More Brooches, a Lesson on Plarn, Some of this, Some of that

Hello Readers!

I went on a Brooch making spree again. I'll show the newest ones in the batch and I will tell you how I make plarn in this post. We will also see a few bags and a stuffed elephant.

Sleep has been a major part of my life for the last few days. The fibro takes hold and I do a lot of sleeping. And when I'm not sleeping I make things. I did get the laundry caught up in the last few days as well. Laundry is an easy chore...doesn't take a whole lot out of me to put clothes in the washing machine. The hard part is transferring the wet stuff into the dryer. That wears me out!

At any rate, I get a lot of things made some days. Other days, not so much done.

Let's get on with this....

 For some reason these little felt brooches have taken over my life for the last week or so. This is a picture of all but the four bird brooches that started this whole felt brooch making spree into action. I have a couple more that are cut out and ready for sewing. I quite sewing though to do some crocheting instead. I will get back to the brooches though.

 Blue bird brooch.

 Green Fish Brooch

This started out to be another bird brooch but that green shape looked more like a fish than a bird so a fish it became. The outside edge is actually yellow, not the same color green as the fish.

 blue and orange birds

I figured if one bird worked, why not two?

 purple bird brooch

 red and purple birds

I really like the colors on this one! 

 Single purple bird

 purple fish

I like the black background behind the fish. 

I don't really think about what color goes where when I'm cutting these out of felt scraps. I'm aware of the colors, but I just let it flow and however it turns out is how it turns out.

 Fat red bird.

No pattern, just snip, snip, snip until it comes together.

 The round brooches were working swimmingly, so why not a fish shaped one as well?

This guy really needs a tiny button sewn into the center of his eye! Those sequins took a bit of time to sew on. This one is about three inches long.

 yellow and gray birds

All of the brooches have lapel pin backs. Some have two prongs, most only one.

 I found this little bag the day before yesterday in a plastic jar where I stored it while it was being made. I kept all the components in that jar and totally forgot I had even made it till I saw it again. It's about 7 inches wide, 5 inches from top of bag to bottom. It's crocheted out of some nylon yarn that was packaged with instructions to make a pair of slippers. It wouldn't have made very comfy slippers! It's scratchy and not at all nice to touch. The flap is a piece of cow leather that was once the covering of a reclining chair. It has a woven leather button and a long strap crocheted from the same yarn as the bag. I call this type of bag a crossbody bag.

 Another crossbody bag. This one is about 8 inches tall, 6 inches wide? I don't know, I'm totally guessing on the measurements for all the things in this post. It is crocheted out of acrylic yarn.

 The strap is braided on the braiding disk.

 I totally forgot about this bag too. I had this bag started before I went to my son's house at the beginning of September. I took it with me and finished while at my son's house. I was emptying bags I had brought home with me from that trip yesterday when I came across it. It's a huge bag! About 16 inches tall, 14 across the bottom...It's a round bag. I crocheted acrylic yarn in various colors around macrame cord.

 I have a boatload of pink yarn so expect to see a lot of pink where bags are concerned from here on out. There is a fair amount of yellow, white and purple as well.

This is a medium sized market bag. It's about 14 inches tall, 10 wide. Acrylic yarn.

 Another find from my unbagging a few days ago. I was in the process of making him when I went away to RJson's house as well. I finished him early in my 19 day stay. Someone will get this fella in the mail some day. His body is made from a wool coat, his tail is jute cord braided on the braiding disk, his tusks are felt and his saddle is felt also. The bells are aluminum. He's about 8 inches long?

 This bag is in progress. Acrylic yarn in shades of pink. Pink, except for that rust color. It works, but it ain't pink. I actually paid attention to the colors when choosing what colors to use. That rust color isn't pink though and I initially wanted to dispose of some of that pink yarn with this bag. That will happen with some of these colors, like the darkest pink color and lightest one. And the rust color will be almost gone when this bag is done also. 

And as you all know is always the case...I have other things in the works too.

