Of course, I couldn’t stop at just one bracelet…

so I made a second one:

Because I had a plan…. bangle bracelets look better when there are more than one….

(BTW, the flash does nasty things to the bracelets…. in real life, they look smooth and kind of irridescent. The flash seems to expose their undies. How rude!)

AND, because I love Furoshiki.

What’s  Furoshiki?

It’s an ancient and elegant Japanese solution to carrying things in the greenest possible way.

Here’s a link: FUROSHIKI

I’ve impressed the heck out of all kinds of people by whipping a headscarf out of my purse and tying a couple of knots in it to make a market bag.

I have also been using bracelets  as handles for my version of furoshiki.

Here’s how:

Tie 2 adjacent corners to one bracelet, and the other 2 corners to the second bracelet….

and VOILA!

You have an instant, earth friendly, eco happy market bag, GREEN tote bag, carry sack, re-usable, upcycled, recycled tote!

HURRAH!

(image source: photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay. Copyright, not to be used without permission)

My husband’s dad built a desk when my husband was a wee little guy. Sadly, the desk fell apart last winter. BUT!

The desk lives on in all manner of ways!

I have made bag handles and a heap of bracelets from the bottoms of the drawers.

And, today, I made myself another ‘Lady Hoare’ (I pronounce it Lady Harr, as the other possible pronounciations are slightly ‘ahem’-ish) tatting shuttle:

The Lady Hoare style of tatting shuttle is a very old version of shuttle and I absolutely love it. It’s my favorite style of tatting shuttle.

Why? Because it allows me to load it up with a ton of thread, so I don’t have a bunch of little joining knots.

AND… I can tat with thicker yarns, including handspun when tatting with the Lady Hoare shuttle.

At first, it felt a little clumsy, but I have gotten so used to them, that it is quite speedy now.

Here’s how I make them:

First of all, I like to have a template, .so I drew out the pattern on a sticky label. I stuck it to some thin brass that my son pulled out of an old amp before it went to the eco station for recycling:

Here’s the template cut out:

I have a big old pair of scissors that I paid a dollar for at a garage sale. I use it to do things like cut templates out of brass sheet!

Then, I traced the template onto the bits of old drawer. It’s hardwood, but I don’t know what kind of wood:

I traced out 2 of them, because the fiddly bits can be notoriously unstable.

Next posting: Out to the workshop!

Image source: Noreen Crone-Findlay

We have a wasp problem, and don’t want to use pesticides to kill them. Well, actually, we don’t really even want to kill the rotten little beasties…. they are part of the grand plan of nature, after all. We just don’t want the little stinkers to set up shop around our house, barn, hayshed, tool shed, garage or the farm machines. Is that too much to ask? LOL!

So, I designed a pattern for a fake wasp nest to trick them into to bugging off somewhere else.

So far, the crocheted wasp nests seem to be working! The deck has been wonderfully wasp free, and Jim hasn’t seen any more of them in the tool shed or hay shed.

Our daughter, Chloë , got inspired and has designed a sewn fake wasp nest. I haven’t heard from her about how it’s working at her house, yet.  Will need an update from her on that.

Jim decided that he’s interested in the family ‘anti-wasp campaign’, so he turned a fake wasp nest on the lathe:

It’s hanging in the barn, and when I was out there, taking pics, didn’t get buzzed by a single one.  Good for the horses!

We shall see how this goes…. hopefully, the wasps will avoid us. There are some kinds of beasties that are just not a treat to hang out with.

Now, if I could just make the mosquitoes hang out somewhere else!

And, oh yes, about those spiders! eegads! there was one the size of a moose in my undie drawer yesterday!

Ah, life down on the farm…..

:o)

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

OH!!!!! I am just delighted! After reading my posting about Hinka Osinga’s spectacular crocheted model based on the mathematics of the Butterfly Effect,  Kristi found the actual pattern for it!

I’ll never have time to do it, but I love it that now I COULD!

Here’s the pattern URL: Crocheted Mathematics of Chaos Butterfly Model   by Hinka Osinga and Bernd Krauskopf

thanks so much, Kristi! Wheeeeeeeeeee!

The Crochet Liberation Front on Ravelry awarded me their hookalicious award for kewl crochet for my earth friendly design for a crocheted market bag:

I love it that they GOT my pun: It’s a♥ GREEN ♥bag that’s all about ♥ loving the earth! ♥

I am tickled pink. When I was nominated for a Fabbie award, I made myself a trophy.

I figured that I always celebrate with a really great cuppa tea (green chai perhaps?) so why not carve myself a crochet hook with a teacup on it? Makes sense to me.

So here’s my award to me… and excuse me while I take a spin around the grungie old carpet (not red, alas) and bow to my adoring cats and dogs. After all, it isn’t every day that you get an award! (grinning from ear to ear)

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay(c) 

Earth Day is sooooooooo not over!

Hurrah! check out this absolutely terrific blog: Green Crafters

FANTASTIC!

For those of us who thought that bamboo was a ‘GREEN’ fiber, we need to think again…. sadly!

Read this article by Victoria Everman about the dark side of bamboo fiber….

Synchronicity is amazing.

I was just reading about the common root of two opposing words:

Hospitality vs Hostility

and then the link for this amazing and beautiful piece of work was sent to a list that I belong to:

Lace Fence 

I am awestruck by the lace fence. As a lacemaker, I KNOW how incredibly difficult creating the lace fence had to have been. The technical virtuosity is stunning.  It took a great deal of power to manipulate the wire to create the lace on that scale.

But, the metaphor behind it is  equally, or perhaps even more powerful.  It’s a potent reminder that we really can approach our environments in more mindful ways and create more beauty.  Functional DOES NOT have to equal ugly.