Nifty Thrifties

I am passing on my junk bone to my daughter. Saturday she and I went out to the Thrift Shops. We hit five before finally making it home. She is only six, but already and avid and discriminating shopper. She was looking for the perfect toy while I combed the deitrus for treasure. I bought something in almost every store we visited, but she held out until the last one to find the TOY.
In plans of remodeling my work area into a studio, I bought two dressers for storage. I was practically salivating when I found them. They have a slightly scandi-modern look that makes my little heart go pitty-pat-pitty-pat-pitty-pat. The tops are a white laminate material and the drawers have a lovely little wooden pull that is made to match the wood of the furniture.
A few days later, I found two chairs at another Thrift Shop (I have four shops scattered about on my various routes to work, the grocery store, the Drug Store, the gas station. I pop in whenever the mood sets upon me.) They cost $20 each, but to be honest, I was so excited, I would have paid just about anything the woman had asked for. I will clean them up and recover the cushions, but for now, it is enough to know they are tucked away in the garage, sending out scandi-modern vibe.<

I particulary like that they are solidly made and all wood. An offwhite linen/flaxy fabric is what I envision for the new pillow covers. But there is always the possiblity that I might change my mind before I start work on them. I think it may be a summer project. Right now I have to keep all flammables away from the woodburning stove and that makes it tough to arrange all my furniture and stuff.

Floppy Repair

Floppy Two narrowly survived an unprovoked attack by the family pet, Diniyoyo,late last week. The unsuspecting Floppy was set upon in the wee afternoon hours when the rest of the family was at school or work. He was found, barely conscious, on the family room floor upon their return. He was immediately taken to the Emergency Sewing Table where the doctor on duty assessed his injuries. Wide-eyed and awake, Floppy listened in shock as the resident seamstress informed him that he had a potentially brain spilling injury to his forehead and had lost his plastic nose. Fortunately, his bowtie, though askew, was still intact. Sam held Floppy's paw through the harrowing and hairy nose reconstruction phase of the procedure but wandered off during the forehead closing to see if Spongebob was on. His sister stepped in at this point, sighing "Oh, brother," and held Floppy's paw for the remainder of the suturing. See the accompanying photo for results of the successful nip and tuck. (Sam reports that he is happy with the "new" Floppy but would have liked me to put a tattoo on his chest. Maybe another time. Sam has two Floppies, Floppy One and Floppy Two. Identical Twins but for some reason, Sam prefers one to the other. He has had them since he was two and a half and is now almost seven. He still totes Floppy around and sleeps with him. On occasion, Floppy becomes an unidentified flying missle or a punching bag, but mostly he is for snuggling and hugging up on. I think when his time is up, we can engrave on this tombstone, "Loved to Death.")

In addition to mending mauled Floppies, I finished Sadie's Robot pillow this week. She loves it and sleeps with it in her crib. Oops, beg pardon. I have just been corrected. It is not a crib (although it was a crib before we took one side off). It is a little bed. She is a big girl and big girls do not sleep in cribs. However, they may choose to sleep in little beds if they are so inclined. We have been unable to convince her to move to the lovingly be-pillowed, Dora the Explorer be-sheeted, stuff toy bedecked, real bed that sits empty in her room. Oh, well. I figure it's not hurting anything. I'll let her stay in the crib a.k.a. little bed until she's ready to move to the big bed. That way I'll have a good story to embarrass her with when she starts dating.

Fishy, Fishy in the Brook

I never wanted fish. My sister had a goldfish named Jack when we were kids and he lived in a shallow goldfish bowl in her room. He survived for seven years, including one winter of being frozen almost solid. I believe this was due to her diligent care and religious cleaning of his bowl. I don't think anyone will ever accuse me of being diligent or religiously clean. There would be much to fear for a fish entrusted to my care. Dogs and kids remind you when you are being neglectful, but what's a fish to do? Send up S.O.S. bubbles? But the pond books all had pictures of shady ponds with flashes of orange cutting a swathe through the water. I knew koi would be a bad plan. They can live for 25 years--given diligent and religious care--and I'm not even sure I'm going to be around that much longer. So we went to the pet shop and bought 7 feeder fish for 10 cents each. There were 5 brown ones and two orange ones. We let them go in the pond and then waited to see what happen.As luck would have it, the two orange ones died and turned up in the skimmer, but we lost track of the others. They were hidden against the brown rocks in the bottom. So, I caved and went to Wal-mart and bought five Shubunkin for $1.25 each. We now have 30 fish in our pond.
Nine are brown, two are a solid pinkish/orangey white and the rest are mottled shubunkin. They are exceptionally friendly and will come swim around your hands if you put them in the water. That first year they had a kaboodle of babies, but this past summer, the frog came and the dragonfly nymphs and the great diving beetles. I think any offspring might have become a tasty snack for the other wildlife in the pond.
Koi get so big, I think they'd eat the frogs. I think longingly of koi, but at this point, I'm happy with all the other critters out there. Sam and Sadie like to splash around the edge and play with the fish. We get a good many dragonflies that zip around the waterfall and the plants. Birds come in the evening to drink and bathe. We once saw an opossum drinking from the edge in the night.

