This is one of Ivy's creations:
She's very enthusiastic about the project and has submitted quite a few giraffes already--if you hover your mouse over the pictures on the website, you can see which ones are hers. Ola has been uploading the pictures quickly-- get to work on some giraffes of your own and help him out!
Then we tied the strings to the arms of a stuffed animal. Throw it up in the air and watch your toy drift slowly to the ground
(those lines aren't as close as they looked, we were being careful to keep the parachute away from them)
We mixed the bacon grease with peanut butter. Somewhere I read the peanut butter is good for birds, but it's sticky so mixing it with some sort of grease makes it easier for the bird to eat. It's rather disgusting
Spread on the bagels.
Dip the bagels in birdseed
Tie ribbons for hanging. This was not a good idea--we should have tied the ribbons on first. Very messy and gooey. I hope the birds appreciate our efforts.
Hanging them outside on the tree
It might have been better to hang them somewhere that wasn't so close to the street, I'm afraid the frequent passing cars may keep the birds away. But this is the only tree in our yard with branches low enough to easily hang things. Maybe these urban birds will be tough enough that they won't be deterred when there is food involved.
And with this project I've exhausted my supply of winter activities and it's only January...
Cutting out the strips of cardboard and coiling them up.
The cats are coming to investigate. Ours are nowhere as neatly and tightly coiled as the one in the tutorial. We were using some old beat up boxes the girls had been playing with, and I think the creases made it difficult to get them to coil smoothly.
The catnip we sprinkled on the scratch pads had the Pip and Yoko pretty interested, but they still haven't actually used them for scratching. I think they might be too high and not wide enough, we've probably got extra cardboard somewhere to add to them
Yes, the giant spider is still out on the porch. We discussed hanging hearts from the web and Brian just sighed. Loudly.
I read about making these last year on someone's blog and I can't remember where, so if anyone reading knows please let me know and I'll include a link. We used balloons--I think the original post used water balloons, but I could only find the regular ones. Squirt a small amount of food coloring into the balloon and then fill them with water (don't try to put the coloring in afterward, as soon as you let go of the balloon water sprays out--maybe I didn't make enough water balloons as a kid to understand how this works?). I just put them on a cookie tray and placed them on the porch to freeze.
The next morning we cut the ends off the balloons and peeled them off the frozen gems.
They really turned out beautiful. Some of them have rather odd shapes because of the way they sat on the pan, I think if we'd used water balloons they'd have a more perfect spherical shape. There was snow along the porch railing and they just stuck to it, they've been out there all day and I'm hoping they will last as long as this cold weather does (which will probably be a while)
Edit--thanks to Anna Kiss at Sugarboot and Weasel for pointing me to the original blog post-- Colored "Glass" at Hurryaic. Her tutorial includes advice on using old clothes and newspapers to stay clean--something I omitted but fortunately came through with no lasting stains.
The stockings were pre-made from the dollar bin at Joann Fabrics. Bella's is the one on the left, I made that last year and the stocking was a little larger, allowing me to be fancy using my sewing machine's blanket stitch to applique the cat head. The ones we got this year were smaller, and I suppose I could have taken them apart to do the stitching, but it's the sort of thing I have to encourage myself to give up--the idea of things being perfect. Bella's certainly looks nice, but the ones the Miranda and Ivy made are charming as well, and they put a lot of thought and work into them. I'm sure Pip and Yoko will be pleased!
Brian suggested she make a chess set out of clay. I thought the plain wooden peg figures you can find at craft stores might work better and "you can make a World of Warcraft set!" (she had an account and loved playing, just making her character walk around, but in the interest of economy, we've cancelled it for a while)
Have you ever said something and as the words are leaving your mouth you are trying to grab them and stuff them back in? And I was truly stuck now, she was delighted with the idea. Brian tried to suggest Pokemon instead but she pointed that "World of Warcraft would be rare. There is a lot of Pokemon stuff. See my shirt? It's Pokemon. Not World of Warcraft."
So we stopped at the store on the way home, enough wood pieces to make a set was less than ten dollars. Once we were home, she was so excited we had to get started right away.
Corncob holders work great for holding the figure while painting it. We used acrylic paints for a base coat and added details with a permanent market.
The finished set
This is the chessboard from our old set, so it's a little beat up. Unless you're familiar with World of Warcraft, the following won't really make sense, but here it is:
In the first game Alliance beat Horde but only because it's difficult keeping the pieces straight. It was time consuming because of all the pieces, but overall pretty easy--you can see we weren't going for much detail and honestly, no one looking at the board is going to say "Holy crap, a World of Warcraft Chess Set, awesome!". But it was still a lot of fun and Ivy is just so proud of it, she can't wait to show it to Miranda.
The chopstick didn't make a very good handle, something like a wooden spoon would have worked much better. I got the idea from a Halloween party suggestion to freeze the hand and then float it in a punch bowl.
This is a project that's been taking shape in my head for a few years and I've been putting it off. It's part of a winged lion costume for Miranda
The dreadlocks are made of wool yarn, attached to a piece of elastic. I've interrupted her World of Warcraft game and was taking a quick picture, I see now that I need to move the dreads a bit to cover the elastic in a few places. It was tedious to make, but really quite easy. I've included a tutorial with photographs. The wood floor probably wasn't the best contrast for taking the pictures, but I didn't realize that until I'd already felted the mane.
You need to use 100% wool yarn in order for it to felt properly. I used some scrap pieces I had lying around. I wound it around my arm and elbow to get pieces that were about 30 inches. You want the hanks of yarn to be about 1 1/2 times as long as the finished piece, because they will shrink.
Attach the hanks of yarn using slip knots to a length of elastic long enough to make a comfortable headband
You can make the hanks as thick or thin as you want, but each hank will make a dread, the thickness of the hank will determine how thick the dread is.
Continue until most of the elastic is covered. You can stretch the elastic some while covering it, but it isn't necessary to fully stretch it.
When you have the elastic covered, knot the ends together. Now you are going to felt it in the washing machine. Put the mane in a pillow case--I have a zippered one that works great, otherwise tie it shut or use a rubber band. Don't omit the pillowcase, or you will just get a knotted mess that wraps around the agitator. Use the smallest load setting, hot water. Add a little detergent--I just use dish detergent because it's cheaper and I'm not trying to clean anything, just aid the felting process.
I've always been able to get the dreads to felt by running one load. The hanks pretty much make individual dreads all on their own, although some stick together and you can pull them apart, others kind of stuck but the effect was still okay. It could probably use a few more dreads, but Miranda likes it the way it is.
Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments section!
Clementines seem to work just as well as oranges to make pomanders, and since they are much smaller covering them with cloves goes quickly. Because the skins are thinner and the fruit is juicer, it's messier then I remember oranges being, but the end result smelled lovely. We rolled them in cinnamon and will wrap them in tulle and ribbon for presents
I discovered this some time ago, it's a live webcam for the Japanese Macaques at the Nagano hot springs.
http://www.jigokudani-yaenkoen.co.jp/livecam/monkey/
The Snow Monkeys live farther north than any other monkey. In 1963 a young monkey went into one of the hot springs to retrieve some soybeans a keeper had thrown to her. She stayed in the warm water and soon some of the other monkeys joined her. Over the years the rest of the troop took up the behavior--to the point that they were giving their own hot spring, to keep them from invading the human springs (and apparently filling them with monkey poo, from accounts I've read). I think maybe I wouldn't mind the cold and snow quite so bad if I had a hot spring to relax in--although getting out would probably be somewhat uncomfortable. I'd just have to sit there until Spring.
