Fall crafts and colours

I finally found enough copper jelly moulds to be able to display them on the wall.  Only one of them on the wall looked really odd, so I took a few trips to various thrift stores when I was out and about over the summer and autumn, and found these.   There are a huge number of different designs, but the curved fish, the heart and the fluted circle with flowers are on my hopeful to find list.  They are fun, pretty, the copper alloy colours are often quite different and they are inexpensive.  The most I've paid for one was $2.

 My Christmas wreath was looking rather sad.  It's been in use for a couple of years and we forgot to take it down last winter and it stayed up until I put the autumn wreath up in September. That means it's weathered, worn and wilted.   I made it from an old wire hanger and some old artifical pine  greenery garland.   Today, I grabbed my pruning secateurs and trimmed back a bunch of Bittersweet vines which were trying to grow up a Lilac.   I wound the larger ones into a circle.  To secure them, I wound smaller vines around the circle.  I slipped as many vine ends as I could inside the wreath.

It's a little lop sided and there are a few places where the vines snapped when I tried to twist them around and they didn't want to bend that way.   The vines aren't very flexible this time of year and soaking them would have helped immensely, but while it's warmer outside today than recent temperatures, being about 4C, it is still too cold to be dunking my hands in a bucket of water outside.   This is definitely an outside or at least studio appropriate craft.   I left it on the patio table for a few hours to help it dry, but it gets little sun this time of year. It's now drying in front of the fire.  I know it's going to warp a bit and won't dry flat, but at least it will dry.  I've some holly and some glittery silk flower poinsettia picks to hide the uneveness.   

Bittersweet has a lot of little pointy things and sharp bits, so you need to wear gloves.   In the past, I've used a lot of Virginia Creeper vines to make wreaths, and they work really well.  However any viney thing can be used to make a wreath, as long as it's not too thick.   This time of year it would be easy to mistake poison ivy for benign vines, so make sure you know for sure, what you're snipping off.

The leaves were just starting to fall when we had snow.  Not just a flurry, but enough to stick to the ground.  The leaves all fell quickly and got covered with more snow.  Finally, it's melted and dried up enough that they can be dealt with.   Leaving them on the lawn isn't an option, if at all possible, because it encourages mice to run about safely.   With the lawn short and the leaves gone, the crows and neighbourhood kitties seem to be able to find rodent snacks much more easily and they tend to stay away from the house.  A win/win situation in my opinion.

My man has been out on his little tractor, mulching the leaves.   We used to bag them with a mulching push mower, and using them as mulch in the garden.  However, that is a lot of work.   With this little lawn tractor, it chops them up and they can be pushed to the side hedges.  It's fast and efficient.  Considering I don't even know if we have  a working push mower, this works just fine.

While I told myself that I really didn't need any more lustre ware doll dishes, I found this little teapot for $4 when I was Christmas shopping.   Almost all of my doll dishes are in sets, mainly full but some partial.  I think this is the only single I have.  But it was cute, in good shape, had a lovely and clear identifying and dating mark on the bottom.  I've rarely seen them with clear Made in Occupied Japan stamps on them.   It just slipped into the basket full of gifts I was purchasing and before I realized it, it was cleaned up and in my china cabinet.  Oops!

From when I was a kid, I've always had a thing for china doll dishes, and there were a couple of other complete sets which I lusted after, but left behind, so I'm telling myself I was good.

Crazy small projects

 I used to make soap.  Lots of soap.  Mainly cold process, although I did try hot process once.  I didn't like the hot process as it just took too long, and I wasn't in a hurry to have soap ready.   I haven't made soap in ages though.   However, I found some melt and pour soap supplies on sale and thought I'd play around a bit.   The clear base didn't even look all that clear in the block, and it certainly didn't finish clear.   I'm not horribly impressed with my first efforts.     I have some shea butter base and another base which I'll try next.   If nothing else, I have lavender oil to add in them, and the bars of soap can be used in wool storage bins to help keep the moths at bay.

And yes, they do have little toys embedded in them.   The round one on the far right has a snail in in it, while the shark and whale ones were obviously too big for the moulds.  The turtle was just a tad too tall but the lobster and frog were perfectly sized.

I whipped up some placemats.  I used cotton warp and the weft was commercial yarns or home made t-shirt yarn from new t-shirts which were on sale for cheaper than the thrift store.  The solid coloured yarns was a new recycled t-shirt yarn which I tried out.   It's great fun to work with, fast to weave up, but turns out to be quite expensive if you wanted to do a large project with it.

I made a wool worm holder.  Wool worms are the strips of wool used in traditional rug hooking.  After cutting the wool into worms, I was stashing them in large zip-lock bag, depending on project.  That meant there were a bunch of colours in each bag.  As I was hooking away on the rug, I realized that I had no idea how many worms I had left.  So I made an organizer to help keep some semblance of order.   I quilted up a mat, adding snap tape to the inside.  Then I bound the whole thing in bias tape.   It works a treat.   For this particular project, I would need either a larger one or a second one though as it doesn't hold all the colours and textures that I need.   I've also been working on a smaller project, still working out of the bags since the worms are much thinner that these ones.    It looks like I'll need to make a couple more holders in the near future.  They take up less room than the plastic bags and make it easier to find the particular colours needed at any time.  Plus the worms just slide out of the holder with a little tug, which is so much easier than prying them out of a ball of thin strips of wool in the bag.

Currently the loom is empty.   I need to make a rug, as per a family member's request but I just finished a run of rugs, and am dithering over my next project.    The wheel has cotton on it, and I need to finish up some rug hooked ornaments.   Sometimes what I picture in my mind's eye, doesn't actually materialize when I work on it.  Thus my embellished with beads and embroidery, hooked ornaments don't actually match my expectations.  Now if they'd been felted, it would have been a different story.

We've been running both wood stoves with the unseasonably cold and snowy weather.   It seems between loading the stoves and keeping the humidifier running, that sometimes there is little time for anything else.  But we're warm and the humidifier runs in the corner with the instruments, so they are looked after.  The cats like to cuddle in the cooler weather, so there is that as well.   Phil has no issues in coming up to me and demanding that I sit on the couch so he can curl up on my legs.    I don't always give in to him, unless it's lunch time or I'm ready for a tea break.  He is a darned good snuggler though.