I've put a few rounds on the plarn bag you all saw last post. We will talk about plarn in a bit here.

There's a market bag in the works being crocheted out of rafia yarn in three colors.

 I started a paper mache bowl the day before yesterday

and I've crocheted half a bag with purple yarn, tore it out and rolled the purple yarn into a ball. 

I have four huge skeins of that purple yarn and have attempted to crochet two different things from it. Both got tore out and rolled into balls. I'm not sure what will become of the purple yarn. I may use it as a main color for the scrap yarn bag that will eventually be made from all the tiny balls of yarn that are building in my stash.

Sometimes my muse is running in fifteen directions at once!

Mel asked if making plarn was easy. In my opinion, yes. It is easy to make. 

All you need are some plastic bags and a pair of good cutting scissors. There are a few different ways to make it. You can use what I call the tunnel version or the ring version. I prefer the ring version for larger bags and the tunnel version for smaller bags. ANY plastic bag can be turned into plarn. In the picture above:

yellow is Dollar General bags

pink and blue are trash bags

all the others are dog waste pickup bags

I cut all these bags using the ring version. I'll go find a video that shows you what I call the ring version of cutting plarn.

This video will demonstrate the ring version. She calls it the biscuit method.
This is my preferred method of making plarn. I let it pile up on the floor for awhile before I wind it into balls.
 

I use the tunnel version mostly when cutting bread sacks into plarn. I use more than just bread sacks though. Ice bags, bagel bags, potato sacks, ect. These bags are just easier to cut using the tunnel version. Potato sacks have small holes all over them so the potatoes can breathe. In using the tunnel version you end up with one long string from the bag. Using the ring version you end up with a bunch of rings of plastic that you have to then connect into a two stranded long long string of plarn. You can't connect the potato sacks together like that because of the jagged edges that the holes leave. But those jagged edges just disappear into your work so the tunnel version works best for the potato bags. And the bread sacks are long and skinny which makes it easy to get your whole arm into the bag once you've started the cuts. 

I will find a video showing how the tunnel version is done also.

 video
She calls this the tube method. Tube, tunnel, close.

It will amaze you how much string you can get from one bag. 

I cut my plarn to be about 1/2 to 3/4 inch wide. You can cut it smaller or larger and accuracy in thickness isn't all that important. You just don't want a lot of variance in the thickness. Different bags are of different weight, but they are usually close enough to play nicely together. The yellow plarn in the sample above is much thicker than the other bags. It still works though.

Yesterday I cut a plastic tablecloth into plarn.
This video will show you how to cut plarn from a flat panel.

ANY plastic sheet or bag can be turned into plarn. 

I hope this was helpful. There are many videos on YouTube demonstrating how to turn plastic bags into plarn. The one's I have shared are only one woman's demonstration of the many, many videos I watched when I first started making plarn. This lady shows you clearly how to make plarn.  It's really not hard. Good luck!

I will leave you with the North Field. Green as it can be! No cows in sight, yet. Ma says it may be too early to put cows on the wheat. I'll keep my eyes open for cows!

The white circle in the picture is of a combine harvesting milo in the next field over. If you click on the picture (or any other picture in the post) it will get bigger. We had our first hard frost early last week. Once it does that it is time to harvest milo (aka sorghum). If I'd been thinking when we went through town yesterday, I'd of taken a picture of that giant pile of milo sitting on the ground at the Co-op in town. But as is usually the case, I didn't think of it till now. Sorry...:( Maybe I'll get my act together soon and all these photo ops will not be lost on me? :) Who knows!

Winter is definitely on its way in! 

The sand hill cranes flew over last week. They announced their arrival and were still squawking as they flew out of sight! Noisy critters! I never get a close up look at them, as they are high in the sky and flying south to warmer parts when I see them. Love hearing them fly over though and I always go out to look even though I can barely see the flock as it flies over head. My guesstimate of the size of the flock is around 30 birds.

