Fred&Toots

Autographs

Here's a little poem from J.T.'s late grandfather's autograph book.   It is from the early 1900s.

Some boys like their sisters
But I so good have grown
That I like other boy's sisters
Better than my own.

Instructions as promised

Woven Strap

Materials needed:

• 2 or more 'sticks' (depending on desired width and how many can be held comfortably in one hand)
• yarn (for a belt you would probably require 2 50gram balls)

For the sticks I used pre-cut dowels bought from a dollar store in the craft section.  They are pencil length and one centimeter thick.

• with pencil sharpener, sharpen one end of each stick.  (no need to be too pointy, just angled enough that it's easy to wrap and slide yarn around)
• on the other end whittle with a pocket knife to create two flat sides to the end.

• now on the flat end carefully drill a hole, as large as the dowel can handle without splitting (you may need to sacrifice one)

Now for the threading and weaving:

• measure out a length of yarn (the length would be the actual length of your project plus about 8 inches for knotting off at either end) for each stick you'll be using.
• * thread each stick and knot it in place

• with the yarn that is attached to the sticks, gather the ends and do one big knot leaving a 4 inch tail.

• now with your master ball of yarn, knot a loop and slide it on the first stick then begin weaving back and forth on the sticks sliding your weaving down gradually as you go.
• when you've reached the desired length, cut off the sticks and knot it off.  Add pom poms, tassles or beads to the ends and voila! a strap, belt or scarf!

*  to make it easier to thread the sticks one can use dental floss or fishing line or thread.

make a loop of thread and put it through the hole in the stick, bring your yarn through the loop of thread and then pull the loop through bringing the yarn through as well...

craft idea

Still working on getting back into the swing of things...took me forever to get a new header up and now my head kinda hurts.

but enough rambling for now

Thinking back to school these days I was fondly remembering my first grade teacher.  Mrs. Irving.  She reminded me of Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island.  We had a huge maze of gerbils in our classroom as well as a baby rooster (would that be a chick too?)(just looked it up, it's a cockrell) and a chick.  The gerbils would roll around in their balls while we sat at our tables and the chicks would hop along the top of the tables visiting us all.  If you were lucky one might even drop a little gift for you on your paperwork.  Mrs. Irving was a square dancer and I remember seeing her in her dress one time.  Blue and white gingham with a big, fluffy crinolin.  What can I say, she rocked!  What got me thinking about Mrs. Irving was a craft I remember doing in her classroom.  I tried it out with my niece who is 8.  It's like weaving and the results come quickly.  It's a great way to make a belt or strap for a purse or maybe even a guitar.

Next post:  Instructions (started typing them out but they didn't make sense at all)

In the meantime, another link for inspiration from a friend who is concerned with the decline of my posting: dirty car art

Back at it!

A friend sent me a link today in regards to my blog - I get the hint - yeah, yeah.  I'd never really thought of bunnies yawning before let alone knew there was a whole web page dedicated to pictures of bunnies yawning.  Cool.  So far #9 is my favourite.

It has been awhile and I'm so looking forward to getting back into routine!  Zoë has had her first day of preschool (yesterday) and Cam started kindergarten today!!!  Nothing a little Rescue Remedy couldn't handle (for me, that is).  They both were very excited about starting school and had fun first days so we're off to a good start!   

Now that I'm home and back at the computer I've just downloaded all the summer photos and thinking about what to do with them...what do people do with all their digital photos?  How many do you develop?  Do you put them into photo albums? Store them on discs?  So far I've been developing a lot of my photos and putting them into albums but the albums tend to just sit on the shelf.  If I'm going to show pictures to anyone I seem to do it from the computer...just trying to figure out some system.

Okay, that was easy...I had a bit of blogger's block but I think it's starting to disappear so I may be back to regular posting, until then there are a lot of yawning bunny pictures you can check out...