Wool soap saver

I am sure you have one of these problems if you use bar soap:
1. The bar of soap slips all over the tub or shower and won't stay in the soap dish.
2. The bar of soap gets all mushy and makes a slime on your soap dish.
3. You have little slivers of soap that end up either dissolving in the soap dish as slime or getting thrown away.
4. Your wash cloth starts to stink like mildew if you try to reuse it a day or two.

I have most of these problems. But one day I discovered that wool is fairly mildew and bacteria resistant and makes a great skin exfoliator.
I decided to make some soap savers from an old felted sweater I had lying around. The wool helped with all the problems I had before. The soap wasn't slippery anymore. It didn't leave a slime everywhere. The slivers stayed put and the wool didn't start to get gross and stinky like a wash cloth.

Here's how I made mine:
I cut a rectangle of an old felted wool sweater, folded the ends up so there is an overlap.
Then I sewed the sides up and turned it.
All I have to do to change or add more soap is fold one side over, drop in the soap and fold it back.

Super simple and easy to do!
Try it!

Tee for two and two for tees

For our September challenge in the Upcyclers Team on Etsy we were asked to make something with tee shirts.  Since my daughter is a skinny little thing that grows out of her tee shirts vertically quicker than anything, I decided to take her old shirts and make her a "new" dress. It was very simple. 

I had two shirts that were the same width. I cut both the shirts into strips horizontally, then using the cutest top and sleeves sewed alternate pieces of the tees around the bottom of each next strip until I got to a length I liked. I didn't hide the seams. I sewed these strips one over the other because I like the rolled edge of the jersey showing. 

I added a swath of thrifted fabric from an old sheet and got an (almost) instant dress for summer or anytime of year.

This is an easy (and free!) project you can try at home with your own (or your kids) old tee shirts, a great use for tees with a small permanent stain. Just cut around the stain. 

Have a blast creating your own "new" summer dress that is easy to wear, easy to wash , and super cute!

It Just Felt Right

  I’m new to Alpacas. I’m not sure I have ever met one outside a petting zoo, but when I met Cindi Webber of Airborne Alpacas at the Clarksville Downtown Market selling gorgeous natural colored yarn in a rainbow of soft browns and creams I was intrigued.  I had been playing with felting wool for a couple months and when I asked Cindi how well Alpaca fibers felted, she felt confident they would felt well. (say that 5 times fast!).  I’m an artist and crafter that loves working in salvaged and “leftover” materials and when Cindi mentioned she had bags of fiber too short for spinning my heart fluttered.  She brought me a couple bags of this “leftover” leg and neck fiber to work with the next week.  I was amazed at how soft the fibers were and how easily they felted. 

  After the tedious process of skirting, washing, then carding the fibers, it was pretty straight forward to wet felt balls from the fiber using plain soap and hot water.  And once felted, these balls are tough.  I sell them as dryer balls as an alternative to chemical laden dryer sheets.  A few balls to a load are perfect for softening and helping to reduce static with no harmful chemicals or scents. They are great for people with allergies to dyes, chemicals, artificial scents or just for people looking for a more natural way to soften their clothes. And for those that just have to have good smelling laundry you can add a few drops of essential oils like lavender or rosemary and the balls will deliver the scent easily as they tumble.  And as anyone who has ever used Alpaca fibers knows, with use they will last years (maybe longer than your dryer itself!).  

  These felted Alpaca balls also make a great natural alternative to rubber and plastic balls for kids and dogs.  If it gets nasty and dirty from fetch out in the mud, just throw it in the wash with the rest of the laundry.  They won’t pop like a tennis ball and they casually brush a dog’s teeth as they bite down on the ball. With studies being done every day on how chemicals in our everyday lives can affect us negatively, it makes me proud to state exactly what goes into my felted balls. The list for the ingredients is short and sweet: 100% alpaca fibers. 

  Currently I am only selling my felted alpaca balls at the Clarksville Downtown Market because I don’t have many leftover to sell anywhere else!

Another snake in the skimmer

Today I went down to check the skimmer on the pool and found two frogs, a dead lizard, and a tiny newborn black king snake. The little king snake was curled up in the recesses of the skimmer out of the water. It startled me at first. But after a quick rundown (no yellow tail like a moccasin, no rattle, and no copperhead, skinny body and head not triangle shape) I settled down and got to observe him. He sat like a ribbon that had been dropped on the ground. My dog came over to investigate and the tiny thing reared up and shook his skinny little tail and even snapped forward to try to scare Quincey. Of course Quincey just sniffed and wandered somewhere else. I took a couple pictures and let him slither off, whispering my mantra that I say to all rat and king snakes in my yard, "go kill the poisonous snakes!"
I still get a little skin crawl looking at a snake, but if it's not poisonous, I don't kill it. I would rather have a hundred king snakes in my yard than one rattler or copperhead! It hasn't made my city friends very happy because they think the only good snake is a dead snake. Se la vi. I have come to love the wildlife in my yard and if they don't want to share it with me that's their problem!