The vultures vacated the Co-op grain bins in the center of town a couple weeks ago. They too have flown to warmer parts. I wish I could fly to warmer parts but alas, I cannot so I will just have to hunker down and stay put for the winter! 

Lotty the possum was back last night, like every night now, to see what tidbits were in the bowl on the porch. She doesn't like cinnamon toast. She licked the bottom of that bowl clean of the dregs of cream I poured from the empty carton and the remnants of my baked potato had vanished as well. Lotty will fare well for the winter. 

I gotta remind brother to turn the heat lamps on under the house so the pipes do not freeze! Lotty will appreciate the heat lamps! Yeah, Lotty will fare well for the winter! I only hope she doesn't have a herd of friends join her in her cushy pad beneath the house. Hopefully she will heartily defend her catered meals and not let anyone muscle in on her luxurious lifestyle. I can't afford two possums! Thankfully the youngster hasn't been seen again. Possums pretty much hang by themselves and don't live in large groups.

I'm sure I'll be back sooner than later with more art and crafts to share, probably a tale about a critter or two and who knows what!

 Thanks for hanging in there to the end.

Remember...

Be kind to one another!

It matters!

831

Back to the Regular Schedule

Hello Readers!

I've had so much to say today, this is the second post of crazy. Crazy is good though! Keeps you on your toes!

We're going to talk about art and other things in this post.

Apparently I've been busy again! 

Let's do this....grab a cuppa something, settle in, enjoy!

 You all saw this little bag in a previous post. I finally got the handle sewed on.

 It measures 6x2x5 inches...somewhere in that range. I didn't actually measure it. It is crocheted from plastic bags made into plarn. The little silver rings are acrylic.

It was a fun little bag to make! There are rings all along the length of the handle as well.

 You all saw this bag in the last post when it was only a few rounds tall.

 These are its handles before they actually became handles. The green tubing is oxygen tubing. Rope. Any flexible plastic tube would work. I taped three 1/4 inch lengths of tubing together and crocheted a cover that would fit.

 Then I sewed those covers to the tubing. I'm not crazy about these handles but they do work. They're kinda fat for a handbag. They'll work though.

 I've stalled on this project at this point. I cut some corrugated plastic signage to the size of the bottom of the bag and gave it a stiff bottom. The plastic was covered in dark blue polyester fabric and then sewn to the bottom edge of the bag. Doing that gave the bag nice structure.

I am going to attempt to put a zipper in this bag. Only one side of one handle is actually sewn to the bag at this point. I'm thinking I should probably put the zipper in before putting on the handles. I've never installed a zipper before. We'll see how it goes as soon as it happens.

 This is my newest crocheted market bag. Still in the works. Going steady and smooth. Should be done in a day or two.

 I finished the cotton thread water bottle bag. It was waiting on that braided handle to be done for better than a week. I like the braiding disk.

 It's big enough to hold a 20oz bottle with a bit of room to spare. I crocheted it out of crochet cotton thread in various colors, plus purple. 

 I made a few brooches earlier today. This one I finished yesterday. The green and purple dog. He kinda looks like a reindeer.

 Another dog like brooch. Dogs are not my animal. I make awful dogs more often than I get them right. Dog though.

 Bird brooch.

 One eyed cat brooch.

 Purple cat brooch.

All of the brooches are felt applique sewn with embroidery thread. They have lapel pin backs.

Crochet has happened a lot here of late...

 This chicken pot holder no longer exists. I messed it up something fierce! It was a practice run. I don't generally follow any pattern when I crochet. I can read patterns, I just prefer to wing it most of the time.

I tore it out and tried again.

 I was aiming for a pair! :) Goal met!

I'll be giving these as a Christmas Gift. I got them right on the first try the second time!

Cute little devils aren't they??? You can go to etsy and buy the pattern or you can go to youtube and watch one being crocheted. I went the video route. It will point you to etsy if need be.

If you know how to crochet, these are pretty easy to make and they are cute as can be!

