Knitting Iris

Bottle cap creations

The bottle cap basket my brother brought back from Africa for me a couple of years ago.  Quilt in progress in the background.

Bottle cap magnets made together with the boys with paint, glitter, stamps, stickers, epoxy (Can I tell you how much I love having a wood shop right next door full of large quantities of all those good supplies such as epoxy, sandpaper, foam brushes, masking tape, rolls of plastic drop cloth, and more all readily at hand and in bulk quantities?)

E with bottle cap shaker/rattle that R made with me a few years ago.

One of the bottlecap snakes made by the boys last month.  Idea found here.  As a friend of mine called it, "arts and crafts for the kids of alcoholics."  Ouch.  In my defense, it took us more than a year to collect enough bottlecaps to make two snakes this long, although I guess we weren't all that diligent in our collecting.  I was hard pressed to find two wine bottle corks so had too break one in half.  The rest became korkenisse last Christmastime.

The real snake that I first saw here in this neglected, weedy part of the yard on the southwestern side of the house in the hot, afternoon sun.  It slithered away from me,hiding down in the drainage rocks up close to the house, right next to where it had sluffed off and left a skin.  We've since seen it hiding amongst the rocks and flowers on the southeastern side of the house, nearer the front door.   Between the big toad living in the mudroom and now this garter snake, hopefully they're taking care of a good part of the mosquitos, slugs, and other insects pesky to humans and gardens.  I'm crossing my fingers the snake won't discover the toad for it's next meal but I suppose that's just the way of things, now, isn't it?   

Scrap metal turned to art.

Watching heavy equipment and picking our treasures of our own (springs, old keys, buttons, washers, etc.) at the scrap yard with Papa while he picks out old, rusty steel which he turns into masterpieces using them for things such as cabinet panels and parts of furniture, along with reclaimed lumber:

One of his mortise and tenoned sideboards with reclaimed lumber, graffiti painted salvaged metal panels, topped with glass. 

A mortise and tenoned bed, in progress in the shop, again of reclaimed lumber, salvaged rusty steel panels, aluminum piping and aluminum pins.

I'll try to share better pictures of his work more often, maybe set up a Flickr site for him sometime soon.

Here are the kind of thing the boys and I pull off with random metal scraps and other random shiny things (E's on left, mine on right).  Not the best pics here either:

a project in one of our indispensibles, The Incredible Indoor Outdoor Book by Jane Bull which, apparently seems to almost not exist.  I found one other person who blogged about the fact that this book doesn't exist anywhere online except as listed at three libraries throughout the country at World Cat, one in Illinois, one in Minnesota, and one in Arkansas.  Speaking of which, if you don't know about World Cat, go ahead and bookmark it now.  Online catalogs for local libraries are the best things since swiss cheese all right, but this one is the mother of card catalogs, telling you where you can find ANY book, ANYWHERE in the country.  Amazing.  So, when there's a book I'm looking for that isn't anywhere in the Montana library system, I can almost always find it in the Seattle area and then go find it when I'm there (So. Cool.)  that is, unless it's the Incredible Indoor Outdoor Book, by Jane Bull, isbn # 0756617375.

Acorn - A = Corn

See what I meant about candy-corn colored knits around here?  I've used the last of the naturally dyed self-striping sock yarn but still have enough solid colors for a few pair.

The kernels from the decorative corn in this post from last year is what we used for both necklaces and decorations, soaking them in water until they were soft enough to string on a needle and beading thread.  We soaked the corn husks to make a corn husk doll as in the Legend of the Corn Husk Doll, following these directions.  We glued the dry kernels and 11 bean soup mix onto paper (Too bad we didn't have any dried squash seed as well to represent the third sister).  We also strung some extra, stale popcorn for hanging on the trees outside, made cornbread, and even tasted (a tiny bit of) corn syrup.  The popcorns balls have dried cranberries and sunflower seeds added for a trio of native american foods in one very sweet treat.  It's called homeschooling and crafting-on-a-shoestring with what we had on hand!