Huaraches- Why I love them

Last summer, I got into a conversation with my husband's cousin about running. I don't run much: he does. I want to try, really I do, but my entire life my feet have hated shoes. I'm not much on the style of running shoes and never had a pair that were super comfortable, so I never ran. Then I saw a documentary on some tribe in Mexico that runs barefoot or in minimal shoes. I thought, "I could do that."  So I did research and decided that the minimalist shoes didn't look so hard to make. I ended up making about 5 pairs from scrap leather I had in my studio, cutting the leather to fit my feet neatly. I used a leather punch from my craft supplies to make the holes for the straps and suede lacing. Each pair got better than the ones before. I got good at lacing them so that I could slip them on and off. And my feet started loving me for it. 

 For 10 year I was a flip flop wearer in summer. But at the end of a long day of walking in flip flops, my toes would hurt and my heels and arches too, sometimes even my calves. With my new simple leather sandals, dubbed "Jesus sandals" by my students, I walk an entire day on concrete or grass and I can hardly tell any difference in how my feet feel from the beginning of the day. My feet are so much stronger and more balanced!!  I LOVE them. It really is like walking barefoot. 

As you break them in the leather cups to your toes and heels as you wear them and becomes almost a second skin. 

The only problem I have is that when I walk in puddles, they get a bit wet and floppy,  but just walking on damp ground doesn't do it. The leather is fairly water resistant on the smooth side but on the suede part it soaks up water. 

As for running, I have no idea how they work running because apparently I lack the willpower and time to be a runner, but if you see me this summer, odds are I will be shod in two straps of leather and some suede string. 

 

My old junk clunker

I got a Jeep Cherokee my senior year of college. It started out a beautiful hunter green with tiny sparkly gold flecks. It was already 8 years old, but was in great shape and it was everything I wanted in a vehicle. Not a thing about it was power anything. Manual shift, manual locks, manual mirrors. Why, you ask, did I want something so simple? My previous car was a 1986 Chrysler Lebaron convertible with a black top, turbo engine and power everything. The gas gauge, the windows, automatic shift, automatic seat gears, the works. And every time I turned it on there was something wrong going on. The roof leaked, the gauges went wacky, the heavy door decided it didn't want to shut one day, the windows refused to roll down, it decided to overheat regularly, just about anything you could imagine had that car in the shop nearly once a month.
So I wanted something that would last a long time and so when I went to buy a new vehicle and I heard Jeeps were good I found the perfect one. It was cheap and looked pretty great.
The doors weren't heavy like the Lebaron and there were no electronic gauges to blink and go out. It was just your basic vehicle with a good sized back seat and storage space behind it. In the almost 10 years I have had my Jeep, it has really taken a beating. I delivered food for awhile so there are soda stains on the seats. I have a 5 year old so there is always a spare Cheerio or fruit snack wedged somewhere. Since I started doing craft shows I have banged and shoved and loaded all kinds of things in it.
The headliner is mostly gone, the handle to the passenger side door is gone, the paint looks like camouflage and the hatch on the back now has a trunk stick. But through it all this Jeep has just kept going. It's had some repairs. A new radiator, a new belt something or other (I forget) some fluids here and there and the usual filters and things replaced, but it just keeps going! I've nearly hit 200,000 miles on it. (It had 100,000 miles when I got it). And I want to repaint it but I am afraid my luck will run out and my jeep will finally kick the big one. I keep telling myself I need a new vehicle, but I am so attached! I don't want a huge SUV, but I have to have a utility vehicle for my craft show setups. What's a girl to do?

Box turtles in our yard

I just learned that box turtles in our area are becoming threatened because they only lay 2-3 eggs every few years and also they travel back to their birthplace to breed and lay eggs which means that they might have to cross roads. Many turtles get hit each year crossing roads. I always try to help these little guys along by moving them safely across when I see them. Lick Creek is just below our property so we get quite a few coming and going.

Below are some pictures of box turtles that live or visit our yard frequently.

