A Bit of Progress on a Beautiful Day

Hello Readers!

It has been a beautiful day! The weather was perfect! I had company twice and I accomplished a great deal today in the art department.

Better get you a cuppa something before you start reading. I have a lot to talk about today. Might not have a lot to say, but there will be a lot of words to read! 

Last time I was here I was rattling on about the burnt house being so full of stuff I don't even know what is there. I went out and took some pictures so you all can better understand what it means when I refer to the burnt house. It's a treasure trove of diversity out there! There's also a bunch of junk out there!

Entering the front door...that's the door stop. Gotta leave the door open so you have some light in there.  I really wish I had brought more than 2 of these heavy iron rollers home with me. This thing is a spacer from a piece of farm machinery. I want to say it came from a plow, but truth is I don't really know my farm machinery so it could have come off of anything! It works wonderfully for a door stop! The other one has a bowling ball sitting atop it out in the rock garden.

This wall is right inside the front door. Walls have been moved since the fire. Lots of things have been rearranged. There used to be a closet here. I thought it was funny that the rubber dino ended up on the antique yard implement. One of the grandboys probably put it there. 

None of the walls have more than sheet rock on them. And most of the studs are bare and you can see right through the walls from one room into the next. This is the south wall of what used to be the living room. To the left is a large window. This is the wall where the fire started that rainy Tuesday morning. Now, as you can clearly see, it's stacked to the rafters with junk. That's the front hall smack dab in the center of the background in this picture. That's where the front door is.

I had helpers. Tippy cat and Fred. This is the middle of the livingroom. Floor is down to the concrete foundation. Full of furniture, stacked all willy nilly. There's also a big stack of empty boxes atop a stack of boxes full of nothing but books. Boxes that I gone through a couple of times to try to eliminate some of those books. I have way too many books! Way too many! These books are in the burnt house because they will not fit in the house. 

You can see the burnt rafters here. This is looking into the bedroom on the left and what I always called the tub room on the left. It is the tub room because there used to be an antique claw-footed bathtub in that room. I loved my bathtub! It was cold as all get out in that room in the winter, but that tub was wonderful on hot summer nights for a long cool soak!  I sold the bathtub after the fire. Most of the tub room wall is no longer there. All those white boxes are full of presentation folders. The brown boxes are full of drink koozies. My eldest son bought all those thousands of drink koozies for a dollar at an auction some years ago. 19,000 of the buggers! I've tossed out more boxes of those than I care to admit. The roof leaks like a sieve on this side of the house. These two rooms always have a wet floor when it rains. All boxes are up on pallets to keep them dry.

There used to be a pair of french doors into the bedroom. Makes me kinda sad thinking about how it used to be. I'm thankful it's still a somewhat useful building even after having burnt. I don't know what I'd do with all this stuff without it! 

My china hutch used to sit where this ugly pink shelf now is. The door to the right used to be where the short hallway to the bathroom was. My brother took out the linen closets on either side of the doorway into the hall which made the bathroom about 18 inches wider than it was originally. He made the bathroom, kitchen and garage into his space. He even cut a hole in the back of the burnt house to make a doorway into his 'man cave' caravan that he parked behind the burnt house. 

That canvas container down toward the lower left of this picture is full of magnetic clips. I keep all kinds of art fodder on this pink shelf. 

There's Don Quixote! I wondered what had happened to him. He used to be sitting on the floor in my living room. Someone knocked his head off and still he sat in the living room while his head sat on a shelf above his horse. I don't know how many times I glued his head back on! I collect men and he is one of my men! Ma must of taken him out to the abyss that last time I went down south to see my son.

This is looking into the dining room while standing at the far south end of the living room. That big black pipe down the center of the picture is the flue to the wood burning stove. Behind the stove, looking through the studs of the wall is a small bedroom. It is full of box after box after box of stuff. Stuff I got out of a trailer house that used to sit in the back yard. It came with the house when I bought it. It came full of inventory from a second hand/craft store. My brother and I moved all the junk out of the trailer house into the burnt house and then brother tore the trailer house down. That happened four or five years ago. The trash men hated us for about six weeks! We threw away about half of the stuff that was in the trailer house.