 I found this little basket in another basket earlier this afternoon. I was looking for the loom flowers I made some months back when I found the little basket. I didn't find the loom flowers, just the looms.

 I crocheted this little wire basket months and months ago. You can see from the crappy picture of it in my hand that it is a tiny little basket. I need to drag out those spools of wire and crochet 11 more of them in 11 different colors. I don't know what else that wire is good for. I thought it was something completely different than what it is when I bought it. It wasn't too hard on the hands crocheting with that plastic coated wire. It's like very thin plastic clothesline wire. 

 You all saw the colorful plarn market bag in the works in the last post. I finally got around to making another ball of bright yellow plarn to finish this bag and mark it off the list! That might happen in the next few days as well.

 I have a few other projects in the works too though, so who knows what will happen! The yellow bag is ready to have its strap sewn on. It also needs a button of some sort as a closure. 

The little green man climbed out of my felt storage bag when I was gathering supplies for the brooches. I haven't seen him in at least six months! Now that he's back in the light of day, he might get his hair finished and some clothes one of these days.

I started the blue bag yesterday. It's the beginnings of a crossbody bag sewn together in a coil with blue acrylic macrame cord and gold crochet cotton thread. It's coming along nicely. 

There are some little crocheted and embroidered bumble bees hiding under the wips also. Three of them in various stages of completion. There will probably be a whole swarm of little yellow bees with black stripes and netting wings to hang on my Christmas tree. There will be at least 3 at any rate.

I leave you with the north field, planted to wheat.  Five weeks and four days into its growing cycle.

The leaves have already started falling off the trees. That's an elm tree to the right and I'm not sure what that little tree on the left is. The chickens have cleared the underbrush from the marijuana growing along the trench. It is dying out for the year. It's wild ditch weed, I didn't plant it. If I were gonna plant some weed, it would be weed worth smoking! 

The wheat field is looking wonderful to my untrained eye! That is my favorite color of green in the whole wide world! Always has been! 

I haven't seen any cows yet, but the possibility is there that cows will show up. 

Stay tuned!

You know there will be art and crochet and all manner of things handmade show up here, might be cows as well! I like cows.

Thanks for hanging in there for a two parter! 

Whew! It's over!

Remember though....

Be kind to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831

The Possums Who Come to Dinner

Hello Readers!

Today I'm going to talk about opossums.  

In a previous post, might of been the last post...? ...anyway in a previous post I told you all about that fool opossum that thought my painting table was a good place to explore in the kitchen. He's a she and she has a friend who is a tad smaller than she is.

I've only seen her little friend once. I found that one on the kitchen table as well. 

And once again, I have only myself to blame because possums don't know any better! You leave the door open and they think it is an invitation to come right on in and wreak havoc if they're so inclined.

I got busy ....not really busy...more like engrossed on somethings or another on the world wide web the other evening and lost all track of time despite there's a clock on this screen. It was dark outside before I closed the front door. It is hard to see outside in this room so I hadn't noticed the sun had gone down.

I was headed to the kitchen to fill my cup when I realized, too late, that it was dark outside.

I closed the door anyway cause I really didn't want possums in the house. Still don't want possums in the house!

Just because I prefer they stay outside, doesn't mean they will when I give them opportunity to come on in and make themselves to home! This one was considerably smaller than the one that sat in the basket on the shelf where paints are stored. That possum is a nice plump specimen! This guy was little in stature, not skinny, just little and stank to high heaven! Unlike the one caught in the paint basket, this one did not grin at me. This one snarled and growled and raised his hackles at me. Then it promptly knocked a container of odds and ends tools off the table, across the kitchen floor! His mama taught him well, put up a fight! But his little spectacle didn't really concern me too much. He only did it once and he really didn't have his heart in it!

I went on through the kitchen, right past that belligerent youngster, into the laundry room to turn on the light and open the back door to give Junior an escape route.

