Hello Readers!
It's been a few days since I was here last so I decided I better get caught up with keeping up with what gets done.
I've turned a year older since the last time I was here. I've been an old lady for a long time, I just got a little older is all. I don't really feel old in my head. My body, on the other hand, thinks it might be ancient! I'm still alive and kicking though so all is grand in the whole scheme of it all.
Or something to that effect.
Ma baked me a cake.
It was tasty AND cute! The picture is out of a magazine. I include it here so you know what the cake was suppose to look like. I'd say Ma nailed it pretty close. The caterpillar is suppose to have antennae on either end of him. That's how some caterpillars roll to confuse their predators. (Though if a bird pecked off the ass end of a caterpillar wouldn't it be just as dead as it would be should the bird choose the other end?) At any rate I loved my birthday cake! Three of my sisters and Ma showed up for the party. We made quick work of that chocolate chip bundt cake!
I drew these three little chickens a week or two back. They are all roughly an inch and half high by an inch or so across. They will end up in my glue book. I've added a few more pages to the glue book since the last post.
I emptied the drawer in the desk in the livingroom where I throw all interesting things that come in the mail. Except for mail art, that has its own special spot--and it ain't in a drawer! I used a lot of that stuff to add to the glue book/junk journal, whatever you want to call it.
I drew some birds on drawing paper. The big sharpie I was using to draw with, I thought was black. It's actually a very dark midnight blue. This one is about 5x7 inches or so. I didn't really measure. It was a scrap of clean paper that I took out of the scrap box by the paper cutter.
Swirls of color. Markers on drawing paper. About the same size as the birds above. This one will end up in the glue book as background.
Tulips bloomed. This is the first I've seen of any yellow tulips in the flower bed. I didn't plant them there. Last year there were red tulips in a different spot in this flower bed, but they haven't even set on any blossoms this year. The yellow tulips were a nice surprise. I discovered them on my birthday. Those are peonies in the foreground of the picture. They don't get enough sun where they are planted. They haven't bloomed for a long time! Like 10 years!! I really need to sweet talk someone into digging them up and planting on the west side of the house where they'll get all the sunshine they need.
I crocheted Ma a new dish cloth for Mother's Day. She said she would use it for a wash cloth, not a dish cloth. Whatever works for her! It is crocheted with cotton yarn. It's dish cloth sized.
I played with the watercolor paints three days running. This was the first attempt at iris painting. I am rather pleased with it, though I can see lots of room for improvement. This is painted on manila drawing paper, 3x3.5 inches. I glued it to the front cover of a little book. You'll get to see that little book once I get it sewed together. I haven't cut pages for it yet. Maybe in the next post.
The next day I tried another iris. I like this one too. It is done on linen textured cardstock. 3.5x3 inches. It will go in a magnetic frame.
I drew some more fish. Markers on old sheet music.
The paper I drew these fish on was cut 4.5x4 inches. I drew the fish to up as much space as possible on the page and then cut them out.
I'm not sure what will happen with all these fish. Book covers, maybe. I just don't know at this point.
It rained like crazy late on Mother's day afternoon. There was a bit of hail, some wind, some wicked lightning and a tornado the next county over. We all fared the storm at my brother's house. I usually go next door when we are put in a tornado warning. And I always keep tabs on the weather when it looks like it might get hairy out. I don't want to be in my own house if a tornado hits! I'd rather brave it out in the basement next door like a rational individual would do. Though I have to admit, when I was a younger woman, I loved being out in the storms, driving around, seeing what I could see! I was young and foolhardy. I'm still foolhardy at times, just not when it comes to storms.
We were treated to a double rainbow after the storm.
I made a few books.....This one is made from pre-cut pieces of a kit teaching kids about different foods. This one is all about pepperoni, cheese and crackers! I don't know why you need a full set of silverware to eat cheese and crackers and pepperoni, but they came with the plate so I glued them on as well. This one is about 6 inches across. It's sewn in the japanese stab binding which I glued the plate over so you can't see it.
