Another birdhouse complete!

Here it is, finally finished!

This is my little yellow bird (sorry, no banana tree) sitting on the perch of his little green birdhouse.

As I've been babbling about, he's all needle felted, as are the flower petals around the "door" to his house.

The other flowers around the house and on the roof are glass beads that I tied together in groups then glued to the house.

I'm pretty pleased with this little guy.

So now it's on to the robin for the blue bird house.

As I was saying yesterday, I want to "test drive" the new leaf rubber stamps now that I have them glued down to the wood "handles".

To do that I needed to create something interesting to stamp them on!

This is a piece of unbleached muslin that I pleat folded then tied with thread.

It was then soaked for an hour in a glass jar containing 1.5 quarts of very hot water, 1 Tbls of vinegar and 1 package of Mango Kool Aid.

It created a somewhat pale but interesting stripe pattern along the edge of each pleat.

Mango Kool Aid is not a flavor that I have any memory of from my childhood, and I can tell you, if I was presented with a glass of it today, I'd run screaming from the room --- this was the nastiest smelling stuff I've encountered in a while -- which may explain why I was able to get packages of it on sale at the end of last summer!)

Anyway, my next plan is to try another dying technique which involves wrapping the fabric around a 4 inch PVC pipe then spraying it with a dye --- probably orange Kool Aid, then letting it "steep" for 24 hours.

And then I'll be mixing up a batch of potato starch resist for the first of the stamping.

Yes, this will indeed be "complex" cloth (and yes, I'm keeping records every step of the way!)

Loom Repair 101

You may remember me saying (or did I just think I said it?) that I need to replace the outside treadles on each side of my loom. (seems the movers were not kind to my baby and we only discovered that when we moved it again ourselves and started working on setting it up)

Anyway, I called Harrisville (lovely folks there!) and explained to them what I needed.

These arrived yesterday afternoon --- the proper 2 treadles (each one is drilled differently, so it matters!), the sandpaper to smooth any rough edges (there are hardly any!) and there in that little plastic baggie, a can of oil finish. So not only will I be able to oil the new treadles, but I'll give the whole loom a "once over" while I'm at it.

Now I'm thinking that the old treadles, which I will be removing, could be used as the bases for more rubber stamps.

Have I mentioned that I'm a 4th generation pack rat? (use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!)

We did some yard work yesterday.

On one corner of the front yard we have had consistant issues with getting anything to grow, and decided that at least part of it would do nicely with some clumps of ornamental grass surrounded with decorative mulch.

First though, we needed to prepare the whole area, including the spots behind that which we needed to reseed with grass.

As we were digging and running the little tiller, we came across these two chunks of tree root -- each of them about 2.5 to 3 inches in diameter!

At one time there was another tree on that side of the yard, and when the previous owners removed the tree, they didn't do anything below the ground.

We have done the planting now, and hopefully today we'll get the mulch in around the little ornamentals.

At least I know why I've got sore arms and legs today -- but I have once again succeeded in doing yard work without hurting my back --- YIPEE!!

Ok, time to stop babbling and get busy