I shooed him off the table with the bristle end of the broom and herded him toward the laundry room. He threw a few more things on the floor on his way down to the floor. Graceful, possums are not. Do you think he went straight out the back door? Heck no. That would have been too easy! No, he hid behind the laundry hamper and refused to be herded with the broom. I shut the laundry room door into the kitchen and left that smelly possum and Lola in the laundry room. He eventually made his way out of the laundry room and down the back porch steps into the great outdoors where he belongs.That cat is of no help at all in getting possums out of the house! She's no help in keeping them out either!

This little possum has appeared to have moved on as this is the only encounter I've had with it. And I do not have pictures to show you....darn! This happened four or five days ago.

The other one though....yeah she's sticking around. There's free grub on occasion!

 

 Last night she had leftover rice with ham chunks and bell peppers. I wasn't real crazy about the combination either! That's why Lotty, that's what I've named her, got it. She took her sweet old time eating this stuff. She came back three times that I know of. She runs whenever she sees me walk past the door and if I'm not quiet about walking through the house, she runs when she hears me so I only see the back end of her going down the stairs. I dumped some oil from a can of tuna onto that rice when she wasn't looking. She wasn't on the porch at any rate...It must have improved the taste as the bowl was licked clean by morning. Except she didn't eat any of the green pepper. Those chunks were scattered all over the rug. No biggie, really. I just swept them onto the ground and the chickens came along and cleaned them up.

 Boo!

Don't try to take pictures of a possum on a dark porch, through the front door glass while you're sitting in the dark as well. Especially don't use the flash. It makes that table top look like I haven't dusted in 20 years! And it makes possums turn into demonic looking creatures. 

Course, if that's the look you're going for....well, that's how it's done apparently.

That's Lotty looking all devilish, eating a bowl of leftover scrambled eggs and zucchini. She doesn't like zucchini any better than she likes green peppers.

She's a bit of a messy eater. The porch always needs swept afterwards.

Are cookies good for possums? Probably not.

 But look at that little face! She loves cookies. Linda was right about that! 

Linda is my sister. She is the one who provided the white chocolate chip cookie to give to Lotty. 

Linda used to have her own resident possum. His name was Tony and he lived on her front porch. She generally fed him cat food but Linda's husband used to go to the store specifically to buy Tony Oreo Cookies. He lived on their front porch in a small dog house Linda had put there for the neighbor's cat who wasn't allowed inside. Tony moved in instead. He stayed for a few months and then moved on on his own accord. When I told her about the possums she said Ma had already told her. She offered up the advice that I MUST feed them cookies! "They LOVE cookies!" she said. She gave me the cookie, I gave it to Lotty.

 She munched and munched and munched! She was so into that cookie she didn't even realize I was right at the door with the camera. The porch light was on and I was using the flash. She didn't care. She just kept eating.

 And when we pan out to see the entire scene... Lotty has a spectator. Miss Lola had checked that cookie out right after I put it on the porch and deemed it not to her liking. She didn't need that cookie! Look at the size of that cat! She must of been on the porch when Lotty came to visit. I doubt Lola arrived on the porch after the possum.

 Lotty has snarfed down every crumb of that cookie and is now washing her face with her front paws. She has fingers on her front paws much like a raccoon. She licked all her little fingers clean and then washed her snout. Lola watched from the porch railing.

opossum feet 

they have cute little feet

When Lotty finished her bath, she snuffled around the perimeter of the front porch, presumably to check for additional cookies. Upon finding nothing of interest she ambled on down the stairs.

 See ya later!

I know Lotty is a girl because when she went down the stairs, I could see the underside of her belly. She has a pouch. Boy possums don't have pouches.

If I continue to offer her leftovers, she will probably stay through the winter. But she's a mind of her own and I'm sure what I want or think really doesn't matter to her. 

I will enjoy her while she comes around and be happy she chose to stay as long as she does.

I do want her to stay out of the house though. Opossums are not allowed in the house. Under the house is OK, but not in it.