This one came from the same type of kit as the other one. The kits weren't to make books. The kits consist of the plate and everything on it, nothing more. I thought they were kinda cool and would make unique book covers. I should have taken into consideration I would have to cut each page separately because of the shape of the books, but it all worked out OK. This one represents sushi. It's sewn in the japanese stab binding as well but I didn't cover up the stitching on this one. They both have roughly 30 pages of copy paper.
This is the little orange book cover you saw in the last post. This is the backside, showing the closure. It's just a plastic green button sewn on with the same thread used to bind the book. It started out life as a Jello Pudding box.
It has 9 signatures of 6 pages, giving it roughly 120 pages. The paper is some old forms I dragged out of a dumpster some years back. The bee on the front is a twinchie done in markers on cardstock. I drew it back in 2012, I think. We'll never know the date it was drawn unless we take it off the book to see what it says on the backside of the twinchie. I'm not THAT interested in knowing the correct date so we will just go with my best educated guess of sometime in 2012.
I crocheted another basket. I show you the close up so you can see the specks of yellow. Yellow stars. They are quite subtle on the basket unless you look closely!
It's a cute little basket, nothing special really. It stands about 4 inches tall and is about 5 inches across. I crocheted it out of curling ribbon.
This is a UFO. I crocheted this earlier this afternoon. It will be the back side of a hot pad mat once I get the front side done. I believe this one will have a day of the dead theme. That's subject to change though once I get started on the front. It will be whatever the muse wants to do at the time. I'll applique felt onto felt and then sew it to this square of crochet. The mat, when finished will be the size of this mat, which is 10 inches square. It's crocheted out some bulky greenish gray yarn I picked up somewhere.
I finished the crochet cotton crocheted market bag. I used up a lot of half used balls of crochet cotton on this one. I didn't put much of a dent in the stash of white crochet cotton, nor in the stash of green. I did empty a few cardboard tubes of thread though. I keep those cardboard tubes that crochet cotton is wound on and use them in paper mache projects. This bag is about 14 inches from the top opening to the bottom. I wanted to reinforce the handles someway but I couldn't get that to work out for me so I just put a few more rounds of crochet on them and hope they work out all right when someone goes stuffing a bunch of stuff in it.
I did this drawing of donuts in marker on watercolor paper. Not sure what will become of it. Perhaps a book cover with some sprinkles sewn on? Yeah, I might do some embroidery on this drawing. That thought just now crossed my mind. It's a tad plain at the moment, but some glass seed beads sewn on as sprinkles would sure jazz it up! We'll see what happens with the donuts..... This one is 3.5x4.75 inches.
I've been playing with my new toys. In reality, only one of them is new. I've had the other one for a few years and didn't really know how to use it despite the fact it has its original instructions to go with it. And the new toy didn't come with instructions, which in turn led me to figure out how to use the old new toy. In case the picture didn't clue you in that I am talking about flower looms, well, I've been making loom flowers!
Lots of loom flowers! They are mostly blue because Ma saw them and wanted a few to patch up a pair of pants she has. I don't how they are gonna look on a pair of a pants but if she wants them there, I'm cool with that! I made this first batch (which are included in that picture with the lot of them) 5, maybe 6 six days ago. When I talked to her a couple days ago she said any old color would work, not just blue. So I made a few other colors since then. I made 6 of them earlier today that are included in the picture also.
I caught Murray asleep on the sofa the day I made that flower and decided I would take a picture of it next to the sleeping cat. She woke up and caught me.....
This is the old new toy. It's called a Crazy Daisy Winder. It's a cool little gadget. This particular one is older than I am, I'm sure. The instructions that came with it has no zip code on the address of the manufacturer and there's a seal on the instructions that I can't read either. I believe it is a Union seal of some sort. I'm thinking 1950s vintage. It is easier to make loom flowers on this thing that it is on the new toy...