The Sins of the Mothers

My mother created a horrible addiction in me at an early age. She used to haul my sister and me to the places in the woods where people had dumped their trash years before. We would pick among the debris, wary of snakes and rusty edges, to find old glass bottles and anything else that looked worthy of our attention. Other days she would take us to visit Ms. Floyd's, an old building in downtown Timmonsville that was jammed packed with ancient furniture and other people's castoffs, to search among the booty for good deals or things we could not live without. The seed was planted, the damage done. When I was a teenager, I would go back to Mrs. Floyd's and spend my carefully hoarded dollars on a wind-up, portable Victrola and records, including "Dance with a Dolly with a Hole In Her Stocking." I loved the whispery, raspy sound of the background noise on those records and the gritty feel of the needle touching down on that spinning disk. I blame my mother for making it impossible for me to drive past a pile of trash put out for early morning collection without my head swiveling around like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist. It is her fault I cannot pass by a Salvation Army, Goodwill or Thrift store without taking a quick gander. She, too, must take responsibilty for my new found addiction to E-bay. Upon her shoulders must squarely fall my quest for all things in need of slight repair or repainting, my love for the imperfection, broken,damaged thing. Thanks, Mom.
Here's the fabric I recently purchased from e-bay. I have a thing for images on fabric. I have often wished I loved subtle, sophisticated prints. Oh, well. What can I say? I love tacky, garish, and juvenile. The image at the top of the page is of a Japanese doll and a carved wooden girl holding a bird. I bought them on the way home yesterday at a thrift store. Did I mention my mother used to collect dolls?