Thanks for reading about Lotty and the Juvenile Delinquent. I am in hopes JD has moved on and won't return. I think one resident possum is plenty. But if he does come back, I guess he and Lotty can fight it out where it works for them. I don't know that JD is a boy. I just know he's a youngun.

I'm sure there will be more chapters in the saga of The Possums Who Come to Dinner. 

Until then....

Remember....

Be kind to one another. 

It matters!

Peace

831 

 

Another Installment of Crazy..

Hello Readers!

I'm just sitting here listening to Bad Company and contemplating a blog post. 

I really don't have a great deal of stuff to show you today. I've been busy making plarn and crocheting mostly.  Better start again after having looked back at all the photographs you will see shortly. I really haven't accomplished a great deal since the last post. That was a week or so ago? Making plarn takes up a bit of time. While making plarn I sat in front of this pc watching Forensic Files, Divorce Court and Street Food videos from around the world on YouTube. I guess that beats the heck out of wasting my time sitting in front of this machine playing useless games. I do that enough on my phone!

I did get a bit of crocheting done since I was here last. I try to crochet in front of the pc but it always goes astray and I end up playing those useless games instead of crocheting. I listen to podcasts on my phone in the livingroom while crocheting. My phone updated itself almost two weeks ago and my podcasts wouldn't play, nor could I listen to NPR. Last Wednesday I went to the nextech office in town and had the girl behind the counter set it right again. They don't call those things smart phones for nothing. Mine's surely smarter than I am in a lot of areas!

A lot of these photos are of stuff I made weeks ago and forgot to include. 

I was certain I had taken a picture of the north field since the last post but there were no new ones to show. I will try to keep up with the field throughout the growing season, which will not end till next July. I suspect, no, no, I HOPE we get some cows to look at during the winter. The field is as green as it can be right now. Growing like crazy! Grazing cows would be a nice addition. 

I'm sorry to say I've missed a few photo opportunities in the last few days. 

The moon was absolutely gorgeous last night.

Mr. Possum came for a visit at 5 o'clock this morning. I was sound asleep when I heard a noise in the kitchen. I thought it was the cat climbing on stuff she shouldn't be climbing on. I hollered at Lola to get down from there! A bit later I heard a bigger crash and came fully awake. I got up to see what the hell that cat was doing. Wasn't the cat at all. She was sitting in the livingroom right outside the kitchen when I came out of my room. Mr. Possum was on the shelf beside the table where I do painting. He was sitting smack dab in the big basket of craft paints that sit on the second shelf up from the floor. He had knocked my strategically placed piles of projects in the works....right on the floor scattered everything on the table and somehow managed NOT to spill the paint water. How he got on the table, I don't know. He was awfully quiet about it all as it happened. Remember I was asleep until the crash happened. 

He sat there, just looking at me as I calmly asked why the hell he was in the house. Then he bared his teeth at me as though he were smiling. Looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Possums aren't aggressive in the least. I wasn't that close to him.  He had knocked a ball of yarn off the shelf onto the floor along with a boatload of other stuff. I picked it up and threw it at him. He seemed not to care. I couldn't do anything but wait for him to leave. Lola was having nothing to do with this circus. Murray was MIA. She didn't even bother coming home last night. I went back to bed. Shut all the lights off and crawled back between the sheets and left Mr. Possum to his own devices. I'm sure he filled his belly with cat food while he was here. I should have taken his picture but I wasn't thinking. I was half asleep. After I had gone back to bed, five minutes later I heard him leave. I got up to make sure he had indeed taken the route out he'd taken in. He was headed down the front porch steps last I saw of him. It's about that time of year, I won't be leaving the front door open at all hours. I have only myself to blame for the kitchen mess. Possums don't know any better!

I stepped out on the porch in the grayness of dawn to see Mr. Possum on his way. There was a thick fog all about. It was still dark at 5:22 a.m. but light enough to see with the light of the moon and the yard light. It was almost as pretty as the moon was last night. It was chilly this morning, in the lower 40sF.