Enough corny-ness for now.  It's been a rough couple of days around here, which makes all this sweet craftiness.  This full-time homeschooling mom needs a break!  Luckily, tomorrow will be a sort-of one as it's a holiday and we'll be enjoying the day with friends and family and far too much food.  Then I could really use a day to myself, NOT for running errands or cleaning up around here or catching up on blogs, but REAL time just hanging out with girlfriends just ourselves, not easy to arrange with kids and families to juggle.  We're just going to have to make it happen, though.  It would be in everybody's interest!

A-corny

Felted acorns, seen first here and here. It turned out that I had on hand almost the same colors as Stephanie's.  The peachy color was dyed naturally years ago with I-don't-know-what.  The boys' acorns turned out nicer and less lumpy than mine.  I think they rolled and felted the wool more gently in the beginning.  I was too impatient.

Since you asked, how-to's for making felt balls or beads (then you can just roll them into more of an oval egg-shape, if you wish, towards the end): good instructions for making small ones and for working with kids here, Martha's pretty version here, more here, and here.  Gosh, I wish I'd taken a peek at these first.

More acorny and squirrely stuff:

How could I have forgotten this?:  the squirrel and acorn clip art from the MSLiving mag last month. 

Wooden acorns like the two mixed in above: here (scroll to bottom of page), or if you are like me and would love to someday get them in bulk so as to have an entire bowlful, then here.  Crafty idea for using them here.

Stephanie's amazing and sweet squirrels here, here, and here.

Felted jewelry: here, here.

Wee Folk Studio, of course.

Sewn & crocheted woolen acorns from here.  Sewn, scented acorns, sold here (scroll down).

Crocheted acorn pattern, free here.  Intricate knitted Leaf and Acorn lace pattern, free here.  Fiber Trends' Acorn Lace sock pattern.  Again, Adrian's Squirrel and Oak Mitten pattern free here.  Another mitten pattern here (scroll down, on right hand side, just under "Min favoritvante fran Dalsland").

Crate and Barrel:  acorn ornament, candlepot, bowl, and squirrel ornament.

Anthropologie:  Felt squirrel and acorn ornament.

Vintage wooden acorn jewelry: pins here, here, here, here, necklaces here, here,  here, bracelet here.

Beautiful wooden acorn needle and thread holder here (scroll down).

Pictures:  acorn, squirrel (via Mecozy), or just go type in "squirrel" or "acorn" in the search box at Flickr.  The squirrels pictures are numerous, sometimes bizarre, and often with hilarious captions.  Mr. Acorn. :)

Stencils/templates:  acorns, another acorn,  oak leaves, or better yet, trace around pressed leaves. 

Acorn boxes here, here, here, and this tiny one from an article about making gift boxes in MS Living December/January 1992:

Enough?  Anything more to add?  I'd love to know of anything else out there that you know of.

Time and Circumstance

Deep cleaning the house recently (as in, cleaning off the thickly dust laden high up shelves that have been ignored for....too long) in the middle of the night when sleep was elusive led to the coming across of this old cigar box I'd found a few years ago at a garage sale:

which, upon opening, revealed this:

!!!! Tucked away and forgotten about since last fall, or possibly the year before: pressed leaves, maple helicopters, lichens, flicker feathers (Oops. not "flickr" which at first I typed), dried rowan berries, and plain leaf-shaped wooden pieces.  Leafy treasure!

Which led to the making of these:

E's ghost, my fairies, R's lion and fairy.  I like the boys' ones best, and my cowgirl fairy.  They almost created themselves, the pile of leaves dictating what they'd like to be.  Crazy fall shadows across some of these pictures.  Inspired from various sources.  It wasn't until after we made these and hung them up that it suddenly hit me where the true inspiration for these came from, a book that, based on a brief review in an old issue of the now defunct Victoria magazine, I bought second hand and sight unseen on the internet a few years ago.  I hadn't even taken a peek at in a least a couple of years:

It's a beautifully detailed, tongue-in-cheek, farce of a book that leaves you wanting to truly believe.  More pictures from Fairie-ality here, here and here.

Sometimes it just takes the perfect amount of time and circumstance stewed together to make things happen.

