Crafting For Ourselves

I love looking through the Crafting for Ourselves group on Flickr, it always fills me with inspiration.  This is what fabulously crafty souls have been making for themselves lately.  Check out the entire pool here.  It can be really hard to make time to be crafty for ourselves, but the rewards are great. 

Just look at these, proof positive!

 

1. Button Makeover, 2. Found Object Necklace, 3. wooden spool bracelet, 4. new handmade cushions : bookhou houses front | plaid wool back, 5. got a spare five mins....., 6. Halloween iPod cozy, 7. my first crochet stone, 8. Puppets!, 9. Knitted Vest/Top

Wordless Wednesday

Land Art With The Wee Ones

A quick thank you to everyone who stopped by yesterday's post.  Your comments really made my day.

The boys and I played in the leaves this wandery weekend and tinkered with a little land art.  While the leaves on our trees have mostly fallen or turned brown, color still abounds closer to the forest floor.  The raspberry bushes have remarkable colors right now so we decided to grab an armful of them and explore.

We arranged our leaves in a gradient of color, running from red to green, along a large downed pine.  There were many tiny thorns to deal with so momma got this job.  The boys placed stones where each leaf overlapped.

After dinner the wind had died down a bit so we went back out to remove the stones and free the leaves to change with the forces of nature.

Oh look, here comes a force of nature now...

swish!

swish!

This was all that remained after hurricane E blew through.

  I guess she thought our work could be improved upon because after she cleared ours off, she began work on her own.  (she's opting for a more monochromatic arrangement)

Have you played in the leaves lately?

Puttering

I gave myself a few days off this weekend.  I puttered.  Rather than working my way down a neatly prioritized to-do list (OK, that might be a stretch), I rambled, completing tasks and projects in a winding, rambling sort of way letting each task take me to the next.

This weekend I baked oatmeal cookies and pot roast.

I washed the winter blankets and let them dry on the line. 

I ironed my pile of birch bark. 

I gathered.

We sat around a campfire.

I sat in the cool of the morning and cut sticks next to a still smoldering campfire, breathing in the smell.

I soaked sticks for making a wreath.

I tended a garden.

I noticed the leaves on the Virginia Creeper, raspberry bushes, and wild roses having their turn at color now that our trees are mostly brown or leafless.

I gathered eggs.  (7 each day!  Yay chickens!)

I dyed lots of wool in earthy colors and made acorns with it because I wanted to.

I checked out the shriveled mushrooms and wondered when it would rain again.

I sent a gift to a friend.

I watched a movie with my husband.

I played with my kids.

I was wildly productive.

I enjoyed the sense of not being tied to "what needs to be done" and relished the freedom of doing what I wanted to do.  The feeling I had this weekend is one I need to allow myself more often.
I'm working on that one.

I also made a few things for myself this weekend, including a scarf made of recycled t-shirts and a bit of leather from a coat.  I had enough material to make two so I'm offering this one up to one of you sweet readers, if you would like it.

 

If you'd like it for your own, just leave me a comment here letting me know or send me an email at lilfishstudios(at)gmail(dot)com. 

I'll ship worldwide, and the winner will be drawn on Friday. 

Have a wonderful week everyone. 

(a winding, rambling sort of week, if you'd like)

Teacup Treasure

Were you puzzling over my Wordless Wednesday post yesterday?  Teacups?  Why is she showing us teacups?  Well, one because my reflection is in there and I thought that was cool... but secondly and more importantly, I was giving you a glimpse at one of my recent thrifting scores.  You see, I'm a garage saler.  A thrifter.  A junker.  Livin' on the edge.  I love digging for treasure and I keep meaning to show you some of the treasures I've picked up this summer so thought I'd start here.

I actually bought these two lovely and incredibly delicate teacups to make into ornaments.  They were marked "France" on the bottom which made me think of my dear friend Sonia, so I had to have them.  I really liked the one with the gold on the inside and the raised decorations on the outside.

I brought them home and was about to begin gluing into them when my curiosity got the better of me and I trotted off to the computer to see if I could identify them.

Turns out these little lovelies are Limoges porcelain paste cups circa the late 1800s.  What I found to be really interesting was that Limoges pieces were often sold as undecorated "blanks" and sold to hobbyists and art schools to be painted.

I tried to identify the two patterns I found and came up empty.  It makes me really wonder who used to drink tea from these (she was a lefty, based on the wear on the rim), who painted them, and how I was lucky enough to get them for 50 cents.

I have no idea what I'll do with them.  I can't bring myself to glue in them, and fine breakables are in constant danger of well, being broken, around here. 

Any ideas?

Wordless Wednesday

The Mushroom Tree

I was wandering around the yard the other day checking up on the chickens and having a look at the fall foliage when I noticed a tree by the wood pile that was covered in mushrooms. 

Aren't they fantastic? 

I was snapping pics when something at the base of the tree caught my eye.  The trunk has a hollow hidey spot and what was peeking out? 

Mushrooms playing a little hide and seek with me.

We seem to be moving quickly through autumn.  It's only been a few days and already the colors have turned more to red and brown and leaves cover the yard. 

Soon the poison ivy will be covered in white instead of showing off their pretty fall colors.

But let's not worry about that yet... instead let's roll in the leaves, wrap these gorgeous days around us, and make soup.  Winter can wait.

Happy Tuesday, all. 

Checking In On The Acorn Rainbow - October 2010

 

It has been over a year since I offered up a little acorn rainbow to mother nature.  I wanted to see how time and the elements would change my little wool creations, and over the past year they have in fact changed. 

Some have changed color, some have been chewed on, all have been displaced from their original mossy stump, and some have been hauled off altogether.

The orange seems to have been a snack of sorts for some little rodent.  I could see the scrape marks from two tiny front teeth in the wool and cap. 

The red is just a little dirty with a touch of mildew but overall, pretty much looks the same.

The blue is the only one that I've seen change color at all, and it too has tiny chew marks in it.

For being out in the Minnesota weather and laying in the dirt for over a year, I'm really surprised at how well these have held up.

To celebrate the one year mark, I decided to move them from under the leaf litter back up to the top of the mossy stump again.  I'm curious to see if they'll be hauled off again.  Maybe they'll be some squirrel's decoration for Thanksgiving...  I'll check back next spring to see what remains.

'til then, little acorns.

Crafting For Ourselves

Look what I've found in the Crafting For Ourselves group this week!  Wonderful wearables, dyeing experiments, home decor, fancy pumpkins... Wonderful stuff, all of it. Are you using your craftiness to enrich your own life? Spoiling yourself or your family with amazing baked goods? Are you one of those that sees something in the store and says "I can make that" and then actually does? Come join us.

1. dyeing with plants, 2. wiggle wiggle wiggle, 3. finished teaser, 4. Teal Shawl, 5. "Into Nebraska", 6. flowerfestival Alden Biesen (B)2010, 7. COMPETITION, Protective Coloration, 8. with you ..., 9. Alabama Chanin inspired scarf

I have a contribution this week too.  I took a break from the wool stash (well, sorta) and worked on some tags that have been in my head for a long time.  I'm already thinking about the holidays (good grief!) and my gift-wrapping so I put these little guys together.

This project was a family affair...my little guys helped paint the beans (you might remember this photo), my oldest son drilled the hole in the acorn cap, we all gathered the birch bark last winter, and I put the whole thing together.  Birch bark, acorn cap, raffia, beans, and scrap wool.  My kind of project.

I made these for me but I'm going to try to put some in the shop early next week too.

Happy Saturday, everyone!  Go make something for yourselves, wouldya?