The Pond Saga

It came to me, in one of those quiet moments when all things seem possible and time stretches before you like a never ending country road, that I needed a pond. The thought settled in my mind like a frog burrowing under leaf litter for a long cold spell and I couldn't shake it. At first I imagined a little bucket of a pond, just big enough for a tiny waterlily and a goldfish or two, but then I took to buying pond magazines and researching pumps and biological filtration systems. I checked books and videos out of the library. I started taking yard measurements. I began to visit nurseries with ponds on display. For a full year, I analyzed the merits and demerits of having a pond in the backyard. This was no mean feat for someone as impulsive as myself. Finally, in the early spring, I ordered an Aquascape system from a supplier over the internet. It was expensive, but I wanted the skimmer system that would suck the leaves off the top. Mostly I was sold on the system because the nursery I visited used that system and after flipping through the manual, I thought I could figure out how to install it myself.
So suddenly my little pond in a bucket became a 19 x 11 pond with a two level waterfall and a maximum depth of 36 inches. There was no way I could dig a hole that big so I recruited two of my students at $10 an hour to dig the hole. This is a photo of two of my students in the early stages of digging the pond. It took them a full 8 hours on a Saturday. We took them out to eat at an Italian restaurant afterwards and gave them a bonus for all their hard work. And it was some serious hard work. I kept running around with a carpenter's level to make sure we were in the neighborhood of level.
We used the dirt from the dig to build up low spots in the yard and to build up the edges of the pond so that it was level since there is a slight slope in the backyard. We also used some of the soil to build up the area for the waterfall. The next day it rained like crazy and filled the pond halfway up with water. I waited a week and it wouldn't drain. This did not bode well. In my rambling research I had come across horror stories of ponds built in areas that did not drain well, ponds that had caved in or the liner had ballooned up in the center of the pond. However, since there was already a huge hole in the center of my backyard, I had no choice but to blithely sally forth.
I went to Home Depot and bought a $60 sump pump and hooked it up to a spare waterhose to empty the pond. It took hours, but finally, the pond was drained. After it dried out for a couple of days, I had my students come back over, and we put down the underlayment and then the liner.
I had ordered an ungodly amount of rocks, from small pebbles to boulders, to be used to cover the liner. While I hooked up the skimmer and water fall, I had my two helpers haul the large rocks from the front yard to the edge of the pond. They used both a dolly and a construction grade wheelbarrow. We ran the pipe along the back of the pond to connect the skimmer to the falls. It took most of the day, but we placed the largest stones. The next day, I had two of my girl students, who were in need of funds, come over and help me put in the gravel and smaller stones. My dog thought the bottom of the pond was a nice place for a nap. I think it looks like a Viking burial ritual with her lying there.
Once the stones were in place, I turned on the water hose and filled the pond. It holds about 3000 gallons. The deepest part is 36 inches and is a spot for the fish to go in really cold winters or to hide from predators. Most of the pond is 24 inches, but a shelf runs around 3/4 of the pond that is only about 12 inches deep. It is a nice plant shelf and the kids like to sit on the edge and put their feet in here.
The most fun was building the waterfall. I wanted the water to spill over into a small pool and then flow into the pond. When I'd visited other ponds, that design intrigued me. I'm not quite sure why, but that small collecting pool seemed like a whole other world to me. Or maybe it's just the idea of getting two waterfalls for the price of one. Whatever the reason, I'm very glad I designed it this way. There is more potential for leaks in this design than if I had just done a straight drop into the pond, but it adds a little mystery that I like.
This is the finished pond before the landscaping is put in. It took the rest of the summer to fine tune the rock placement around the edges and to figure out what should be planted where.
This is a view of the waterfall from behind the waterfall. I rarely see this vantage point because I designed the falls to be viewed from the deck on the back of the house.
The sunlight and shadow that plays on the water is really very hypnotizing in the early morning or late afternoon. I planted a green Japanese maple that I hope will eventually grow up and over the falls. Hostas siberian cypress,and azaleas flank the edges. Creeping jenny is the lime green vine that has grown like crazy in the crevices. I have tried to plant greenery along the edges to soften the rocks. This area gets a good deal of shade so it has been tough finding plants that do well and look lush.
On the side of the pond closest to the deck, I have tried to keep plantings to a miniumum so it is easy to walk right up to the pond and see the fish. Originally, I didn't want fish. It seemed like a lot of effort and I didn't want to get attached and then have them die. But I did want frogs. They were one of my prime reasons for wanting a pond. I wanted frogs that would sing in the spring. Frogs that would float in the water with their endearing little eyes poking just above the water. So I ended up having to build a frog pond.
I dug it and built up the sides with excess dirt. Then I put in a liner and bought a little aerator pump. I didn't want it connected to the main pond because I wanted to grow plants in there (like duckweed) that the skimmer would have sucked out of the big pond. Then I had my students come and use some thin stones to stack up a wall, leaving an opening so any frogs who took a notion could come in and set up housekeeping. The first year, no frogs. But the second year, I was out in the morning poking around and a tiny little frog was sitting on a rock that jutted out of the frog pond. She stayed all summer and this is what she looked like this August. Even though she often hung out in the frog pond, she also liked to explore the big pond and sit on the lilypads. She also liked to hang out in the skimmer and scare the bejesus out of me when I lifted the cover to check the basket. I think she is a green frog (Rana clamitans), according to my National Audubon Society Field Guide to New England. It says the male frogs have yellow throats, so I'm guessing it is a she. I am so hoping for frog song and tadpoles next spring.

Beach Light, Rabbits and Robots

I love the beach in winter when the crowds are gone. I love the cold color of winter light. These pictures are from a few years ago, when my children were four. Back when they'd ride a good distance without complaint and were content to look out the window, listen to whatever music I might be listening to, and had not yet learned the pleasure of tormenting a sibling by crossing over the invisible dividing line that runs down the center of the car.
I love the smell of wood in houses near the beach or the sun warmed planks of the boardwalk. I wish someone would bottle that smell and sell it.
Tonight, when I should have been grading essays or doing laundry, I got the mood to do embroidery. Particularly a rabbit in boxer shorts. I wanted to make it the panel on the front of a throw pillow for my son Sam's bed. Sadie, not to be left out, began to draw robots so that I would have some ideas for her pillow.
Here is Sadie's lovely green and yellow robot drawings. Unfortunately, I didn't have any lime green or canary yellow floss so she approved bright orange for the outlining. I just freehand embroidered it onto the fabric so it isn't an exact copy. Luckily, Sadie is very forgiving of me. I can only hope this continues into adolescence. However, Sam, not one to suffer fools lightly, informed me that my rabbit was not a rabbit because rabbits don't wear shorts. What a little realist!
So he has made me some drawings of spaceships and robots that he would like me to embroider for his next pillow. He really loves balloons, so maybe if I gave the rabbit a big bouquet of balloons to hold, Sam would find the creature more endearing. I put a little heart on its chest and told Sam that meant I loved him. He gave it a quick once over and said, "Hmmmph," before running off to bounce off the couch. He didn't seem particularly impressed.