On a dreary, windy, drizzly November afternoon...

...four boys aged 3-10 and two women in their late 30's and early 40's walked into this garage and made this:

A friend invited us to come over and put paint on two of the walls of her newing sewing room in one corner of this garage.  Since her own children are 15 and 21 and not interested in taking part, she specifically wanted younger children to do the job.  Using 8-10 colors of paint leftover from painting polkadots on her daughter's wall a few years ago in their former house and various sponges, kitchen scrubbers, bath scrubbies, plastic bags, plastic cups, and hands and feet, we were asked to apply paint in any way we could possibly think of.  It was messy and loads of fun, of course, and she's thrilled with the results.  Another adult friend of hers will come and paint very detailed paisleys on another one of the walls with the leftover paints.  We felt lucky to be asked and a good time was had by all!

R's First FO

Confession:  I've been a terrible mom/blogger.  I've been remiss in the timely sharing of these pictures of R's very first knitted finished object, a scarf.  These were taken, pre-haircuts, during the summer.  He started knitting it here on July 13th, 2005  and, picking it up again from time to time over the year, he finished it this last summer.   I just checked the date these pictures were taken and guess what day it was:  July 12, 2006!  It took him EXACTLY one year to make his first scarf!!!!   (Well, that's when I got around to weaving all the ends in, anyways.)  He made it for his cousin, my brother's son, and presented it to him a week before his 2nd birthday when we were in Seattle in the end of September.  The picture of E from the same day is just because he asked me to take one of him, too.

R has been asking me to teach him the purl stitch for awhile and finally I agreed the other evening before bedtime.  He tried, quickly getting frustrated by it because he was too tired.  It is rare that I'm up and about before the boys are but the following morning I was awake and enjoying a few minutes of quiet knitting before he came down the stairs.  He took one look at me, didn't say a word, went and got his needles and yarn, crawled into bed with me and, within a few minutes, with a little help, was knitting and purling every other row, "making the V stitches" or, alternatively, "making the teepee stitches," as he calls stockinette stitch.  He made a square, casting off by  himself, and is sending it off to my mom to show her that he can purl now. 

Pumpkin Socks

Appropriately, these socks were finished on the way to the pumpkin patch last weekend where the pickings were already getting a little slim.  The pumpkins were in a few leftover piles in the field but we managed to find some good ones and spend a couple of hours seeing the sheep, chicken, goats, rabbits, riding the pedal cars and more, despite wind and hail followed by plenty of sunshine. 

The yarn is KnitPicks Dye Your Own in fingering weight that I dyed self-striping with Coreopsis tinctoria and Yarrow over a year ago now, posted about here and here.  They were knit toe up with the magic loop on #1 Addi Turbos over 56 stitches and they hit about mid calf so they're bunching around the ankles a little in real life.  I just loved knitting these and they had the perfect amount of modern-day witchy-ness when worn today peeking out from under green velveteen jeans and my "new" $4 thrifted-in-Seattle Jack Purcells with the smiles on the toes!  So, I guess these triple as a pair for Socktoberfest 2006, the Sock-A-Month knitalong, and I suppose even for the Witch Sock Design Contest.  I'm not sure if they can top my last year's knee-high witch socks, though.  You can expect to see a lot more of this type of candy-corn striping around here in the next little while.  I guess it's in my bones right now.

We've been doing some pretty messy crafting and concocting around here lately, including potato printing, papier-mache and the "oobleck", above, that we made earlier this month while reading Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck.  We pulled it back out the other day and added googly eyes to make crazy monsters, aliens, critters, and ghosts.  There seems to be a few different "recipes" out there for this stuff.  We got ours from The Ultimate Book Of Kid Concoctions, by John E. Thomas and Danita Pagel, where they call it Gooey Gunk.  Here they call this Glurch and another mix with cornstarch Oobleck.  Whatever you call it, it's all gooey and fun... and not nearly as messy as I would have thought.

