on't make the same old tired handprint turkey for Thanksgiving. This year, try being colonists instead. Grab your mobcap and try one of these ideas.

Silhouettes

Now if we want pictures, we just grab the camera and shoot. But if you wanted to preserve a likeness of a loved one in the 1600s, you'd need a candle or lamp, black paper, sharp scissors, and night. The only hard part was patience, something the early settlers had plenty of.

To make a silhouette, sit your subject about 12-18" in front of a wall, facing parallel to it. Shine a bright light on them, so that their shadow falls on the wall. You may have to adjust the placement of the light and subject so the shadow is sharp and details show up well. Hang a black piece of paper on the wall so the shadow fits onto it.

Now, carefully trace the outline of the shadow with a pencil. Include everything, even eyelashes. The subject must sit very still for this to work. Once you've completed your tracing, cut out the picture you've made. The completed silhouette makes a portrait that was more affordable than an oil painting.

Butter

Most people like butter on their cornmeal mush, and they have since the times of the Mayflower. You probably don't have a cow out back, but you can buy unskimmed milk, sold as heavy cream, at the grocery store.

If you were keeping house back then, a butter churn would be a staple piece of equipment. In our day, making butter at home takes either a jar with a lid or a hand mixer or food processor. If you want butter with a good tasty flavor, leave the cream out overnight so it gets sour. If you make butter with the cream at about 60 degrees f , the butter will form more quickly, but will still be hard enough.

As you shake or mix the cream, globs of butter will form. When it's all separated, drain off the buttermilk (a tasty treat or good to bake with) and then rinse the globs in cold water. After draining off the water, use a rubber spatula to press the globs until all the liquid is released and you have, well, butter. If you lived back in colonial times, you might even have a pretty mold to make fancy butter pats. Without one, mound the butter in a bowl for use. You can, of course, add a little salt if that's how you like it.

Quill pens

Colonists might not have had many things, but they did have lots of feathers. You can make a pen just like the ones used in this country many years ago. You'll need the wing feather from a bird, a biggish bird like a turkey. If, unlike a colonialist, you don't have birds around, feathers can be bought at an art supply store. (Maybe the zoo would keep some for you?)

Using a sharp knife, like a pocket knife or a craft knife, make a cut on the underside of the tip, angling away from the feather end to the tip end. Cut a bit more off at a steep angle. It should end up looking like an old-fashioned nib pen.

Scrape out any membranous material from the inside. Now, slit the tip of the pen about 3/8" or 1cm. Press the tip against a table or a pencil to spread the nib ends apart a little bit. Try holding the pen to write with - you may need to clip some of the little feathers away.

Just dip in ink (the kind made for fountain pens) and off you go. Imagine what it would be like to have to make your pens and then write by dipping - on homemade paper, too! And without electric light! I bet people thought more about what they were writing back then.

Early settlers, both children and adults, knew how to make many necessary things. No Home Depot runs in Jamestown! While you're making your craft, think about what it would be like to have lived at the very beginning of what we now call this country. If it makes you grateful that you live in a time of electric lights, refrigerators, and cameras, well, that's what the holiday is all about.

Stefani Leto writes and parents in the Bay Area. Mother of an almost-five year old and an infant, she says nothing challenges her mind like parenting. Her work also appears at http://www.windowbox.com [1] and
http://www.folksonline.com/folks/ts/1998/pph.html [2].

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