What an ordeal!

I have been trying my hand at needlefelting for awhile now, and have been working on an especially awesome piece. My Etsy friends have been eager to see it.

Soooo... I decided I'd better learn how to a) upload photos from the camera to the computer, and b) from the computer to a blog. This is ME we're talking about. Good luck.

First I did the easy part: I took photos of the little fella. Oops, the battery in the camera is dead. Where is the battery charger?

I spent over an hour tearing the house apart, looking for the battery charger. If you could see this place you would understand. Finally I called my son to see if his store sold them without the cameras, and while I was talking to him, THERE IT IS! Sitting right there on top of the microwave!

So, the battery finally charged, I start to take the pics. Hmmm, that one is too dark. This one is a bad angle. THAT one is too dark! Why is it so hard to get a good pic??

Now I really have even HIGHER regard for my Etsy friends who can take a decent picture!

After much fiddling about, reading the instruction books, plugging things in, opening files, etc., I finally got them uploaded to my computer. EUREKA!

The pics are still not great -- I need to stage them better -- but for the time being, I'd like to introduce you to:





JERRELL, the Needlefelted Axolotl!

This little fellow was inspired by Cindy Jerrell at Black Cat Graphix on Etsy, who emailed me one day with the funniest rant about my awesome avatar (an axolotl!), and how much she loves him, and how I could corner the plushie market with those things if I made them. The wording of the convo tickled me so much, it inspired me to make this little fellow.



He is 10 inches from snout to tail tip and has wire in his legs and head-thingys.

I needle-felted his face last, and was I ever nervous. What if I wrecked him?? What if his lovely body had a hideous face? And sure enough, when his face was first begun, it looked bad alright. Somehow I saved it. :) See, he looks just like my smiley!





As I learn to take better photos I will show them off, plus any new stuff I do. For now, here he is! Yay for me!

A Sweet Story

My mother is the most amazing person you could meet. She is kind, loving, very funny and quirky, really on the ball and the best grandma in the world. If I post a pic of her she'd kill me, so I'll be nice and keep her pic under wraps. :) She really is beautiful but she's as photogenic as I am, which is not very. You don't see any pics of *me* on these blogs, do you? :D

So, my 70-year-old mother was at a potluck dinner with the other seniors at her adult-only condo complex. She had been given two paper placemats instead of one, so she decided to fold a boat.

Someone saw her, and decided to fold an airplane. Soon several of the seniors were folding airplanes.

Then, one gentleman came forward who was the airplane-folding PRO, and he taught everyone some tricks about folding airplanes.

Soon the entire place was alive with seniors throwing airplanes at each other! Even the people in wheelchairs were getting some good air on their planes.

When this had gone on for quite awhile the airplanes started to get bent, so everyone began crumpling them up and chucking the balls at each other like snowballs!

The condo supervisor walked by my mom's table with a huge grin and said, "You really started something!"

Everyone left there feeling ten years younger. :)

The Sky Is Falling!

Well, maybe not the sky, but apparently people's flush-mount dome lights are crashing down all over the place. My blog entry before the previous one detailed our own experience of our light fixture crashing to the floor in our kitchen.

Today we spent most of the day going to various lighting shops to replace the fixture. The lady at our final destination had the same thing happen to her recently! She works with builders and designers every day and apparently there was a manufacturer whose lights were installed in many, many homes 8 - 12 years ago, and this manufacturer's lights have been crashing down from the ceilings of various homes in recent months!

I don't understand why this hasn't been made known to the public. I will be talking to this lady again when I pick up our fixture on Monday and I will ask her if there is any intention of warning the public. Apparently these fixtures are also mounted in foyers and hallways, some of which have ceilings 2 stories or higher. If someone is under one of those... I can't even think about it.

If you have a flush-mount dome fixture -- they are mounted directly onto the ceiling rather than dangling for any length -- take a ladder and have a good look at it. Carefully take off the glass and inspect the nut holding the base onto the ceiling. Not your husband, the hardware! Silly. If it seems at all flimsy, buy new hardware.

I'll keep everyone posted on this.

How Cool Is This?

I think I'm copying my friend's post title... but I don't think she'll mind.

Several months ago I spotted the cutest dolls I had ever seen at "dmollison's" shop at Etsy.com. Every time I decided which one to buy, my choice had sold and I had to make up my mind all over again! I finally snagged one:

Lewis the Lizard Sock Kid ^^^^^

and he's been the love of my son's life ever since.

I also need to say that my son is a total guy's guy -- he turns everything into a gun and hates the colour pink. And he adores Lewis like a best friend.

So when Lewis started to turn a grungy shade of grey, I knew he needed washing. And I was nervous. What if I ruined him??? I convo'd his creator, Denise, for reassurance that he could indeed be washed (despite the clear washing instructions she sent with him...) She was extremely helpful and even volunteered to have me mail him to her and she'd clean him for me. Talk about customer service!!

Lewis ended up being bathed without any tragedies. I was so enamored with the excellent customer service, that I wanted to go onto the Etsy forums and promote Denise a little. Lo and behold, a Natural and Waldorf Toys thread popped up, so I posted about Lewis and Denise's shop.

This correspondence has grown into a friendship, and I'm lucky for it.

A few weeks ago I had sent her some embroidery floss from my past projects, and I had also painted a picture of little Lewis to send to her. It took forever to get to her and I was getting worried, but the timing turned out to be perfect: her and her family are going through a speedbump right now and the floss and pictures really made her happy.

Check out Denise's blog for a pic of the painting as well as her lovely compliments, on the same date as today.

And check out her shop while you're there! Her dolls are fabulous. I own three: Lewis, a doll that she gave my name to, and Ziggy the Tooth Fairy Sock kid. She mailed me Ziggy as a thank you for the floss and he got to me before the floss got to her!

A caution against buying cheap stuff!

Clang, clanKITYCLANG *CRAAASSHHHH* *tinkle tinkle*

This was the sound in our kitchen at about 9:45 Wednesday night. My husband was downstairs and I was in my library (read: junk room) when this huge crash resounded in our kitchen. We each made our way cautiously to the kitchen, only to find:

... the base of the light fixture dangling by a wire from the ceiling, and the glass dome shattered all over the room.

While we were cleaning up the glass shards, which had exploded so vehemently they ended up in adjacent rooms, we were pondering how this would have turned out if anyone had been in the room. The glass dome that broke was very heavy and gouged chunks out of our lino as it fell.

WHAT if our heads had been under this dome? My husband is tall, it may have konked him good. My son is small -- it would have injured him, or worse. Even if no one had been directly beneath the dome, the shrapnel would surely have caused injury.

Upon closer inspection my husband found that the single nut that was holding the thing up was not metal. He figured the heat from the enclosed dome finally melted the nut enough for it to let go.

This was a cheap fixture from a big-box store, installed by the contractor who owned the house before us. I have always found the mass-produced stuff from the big-box stores to be flimsy and a waste of money -- I never thought they could be dangerous. Until now.

Our new light will be coming from a proper light shop. We'll be inspecting it to make sure it is all metal!

I have been thanking God and our guardian angels that this thing let go with no one in the room. This could have been a real tragedy.

Lesson learned: There is nothing to be saved by buying cheap!