Camp

This is Camp.  It was family-owned land that my grandfather bought from the other relatives and built a cabin and a bulkhead on at the water's edge in the 1920's, I'd guess.  The cabin itself has obviously changed over the years.  A new, bigger bulkhead was built to ward off being washed away by waves in the winter storms.  A mudslide came through the back door at one time.  There isn't a level spot in the cabin anymore.  Although it looks as if you wouldn't even want to set foot inside, the floor is still surprisingly solid, at least where the holes aren't.  Despite appearances, this place is well loved.

My dad and his brother came here as children.  My brothers and cousins came here when we were children.  Sometime in the 1970's we found that a hippie named Jessica was living there.  In the 1980's some new-agey guy had discovered it and had moved in.  It was in my grandmother's name at the time and apparently she just let them each stay there for awhile.  If there was any rent involved it had to have been minimal.  There was likely not much in the way of running water and electricity inside it by that time, but at least the doors and windows were still intact, a shower hung from a tree outside, and an the outhouse (still there) was half way up the hillside.  I still used to stay inside the cabin during college, shoving a picnic table against the door to keep it shut and setting up my sleeping bag on top of the table to stay out of the wind and the rain.  Some of us still bring our children there. 

My dad and his brother didn't speak to eachother for about 5 years regarding something to do with this property.  My dad's cousin, who has no vested interest in the property, probably spends the most time there of anyone and does most of the maintenance, keeping the blackberry brambles at bay, mowing the grass at the  top of the hill, building the latest set of 117 steps from the top of the property where you drive in down to the beachfront.  He keeps a tent set up, half way up the hill in the summer.  This was where E and I camped this time, listening to raccoons scamper by in the night.  My dad went with us and spent the day there leaving for the ferry back home just before darkness set in.

It's a bit odd to camp there today, within yards of million dollar houses and old farmsteads worth even more, I'm sure.  What was once remote is now within a ten minutes drive of a Thai restaurant and it's only a few minutes further to even fancier restaurants, shops, and the most fabulous of all grocery stores I've been to.  If there was any place on this planet I'd like to live as much as where I do now, it would be at Camp.  Oh, the garden we could grow!  I have daydreams of a greenhouse down by the beach.  You can no longer get a permit to build down on the waterfront but this property is grandfathered in so you could "remodel" the cabin below as well as build a house on the hill up above.

Of the 5 cousins who stand to inherit this property, the two who could afford to buy it aren't interested in doing so.  The other three of us could never afford to even pay the taxes on it.  It seems inevitable that eventually this property will have to be sold.  There has been talk for too many years about my dad and his brother rebuilding a cabin there but personally I don't think it's worth their sacrificing their relationship over it.  It's too heartbreaking for me to even think about it anymore.  It gets my hopes up for a place to go and stay there, warm and dry, even in the wintertime.   Inevitably, my hopes are soon dashed every time so, for now, I just try to enjoy this place for what it is.

E and I collected and strung clam shells on twine and he wanted to leave one hanging on the cabin "to decorate it."   We sought out some of the last of the summer's blackberries.  I swear that Bainbridge Island has the sweetest, juiciest blackberries of anywhere, by the way.  My dad told us of memories of his grandmother canning blackberry jam on the old woodstove there when he was a kid.   We rebuilt the campfire pit, had dinner, and toasted marshmallows together, the three of us, and then E and I crawled into sleeping bags, on cots, in the tent for the night.

Rock paint(?)

I'm not sure how I started doing this, if somebody showed me, if I read about it somewhere, or if I just sat down by a river one time and did it, sometime in my early twenties, I'd guess.  I'm not quite sure what you'd call it.  Rock paint?  It's ancient as can be, of course.  Has anybody else ever done this?

How to:  Choose two rocks and wet them in the river or lake.  Rub one on the other, quite hard, to see if at least one of them is soft enough to produce a "paint."  Drip on more water as needed.  Dip either your fingers or a rock into the paint and decorate your body as you wish.  It doesn't show up much until it dries, and then, if you don't like it, wash it off and start again.  The subtle differences in the colors don't come across well in these pictures.  This riverbed has an incredible variety of rocks so we were able to make pink, yellow, green, white, and brown.  Much fun for kids and adults alike!