and I really wanted to make something for him and his sister that would be like a note

Leather Tool Roll

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

A lot of the projects I share on the blog are for the kids and their imaginative play, but I've been enjoying branching out and making some other kinds of things lately. I very rarely make anything for myself, and one day I realized I needed a toolbag/tool roll for bringing all my tools and odds and ends out to the playground, where I do most of my work. I was keeping my tools out in tote bags or

My Workshop

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

This is the stone bench where I work on all my wood and leather projects while the kids play on the playground just a few steps away. I can't get much work done inside during the colder months so when it gets warm the kids and I are both itching to get outside, and we've spent a good chunk of this spring and summer out there. To be outside doing what I love under that purple tree and then

Here Be Dragons

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I started this project a while back as a way to use up some smaller leather scraps lying around. I twisted them into dragon's teeth, tendrils, and horns and designed the dragon mask so the kids could see through the mouth (the lower jaw can be adjusted up and down). Of course, when I finished the red dragon head, they fought over it. So I just had to make another. I used slightly

Cooling off (1934)

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

From the photographer's notes: Six-year-old Junior Johnson, of 14080 Northlawn in Detroit, pours water on the head of his girlfriend, 3-year-old Sally Salsinger. Photograph taken by Detroit News staff photographer "Brooks" on July 2, 1934.

Previous Week's Urchin

Kids at the Jeffries Projects, 1953

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Several readers have sent me links to this great image taken forty years ago in a Detroit suburb. It reminded me of a picture from my personal collection of old press images (found at a local book store). A cropped version of this image appeared in the Detroit News sixty years ago (September 13, 1953), accompanying a story on the Jeffries Housing Projects in Detroit: Unlike the lovely candid

Grandma's Hearthstone, by John Haberle (1890)

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

The kids and I stared at this giant painting (it's 96 by 66 inches) for about ten minutes the other day (you can click on the above image to see it huge). There's a bit of a trompe-l'oeil effect and it hangs on the wall in one of our favorite parts of the museum. Grandma must have been a pretty cool lady, we all agreed. Source: Detroit Institute of Arts Previous Inspiration

Broken May

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

When your kid breaks a bone, everyone wants to know how it happened. Like with divorce or some freak accident, there is a natural, selfish curiosity that surfaces when someone else breaks something: we want to know how, and why, perhaps so we might avoid breaking precious things of our own. Facing the inquiries, I feel for parents who break kids' arms on accident, swinging them around or

Craps

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

Arthur Rothstein, Children playing near latrines. Saint Louis, Missouri (1936).

Previous Week's Urchins

Pray

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I was working on a project on the west side when suddenly this raging plume of smoke appeared like an angry god just a few blocks away. Previous Photo This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

Birthday Party Battle Royale

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

A few weeks ago our friends had a birthday party for their son, and the theme for the party was simply "battle" and you can trust everyone in our house was looking forward to this for a long time. A few nights before the party Conan the Barbarian was on TV and having not seen it in years I watched with renewed interest and decided to make a hammer like the one used by the character Thorgrim who

My favorite dads from anti-suffrage cartoons and postcards, i.e. I AM YOUR TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY NIGHTMARE

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

As a man who has been the primary caregiver to my children for over six years (I don't like to say stay-at-home dad, but, well: yeah), I have spent years collecting propaganda images of fathers burdened by their children created during the women's suffrage movement. Here we see one of the "worst possible outcomes" of giving women equality, and I love the idea of my lifestyle horrifying an entire

A samurai in Cincinnati

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

When writing up the post about my son's samurai costume the other day, I forgot that we'd taken some pictures while visiting our friends Zan and J down in Cincinnati a month or so ago, and when we were playing down in the creek bed behind their house and saw the amazing "samurai castle" house up the creek, we had to snap some pictures (it's actually the house that architect Ben Dombar

Terrifying Nixon-Era Children's Books: The House Biter by William D. Sheldon (ill. Dan Dickas) (1966)

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

The Ambush (Children Playing in New York City, New York, Arthur Rothstein, 1941)

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

Hell yes.

Previous Week's Urchins

Samurai Armor Inspiration

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I received an e-mail last week from someone interested in what specific inspiration I used to make the samurai armor for my son, and I thought it would be cool to share some of the images we looked at while working on the project. First we looked at examples of samurai armor on the websites of museums that have actual armor in their collections, trying to see as much detail as possible.

The Honorable Samurai, Age Five

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

It turns out it's not so easy to explain the concept of honor to a five-year-old. This is one of the wonders of parenthood: knowledge that you have spent decades taking for granted suddenly requires detailed explanation. How do you explain honor to anyone, let alone a five-year old? Lord knows I don't want to start talking about Latin word roots. Only assholes do that. It went like this: "Yes,

Go ahead, smash as much as you want. . .

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

He said his name was Asterix Snowsmasher. I said, "Cool, let's go smash some snow." None of the neighborhood's stubborn snow boulders were safe that morning. [I made him that helmet last summer. He still wears it everywhere.] Previous Fun This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

Children feeding goat, Grand Canal, Ballsbridge, Dublin (1964)

2026-03-20T05:17:32Z

Via The Wiltshire Photographic Collection, National Library of Ireland

Previous Week's Urchins

Down South: Seen

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Just a few pictures from our trip down south (Lexington-Knoxville-Asheville-Columbia-Charleston).

A Visit to Congaree National Park, South Carolina

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

Congaree National Park is a relatively new park in the federal system. It used to be called Congaree Swamp National Monument, but when they realized (a) it wasn't actually a swamp, and (b) people don't pack up their station wagons and take a trip to South Carolina so they can visit a swamp, the folks in charge very wisely changed the name. The national park "preserves the largest tract of old

A hobbit at the grocery store

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I made these hobbit feet for the kids a few months ago but the weather has been too nasty to wear them outside to go on a proper hobbit adventure. One day my son decided he didn't care and wore them to drop his sister off at school, to the coffee shop, and to the grocery store. He also insisted on wearing short pants and a waistcoat. The cashier thought the feet were real (at first).

Winter unraveling

2026-03-08T06:45:54Z

I'm sitting in shirtsleeves somewhere in Charleston, South Carolina and a few dozen voices on the phone screen are complaining about how cold it is back home. We came here, in part, to escape the weather but in this day and age though you may be able to escape the snow and cold the complaining on Facebook will follow you to the smoldering gates of hell. In Aiken last night we sat down with an