Garden Statues

I am obsessed by garden statues. I really love the old ones with moss growing in the cracks and crevices and lichens mottling the surface. Mine are all of cast stone or concrete and have yet to be stroked and spattered by time's relentless hand.
Mabye in the spring I'll try to speed things up with a concoction of fish fertilizer and clay and buttermilk. Oh, and moss spores. I tried it once before with no luck. Maybe there is something in cast stone (a lovely euphemism for concrete?) that is reluctant to allow biological crusties and critters to take hold. This is a statue of a baby satyr, with sweet little hooves and furry legs, cuddling a rabbit. I'm a sucker for statues of children.
I remember as a child growing up in South Carolina and visiting Brookgreen Gardens down near Murrell's Inlet. I loved that bronze statue of the laughing child holding the frogs. My sister and I used to love going to old cemetaries to take pictures. Mostly of ourselves, but sometimes of the statues that were there. This is a statue of two giggling children that I have in my front yard in the hosta bed. I don't want to have one of those yards with twenty statues crowding up the space. But I've got a bad junk bone and given free reign, I could see myself creating a yard that begins to resemble a salvage lot. I'm trying to practice restraint and using the rule "only one statue should be visible at any given time from any given point in the yard." In my backyard a have a statue of Buddha by the pond. It is a sitting Buddha that has been liberally doused with buttermilk in the past but refuses to age. Sometimes leaves fall in his lap and he looks quite contempletive when dappled shadows play across his face. I have a little rabbit of real stone that came from an antique shop in Seattle many years ago. I put felt pads on the bottom and use his as a doorstop inside though. I also bought a copy in cast stone of The Savannah Bird Girl. She seemed such a plaintive figure with her held tilted just so. I haven't found a good spot for her yet. I don't want her to fall over and lose her arms.I don't know what will happen to her finish over time. I haul her in in the winter so she doesn't get damaged. Maybe one day I will cement her to a base or make her a little private grotto to keep her safe.
Then there is the statue I made myself from a stone ball I bought when I lived in Arizona and a chunk of concrete I dug out of the ground when I pulled out the old umbrella style clothesline of the previous owner. I think it sort of looks like an abstract version of the Buddha.

The only statue I have that is getting lichen encrusted--or at least it seems to be in the early stages of encrustation formation--is a lion statue that I bought from Agway about four years ago. He is such a sad, pensive fellow. I have him perched atop some stones overlooking a small pond I have in my front yard.
That way he can keep an eye on the snails and great diving beetles that feed among the water liies and dwarf horsetail rushes. Next year I think I'll give him some goldfish from the backyard pond to keep him company.
Grasshoppers bring good luck, I think. This one I got from Jo-ann's Fabric a good while ago. It shed it's hard slick coating and is now has a grainy exterior that makes it look old.
This is the door rabbit. House rabbit. Rabbit most likely to be tripped over. I dream of creating concrete statues, hypertufa containers, mosaic fountains. One day the mood will come upon me and I won't be able to resist. Until then, I'll just take pictures of the ones I already have.

With My Little Eye

How nice it is to sit in the sun from a south facing window on a chilly November day! From this window I can see the adirondack chair with its cheery coat of sea-blue paint and it makes me happy. This is my dauther's I Spy quilt, pieced by me and handquilted by her Aunt Drue. It's a nap quilt. She went through a phase of not wanting to sleep under it because it had bugs on it and it was freaking her out. So I guess entomology is out as a career option.
The back of the quilt is a tropical print I bought cheaply at Wal-mart some years ago.
This is my son's I Spy quilt. I nixed the hexagon pattern and went for squares inside diamonds. I pieced it and then mailed it off to a lovely lady in California to machine quilt. Now that I am no longer a true spring chicken, I don't feel the need to do things that are totally repulsive to me. The idea of quilting a quilt top does not appeal to me in the least. I would much rather send it off and have someone else do it. Life is short. Time is limited. I'd like to spend my free time doing the stuff that makes me happy. The back of the quilt is pieced to provide some interest. Now I'm hooked on that idea for all my future quilts.

Charmed, I'm sure.

With two 6 year olds and a full-time job, it takes me awhile to finish things; however, it doesn't stop me from having 5 or 6 projects running at one time. I recently went into feeding frenzy making theme charm bracelets. It started out harmless enough. I went on E-bay and bought a Tweety bird charm bracelet. Then a few days later, I picked up one with a gardening theme. And how could I resist the pirate one? So I thought I'd just make a little Halloween bracelet myself. Before it was over, I'd made a purple and black 1950's Horror flicks bracelet,

an aqua and green "Martian Cocktail Lounge" bracelet, the intended Halloween bracelet,
a pink Kitty bracelet, and a black and white Frida Kahlo bracelet. I teach English in an inner city high school, and I got the notion to create theme charm bracelets to go along with what we were reading.
So, hence the red Romeo and Juliet bracelet, the blue and white Odyssey bracelet, the Puerto Rican theme bracelet (for An Island Like You)and a turquoise western themed bracelet for Montana 1948.