More books and a big old stack of vinyl. 

The possessed boombox that used to live in my kitchen until I just couldn't stand the dang thing anymore! It would shut itself off all by itself. I'd be listening to it and be nowhere near it at the time it would stop working. Then hours later it would come back on again. I'm not sure why my brother hasn't latched on to it and junked the dang thing.  It's the antique cider press I was really showing off in this picture!  I need to find someone to buy this thing. Someone who would put it to use and make some cider with it like it was intended to do! I could make cider if I could get someone to do the heavy lifting! Can't say as I've ever heard of pear cider, but why not? 

I had high hopes of turning the burnt house into a summer studio. It has electricity and if the wood burner were to have a bit of work done to the flue and the roof, it would have heat as well. I heated the house with only the wood stove all the years I lived in it. Unfortunately my health and lack of help from others prevented the summer studio from becoming a reality. The stars just didn't align to make it happen. I still go out there on occasion, very rare occasions, and play. 

My alien babies are out there waiting on me to do something with them. They've only been hanging about for a year or so. They are in the room that used to be my bedroom. Brother did away with the closet in this room, making it a very large room! The roof leaks badly though so there isn't a lot of stuff in this room.

So when I say I've been out to the burnt house....you know kinda what I'm facing when I go out there to look for something! 

I actually slept in the dark like normal folk last night. I was asleep by 7pm last night. Slept all night long! Lola cat woke me up about 4 am but I ignored her and she eventually went away. I didn't get up till almost 9 am. And when I got some coffee in me, I went to town on unfinished projects!

I royally screwed up a little book's sewing job this morning. Nothing to be done about it now. I put too many holes in one end and...well, it's just a mess! I've put it 'back on the shelf' for now. I think it can be salvaged and done right the next time!

This one I got right the first time! This book is 6x9 inches with 50 pages in it. The paper is primary school writing paper. You know, the stuff you learn to write on.

Sewn in the long stitch with green embroidery thread.

While Ma was here this afternoon I finished sewing the wool bucket hat. The inside of the hat is black velvet. This hat doesn't fit near as well as the dino hat the youngest son claimed for his own. I tweaked the pattern for this hat...made the hat longer on this one. I think I should go back to the original measurements! Rich says his dino hat was a hit on the rig. The guys laughed at him but he didn't care cause his ears were warm! 

I finished painting a few baskets. The last time you all saw this one it was plain dark brown.

So was this one. They've been dry brushed with a metallic silver color now.

This one has its first coat of paint. I've since painted it green over the pink. I don't like how it turned out so it will have another coat of paint...either green or some other color. Who knows what the muse will decide to do when I sit down to finish it.

And two more polyrope baskets with their first coat of paint. It is surprising to me how stiff these baskets become once they have a coat of acrylic paint. The more layers of paint, the sturdier they become. I haven't decided yet if these will be just one color or if I'll do something fancy to them. All depends on the muse. Since this picture was taken, I have painted both of these green also. 

I promised a picture of the soybean field. It's not been harvested yet.

I took a short walk to the field to get a closer look. Here's a part of the field I can't see from the from porch where I usually take a picture of the field. I think it's going to be a few more weeks before they harvest. There's still a lot of green on those beans. When  you get up close to them, they aren't near so brown. You can't see well what the beans really look like in this picture, but there are no leaves on the plants, only bean pods. The plants appear to have been devoured by grasshoppers. Lord knows there are plenty of grasshoppers out there to do the job! I was swarmed by hundreds when I walked out there. If grasshopper ate the leaves, why didn't they eat the beans as well?

And I found some pretty little pale purple asters growing in the lawn. 

That's it for me today!

Thanks for sticking around for the novel!!!

I have more things to show that were done today that I didn't take pictures of yet. One of them I can't show as my October partner in the Envie group hasn't seen it. She won't see it till I get it done and mailed to her! It will be done tonight before I call it a day. 

That's it for me for now!

Remember....

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

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