Thinking in 2D

I have been making bookmarks from copper wire for a while now and I always amaze myself when I get a good design that is both visually appealing as well as functional. In the beginning I made the mistake of crossing wires. In other professions when you cross the wires you might get a shock or worse, but in cold forging wire, you just get a ruined piece if you try to hammer the crossed wires and since all of my bookmarks need to flat to be functional, crossed wires are no-no. This all leads me to the fact that my bookmarks have to be one continuous piece of wire. If you have ever tried to draw a picture without picking up your pencil and without crossing any lines you understand this dilemma. It's a little nerve wracking at times! When I have a specific design I am working on it can take me hours or even days to get it "right". Often I have to pick and choose the details of an item to include so that for instance, a violin still looks like violin. It's a balancing act and a puzzle at the same time. I hope you enjoy all of my designs I have puzzled out for you and keep watching for new ones.

The snake pose

I headed down to the pool this morning to do my yoga by the water and my dog wouldn't stop barking. I kept telling him to hush. He wouldn't. So I went over to see what the fuss was about. At the other end of the pool on the warn concrete was a black rat snake. It was a couple feet long and half settled into a crack in the concrete. I left it there and returned to the warrior pose and my dog seemed satisfied having shown me the intruder. It got me thinking though. The way that the snake's body twisted and turned. I have scoliosis and my back feels like a snake sometimes, twisted and curled, which is why I started doing yoga. I wanted to somehow straighten my back, strengthen it and lengthen it so that my back won't hump over and make me one of those hunchback ladies that I've seen growing up who can't reach their own hair to brush it. This snake gave me a great visual to use while doing my poses, imagining my back like a snake, muscular and able to unfurl itself from its gnarled twist.
Maybe that's why many of my pieces have snaking curves. It's my subconscious trying to balance my twisting and curving spine. Whatever the case may be, mine will be a lifelong struggle to keep my back from collapsing on itself. So I suppose I will continue making writhing serpentine pieces of copper and metal.

Upcycled Southern Belle

a southern belle ballgown for under $100

before

For the past 8 years, our local historical society has thrown a reenactment ball to commemorate the battle of Fort Donelson in February 1862 here in Dover. Two years ago I went in a borrowed gown 3 sizes too big and the year before I went in a gown that was only about one size too big. This year, I wanted to do it right, but "right" came with a budget.  I wanted a fancy 1860's ball gown that would cost less than $100, but I'm a bit of a fashion snob and didn't want any old cheap looking gown. It had to be fairly historically accurate, or at least look that way. Since I can sew, I thought about making one from scratch, but new fabric prices had me choking a little and I didn't have enough of the right material in my stash, so the dress from scratch idea flew out the window. I searched for a dress that fit my budget and might be close enough to that style that I could make it happen by reworking.  I found a dress from TreasureChest01 on Etsy that was perfect.
     I took in the waist, added maroon satin from my own fabric stash to the lace at the bottom and sleeves and added bolder bows and buttons (also from my fabric stash) at the gathers. I  lifted the low back up to a more modest level and added a fancy brooch from my collection of vintage jewelry to the waist.  Using an old sheet and the eyelet lace trim from an old pillowcase I created a chemise (underdress). I took some maroon ribbon from my stash and threaded it through the eyelet holes to make a pretty accent to the top of the dress.
     Because of the fabric and notions I already had, I spent a whopping $39 total on a dress that I felt made a huge statement and looked great!  I decided to splurge on a vintage hoop instead of buying a cheap modern made one. The final result turned out to be a beautiful dress that showed up great in all the photos being snapped. I got many compliments on it and just had to brag about how I upcycled it for under $100.

finished ball gown for under $100

I had a customer ask me to make some bird wings. These ones: http://llevoelinvierno.blogspot.com/2011/03/make-alitas.html

I love the look of these but as I am a free spirit and hate patterns, well, I had to do them my way. I have a large stash of thrift store fabrics, maybe bordering on hoarding but that's another blog altogether. Anyway, I cut a half circle that was 44" wide and cut it again in half to have two triangles, just like the instructions on the other blog only a little larger. I free hand cut the feathers from scraps of fabric about 2-3" wide, the only difference from the instructions was I used pinking shears to give it a more textured edge. After I was finished with the wings, instead of adding bias strips for the neck, I made fabric strips wide enough to fit the velcro strips I had and then added the velcro to the ends sewing it all together to make a simple collar and cuffs. I then added 3 buttons to the middle of the collar and one to each cuff. After that, I added rayon cording loops at the neck and arm of each wing so that the cuffs and collar can be buttoned at different points on the wings as the child grows. It turned out great and my customer really loved it. Here's some pictures of the finished product. 

collar and cuffs are easy release velcro

I can do it by myself!

wings overlap while the child is small

buttons on the collar make the wings adjustable