Fiber Shenanigans

Quite a long time ago I had the opportunity to obtain a whole shitload of silk and fibery type flowers for a really really low price. These flower were pre-made into normal looking fake flowers but of course normal is not really anything I aspire too. I found myself spending a lot of time tearing apart and remaking them into something that was more to my liking. So, recently I decided to spend an afternoon dismantling the normal fake flowers and discarding the greenish plasticky innerds so I could make up my own non-standard looking flowers whenever the mood hit. This is what it looked like when I was done cannibalizing them:

Somehow I managed to get a picture without the cat faces. They will steal things if we don’t watch them, especially Barney, he REALLY likes flowers.

I now have a huge box of fake flower parts that I’d like to just curl up and nap in and just pretend that it’s spring.

I’ll gather up some of the ones that I’ve messed with over the last couple of years and post pictures someday.

On another note, just before christmas a friend contacted me and asked if I thought I could repair/resurrect an old stuffed frog that he stole from a friend around 40+ years ago. He found it when he was cleaning the garage and it fell out of a box or something. I told him I’d take a look at it and see what could be done. Well, poor froggy appeared to have been severely beaten, chewed on, and peed on by a band of bully mice. I think they were going after the rice stuffing, anyway he was just plain un-saveable.  I was pretty sure I could use him for a pattern to make a froggy 2.0 tho. Once I got over the pure revulsion of actually touching that raggaty ass-thing I was able to cut a fairly decent pattern. I tried to match the original fabrics as close as possible to come up with reasonable replacement. Froggy 2.0 was completed and stuffed with fish tank gravel to avoid any further run ins with bully mice.

If you don’t personally know me or my hubby, you wouldn’t know that we tend to take an idea and run it out as far as we can before it either gets so expensive or it becomes so ridiculous that it’s no longer feasible. Needless to say, we ran with this one. My hubby decided that froggy needed a coffin so we were able to find the perfect glass covered coffin at one of the local craft stores. He sanded and stained it while I worked on froggy 2.0 then I made a beautiful blue lining and placed froggy in for his final rest. We gave him an appropriate funeral complete with huge bouts of laughter and 3 feline mourners. Froggy and froggy 2.0 were returned to the thief so he could return them to the rightful owner. Froggy and froggy 2.0 were returned to the rightful owner last weekend and she was surprised and pleased. Well, come to find out the granny of the original owner made the original froggy special for the original owner so I was really happy to help the thief appease his conscience and replace a childhood memory as well as I could.

This is froggy 2.0 giving his final farewell to froggy just before the lid is place on for the final time.

I forgot I wanted to show you this birdhouse tree that my hubby made and put in our backyard. It’s about 8 feet tall and has 12 birdhouses that he made attached to the limbs. It’s made out of steel and welded together. Apparently steel and welding are just like fabric and sewing for guys. Isn’t it fantastic. It’s just so bright and happy looking. We are eagerly awaiting spring to see if the birds actually move in. I’m planning on putting out my thread and yarn scrap as soon as the real spring gets here so the little critters don’t have to work to hard to find nesting material.

My flamingos are the security guards.

Yesterday I informed my co-workers that I would be snowed in today. My personal weatherman Chuck G. on Channel 4 guaranteed that there would be so much SNOW in my yard (up to 8″!!) that I probably wouldn’t be able to get out for DAYS!!! For those of you that don’t live in the great state of Michigan, our so called winter has been very very mild, so when my personal weatherman Chuck predicted SNOW, SNOW, and MORE SNOW I decided that it would be a good day to stay home. I’d much rather be SNOWED IN at home than 35 miles away at work. Well, as luck would have it, yeah, we got snow. It was a nice snow but not the SNOW that was supposed show up.  Sometimes my weatherman Chuck gets a little excited about weather. This is Michigan after all and snow is not that unusual in February – except this year.

So anyway I’m home for the day, I have a nice snow in the yard, I have some white fabric that really needs some color tossed on. What’s a girl to do but snow dye fabric! I spent the day gathering snow in the kitty litter bucket (glad we don’t have neighbors), piling snow and dye on fabric then staring/glaring at the fabric and sending melt faster dammit brainwaves to encourage faster melting so I can get to the washout and finished stage. It’s almost impossible for me to leave it alone and for some reason I need to go look at it approximately every 5 minutes to check the melting progress. You’d be surprised how little snow melts in 5 minutes! Eventhough I promise myself that I’ll leave it alone, I’m pretty sure I’m just lying to myself and out comes the heatgun to hurry the process…Eventually though it’s all dyed, washed, dried, and ironed – with varying degrees of success. It really is very exciting to see the final product because you just never know what’s gonna happen.

It is my understanding that normal people, when gifted with an extra day usually use it to do something called “housework” at least that’s what I think it’s called. They do something called dusting(?) and use a machine called a vacuum which apparently removes threads, pins, fabric shards, yarn fuzz, beads, feathers, cat hair, and general dirt from the floor. Also, I’ve heard that you can use your washer, dryer, and iron for something other than yards of flat fabric. Wonders never cease.

I also got together a donation pile for our local animal rescue fundraiser. My daughter made and donated a beautiful handmade lap afghan and I donated this mermaid doll that I made a couple of weeks ago along with a few other trinkets that I’ve made in the last year or so. I hope our donations make millions and millions for the animal rescue.

OMG I actually inserted a picture! I did it by myself! Yay Me!!!

So now that I think the picture thing is figured out, maybe this blog will be more interesting. I sure hope  you like cats.