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November 24, 2019

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.


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