This is the Hana Ami Flower Loom. I can't read Chinese or I would tell you the brand name. This one works on the same principle as the daisy winder. This one makes lots of different sized flowers whereas the daisy winder only makes 2.5 inch flowers. I'm still trying to master the hana ami loom and all its parts.
I figured out the daisy winder in one session with a youtube tutorial. I wouldn't have bought the hana ami loom if I had already figured out the daisy winder. The daisy winder has been sitting on a shelf in my cutting room for at least four years. I didn't realize it was a flower loom until after I had recieved the hana ami loom and started researching how to use it. I ran across a tutorial for the daisy winder and light bulb went off above my head, a ding sounded in the room and I said, outloud, to myself, "Hey! I have one of those! So that is how that works!" I went and got the daisy winder off the shelf and went off making loomed flowers. I suspect there will be more of these.
I guess you'll just have to look at this one upside down because blogger refuses to let it stay the right way. This is Yellow Kitten Killer....was supposed to be Yellow Killer Kitten but I crossed the L's in killer before I wrote kitten when I was signing the backside. I go with the flow! The stream was a tad crooked at the time. Bad Kitty! Bad Kitty! That Murray cat inspired this painting in watercolor on cardstock. She's always bringing me dead critters. This week I received a sparrow, a couple of little mice and field rat. In her eyes, I am a terrible hunter and I need all the help I can get. She brought the rat in last night. I thought there was something terribly wrong when she came in from outside. She was making the most gawd-awful noise as she headed down the hallway in my direction. I got up to see what the trouble was. She dropped her catch and looked at me. Then she meowed clear as day as if to say, "I brought you something!" I tossed it out in the yard on my next trip passed the front door. It was back in the deskroom doorway this morning. Or maybe, I have gotten two field rats this past week?
Miss Lola thinks I am much better hunter than Murray does. She does sometimes catch mice, but not often! She is such a fat thing! I don't say that to be mean. I say it because it's the truth! LOOK AT HER! She's lounging in the sun ray on the livingroom carpet, looking out the front door at a bird probably. She pays close attention to those birds...not like she's caught one anytime recently though. She had just settled down after having killed that little dark blob behind her on the floor. That's a catnip filled felt fish. She finally lay down, rolled onto her back and took a nap in that sun ray.
I've added Eric the Rooster's tail feathers to my natural collection. I've added a few other things to it as well. I have a naturally dehydrated frog...tiny little frog that my sister gave me. She found it on the concrete at her Father in law's house. And there's a new snake skeleton...half a snake skeleton, it's head and maybe a third of its body. Little snake, all of three inches of it. My brother found it when he was clearing out some brush behind his house. All of those bones and such were either found by me or given to me by someone I know. The duck skull is still my favorite, followed by the goat skull with horns that hangs on the wall in the deskroom where the computer lives. Youngest son gave me the duck skull. He found it at the lake. Oldest son gave me the goat skull. One of his buddies gave it to him and he gave it to me. Eric had some pretty tail feathers! They go nicely in the collection. I almost forgot about the vulture feather Ma brought me the other day. She said she found it in the Dollar General parking lot. I didn't have a vulture feather.
And there's Ma herself with Murray who loves Ma!
That's about all I have for you all today. The old body has been in rebel mode so I've not been out of the house since Sunday. I haven't been to town since Friday. Tomorrow is a run to town day...the cupboards are getting bare and I need to get out and get stink blown off! I leave you with a view of the north field.
It appears all we will have this year to look at is an empty field. Not exactly empty...it's full of last years soybeans still...I don't know what's going on with the field. Perhaps he will leave it fallow this year. I can't remember a year he didn't plant something though. Guess we'll have to wait and see!
Thanks for hanging around till the end!
Remember...
Be kind to one another!
It matters!
Peace
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