At any rate. You all won't be seeing those sights unfortunately.

I do have a few things to show you though, so we better get on with it!

Enjoy!

Last post I told you all the things I forgot to take pictures of that you may see in a future post. This post contains some of those things. I think I missed one or two....

At any rate these are all 4 x 6 inches. Markers on colored writing paper. I don't know if they'll end up being postcards or book covers. Or something entirely different than that. Who knows!

 The paper started out orange.

 green

 green

 pink

 yellow

 orange

 green

I am pretty sure I had all these pictures oriented correctly before I added them here. What's up with Blogger changing things up like that?

 The eyeball is upside down too....

This eyeball was going to be the eye for a cyclops cat but the eye is all that materialized so far. It's a little less than two inches across. Markers on book page paper. (end papers) I did the eyeball three or four days ago. I don't know, they all run together sometimes.

 I am not fond of the color pink! I have a boatload of pink yarn and a boatload of white as well... I decided to make some backings for mug rugs. I'll do applique on felt with felt and sew them to these instead of using felt like I usually do for mug rugs. The bottom on is a bit big to be a mug rug so it will be a hot pot mat instead. I made these earlier today.

 Actually I've spent most of yesterday and today doing little more than sitting on my backside crocheting. I started this plarn bag yesterday. I ran out of yellow plarn so will have to make more before I can finish this bag. It needs a couple more rows of each color. It's a bit short at this point.

 When I ran out of yellow plarn I started crocheting with acrylic yarn. This will be a small market bag within a day or two. The colors look totally off on my monitor. They are dark blue and a grayish smokey blue color. I've no idea what size hook I'm using as it had been rubbed clean of that information when I acquired the hook. For some reason someone scratched it off. I use this hook a lot with acrylic yarn.

The day before yesterday I dragged out my scrap bag of felt and made some felt brooches for the swap instead of the ones I showed you all the last post.

 They're all in the 2-2.5 inch range.

 I don't know if the lapel pin backs are acceptable per swap rules but they were done by the time I thought to check. I wrote my info on a sheet of white paper and colored it with markers to match the brooch. I then glued those little papers to the brooch.

I used some of these metal lapel pins for the innards of the bird brooches. I have a shipload of these lapel pins. Some of them are worthless as far as monetary value. They work great for this application though. I also have big safety pins that would have worked but the lapel pins were on the shelf six feet away. The safety pins are way off in the kitchen, pinned to the inside of my wool bag that I sometimes take along when I leave the house.

Either way, I'm set for the swap. I really like the bird pins the best. I'd trade the others. Though I really do like the purple bells. 

This will eventually become a little brooch too. Dog made with scraps of felt. I'll sew him together with embroidery thread and put a double pronged lapel pin inside him.

This is about as Halloweeny it's going to get around my house. This little rubber skeleton hangs from the ceiling in my deskroom year round. He's about a foot tall. He's hung in that spot for years!

Yes, that is a Grow a Boyfriend and a scorpion in acrylic. All kinds of weird crap like this on the walls of this room where all writing takes place. The fella with the deer is Jimmy Johnson, says so right on the picture. My youngest son brought me this photograph maybe 10years ago. He said he got it at the bait shop in town. He's a stinker of a boy, used to be a bigger stinker of a boy when he was younger. He didn't come right out and say he swiped it, but that's what he did. He doesn't know who Jimmy Johnson is anymore than I do. "But look at that deer, Mom!"

I drew the abstract behind the skeleton shortly after I moved into this house, so about 11 years ago.
I got the Grow a Boyfriend from my sister for my birthday a few years ago. Best kind of boyfriend to have! Just keep him locked up in his packaging so he can't give you no shit! I haven't heard a peep outta this one EVER! LOL 

I'm pretty sure one of my sons gave me the scorpion. I have several scorpions.

I'm just rambling now....thanks for hanging round till the end! 

Remember ....

be kind to one another!

It matters! 

Peace

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