A Recipe for Chalk

I’m going through some stuff of mine that my mom had been storing. Among the books I now have Where the Wild Things Are, William Blake’s Inn, Caretakers of Wonder, A Woggle of Witches, and one called Good Times: Every Kid’s Book of Things to Do. Coolest book ever. So in honor of finding this again, I’m going to post one of the activities:

A RECIPE FOR CHALKeggshells from 6 or more eggs
1 tsp. of very hot water
1 tsp. flour
a rock

Wash the eggshells so there’s no egg bits left. Dry well. Grind them to a fine powder with a rock or mortar and pestle or something.

When you’re “absolutely sick of grinding” and have enough of the powder, pick out any bits of not-very-ground up shell.

Measure flour and hot water into a small dish and stir them together, forming a paste. Take a soup spoon full of the powder and add it to the paste. Shape this into a chalk stick and roll it up in a strip of paper towel. Let it dry for at least three days. Peel off the paper towel and go find a sidewalk.

Another few treasures:

a puzzle of an image by Kitagawa Utamaro of a Japanese tea
a guide to Hearst Castle and one for Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castles.

The Fairy Castle is this (was anyway—this is from the early 80s) collection of incredibly detailed miniatures in a miniature castle. And as I’m reading the brochure it says Colleen Moore has different-colored eyes. Like me.

Heterochromia4Life.