Lichen and Moss on a Rock Soft Sculpture

 Or you could call it a pillow.

I worked on this for months. There are a lot of french knots. I will kind of miss this project, now that it is done. 

Spool and Tube Knitting

I can remember spool knitting as a child, with set-ups just like this. I have a few wood spools that are pretty much antiques by now. Fortunately I had enough spools to have messed up two of them by getting the fourth nail (always the fourth) crooked, and still having 2 spools where I got things right. 

The larger 'spool' is a very solid tube with 12 nails evenly spaced. It was a little trickier to set up the knitting, but should go well enough now that it is started. 

 

Toilet Tube Village

 I wanted to make some play things out of very recognizable objects. It will be wonderful if they have play value. If they don't they can go out with the recycling. 

There are 26 toilet tube houses. If you go to the trouble to count, you will notice that there are only 25 in the photo. One fell out of the box on the way to the photo shoot. It was returned to the fold. 

Adding the letters was an after thought.

I added paper cars, which may only last a minute, but bring some added imaginative opportunities.

Time to clear up. 

Advent 2023 - Part 4

Day 22 - House street    

Day 23 - Family and car  

Day 24 - Airplane

     

2023 Christmas Card

 I have a general operating strategy that encourages me to work with what is at hand. At the moment I have a stack of strips of paper, remnants from the Faerie Book project. 

What could a little folding and gluing produce? My aim was to make something that did not require assembly by the folks who receive these in the mail. My research indicates a stunning lack of viable gluesticks in the homes of the nation. 

The idea behind this year's card is that it behooves us to be open to new ideas.  A retirement in my household will change how we organize our days and what opportunities we can entertain. We can still take pleasure in the ordinary (white petal) days;  we also need to change our thinking to take on new things - the coloured petal days. In a more general way, new thinking --generous, empathetic, and conscious -- could go a long way to change our communities and the world. 

Advent 2023 - Part 3

Day 15 - Mary and Joseph  

 Day 16 - City buildings on left 

                                                                                                      

 Day 17 - City buildings on right 

                                                                                                    

 Day 18 - Element 😁                                                   

Day 19 - Hotel

Day 20 - Stable (see the truck parked at the side?)

Day 21 - Tents 

Advent 2023 - Part 2

 Day 8 -   New hill: Mary and Joseph now have a red truck and the donkey is in the back.               Day 9 -   Wise Kings                                                                                                                               Day 10 - Trees                                                                                                                                    Day 11 - Star

Day 12 - Farm hill and crop

Day 13 - Mary and Joseph in the truck

Day 14 - Green hill crops and flock of sheep

   

 

Advent 2023 - Part 1

 This year's advent project for my grandchildren is a progressive diorama. The non-celiac in this house had to eat a lot of cereal to provide the cereal boxes that I needed. 

Here is the development of the idea:

Building of one of the boxes. I am pretty good at building boxes out of boxes. 

The children will each have their own box and diorama to build. They each have a book of pockets, one pocket for each day, with some general directions for the children and parents. Most of the activities take very little time.

Day 1 -  The sky. It is hard to tell in the photo that it is a day/night sky.

Day 2 -  The sun and stars.

Day 3 - The hills and rocks (Mary and Joseph are on the crest of the hill)

Day 4 - The trees

Day 5 - Shepherds; Mary and Joseph

Day 6 - Sheep

Day 7 - Rocks and bushes

Book Faerie House: Faerie House Book

 This comes after a long line of Persuasion Journals that I reread, then turned into houses in some form. I guess a book faerie house was inevitable. 

Come on and have a look inside.

The front entrance.

The living room.

An upstairs space to curl up.

The other door.

The kitchen.

A space just for T1.

The view from above.

Where you will find this book house. 

Little Houses in the Library

 Over a couple of months I have left little houses at the library in places related to the theme of 'home'. This has been on the sly. I do not think it is illegal to leave small paper objects in a public library. 

The first one went to live in the fiction section, filed according to the Dewey decimal system: after HOO comes HOU for house.

The next one, also in the fiction section, went to reside by T.Morrison's book Home.

The third one found a place in the non-fiction section. You can see why this made sense. 

Little house number 4 went up to the magazine section: This Old House.

The location for little house number 5 was in the CDs. The title is partly obscured by the label; the CD is called 'Home.'

And finally, little house number 6 went to the children's section: 

I hope the librarians at my local branch had some fun with this. I do not expect to find out. 

Birthday Number: 39 trips around the sun