A Drum Roll Please.........

"OK, Tessie. Cut it out! How gullible do you think I am?" I can never be sure of what she is going to try to pull to get her way. After I listed all of the names for the drawing in Word, printed them out, cut them apart and rolled them around a skewer so that Tessie couldn't possibly see the names on them, she managed to slip an extra one in....

I let her chose a bowl for the drawing and she opted for one that I made in a pottery class several years ago. I think it suits her. It looks all soft and ruffly, but it is really tough as nails.


I know you don't want to hear anything but winner's names. I disqualified Tessie immediately and she stomped out of the room, very aggravated...

When I managed to coax her back into the bowl she picked up the skewer and started stabbing into the little rolls. It was pretty fast and furious for a few seconds. As she poked each one, I picked it out and unrolled it.

I didn't think about photographing the rolls after. They were quite unruly and we had to call in Zar to help.

The two of them stood on one end of each roll and I put a notebook on the other end. Please note that Tessie is NOT the first winner. It's another instance of "easier to let it go, than argue".

You can poke the photos to make them larger or I can just tell you who won. That would probably be better.

The first one drawn was Sabiha Barkey.

Sabiha, I must apologise for spelling your last name wrong on the slip. I am not sure why I added an L in the middle. Just chalk it up to bad typing. Anyway, Sabiha is from Sabs Mini Interiors. http://sabsminiinteriors.blogspot.com/ She has a lovely blog with lots of good information and beautiful minis.
The second one that Tessie picked was Kim of Flowers and Art http://flowerkim.blogspot.com/
There are lots of minis and other types of art on her blog.

Last but not least, Claudia of Mockingbird Hill Cottage.
http://mockingbirdhillcottage.blogspot.com/ Her blog is inspirational. she has a wonderful real life cottage in New York. The minis are coming back to her after a bit of a hiatus. She is working on a beautiful mini townhouse. Look under dollhouse in the labels sidebar.

Congratulations to the three of you. It was hard for me to stop Tessie after three picks, but don't worry. This drawing was to celebrate three things. I have made it through three straight years of blogging....Long winded. I have done over 1200 posts.....Longer winded. I passed the 600 followers mark. This morning it was 650....One of these days I may have to have a 700 followers drawing, among other things....I can dream, can't I? You all are great! Thanks for putting up with me all this time and I hope that you will keep coming back.

The three of you that won, please contact me at my regular e mail and we will discuss your preferences.

See you tomorrow.

The Bead Loom Works!

Last night I was working on a # 40 count silk pillow in four way bargello, when Tessie came bouncing into the room. She announced, "You shouldn't be doing that. You promised to try out the beading loom and see if it would work for regular weaving."

Then she proceeded to zap the silk gauze that I was working on right out of my hands. She also managed to take all of the spools of silk sewing thread that I was using. I have no idea where she hid them.

In their place was my smallest beading loom and lots of crewel wool.

I went on strike and refused to start weaving until this morning. After pouting for the rest of the evening, she finally stomped away, defeated. I won a round!

Well, I did until this morning. Then she let me have it with both barrels. "You will not do anything but weave today. I am not giving your bargello back until you finish at least one rug!"

In the early 80s I taught macrame and weaving in a couple of craft stores. I used a table loom quite often. For the classes, I taught people to make a cardboard loom and do a woven pocket or bag. It was fun to do. I haven't done much weaving since that time.

I finally gave my dusty table loom away....I just wasn't using it. Minis got in the way of larger crafts.

It all comes back when you need it though. I strung up the loom with regular sewing thread and started using various crewel wools for the weaving.

I did the starter band of weaving with tatting thread because it is a bit thicker than sewing thread. Then I switched to the crewel.

Tessie tried her hand at it, but she kept getting tangled in the thread and messing things up.

I finally shooed her away and took the needle back. I find that a long tatting needle works great for doing this on the beading loom. It reaches all the way across the loom and you don't have to stop in the middle of a row to pull the thread through.

I remembered why I am not that crazy about weaving, especially with fine thread....It is slow.

Here's what I had after a couple of hours. It goes about the same pace as mini needlepoint. I am out of practice.

It does take a bit of work to keep the edges straight.

I am determined to finish this piece this afternoon so that Tessie will give my bargello back....I guess I had better get back to work now.

Please don't forget to vote. You are hanging in there with me. I appreciate your going back, time after time. So far, so good....

Also, the response to the anniversary drawing has been fantastic! There are right around 100 people entered so far. I am going to have to sort a few out because they commented twice. It will all be straight before Tessie draws the lucky three.

I have to go weave a rug now.

See you tomorrow.

It's Here.....!

It is official! I have been doing this every day for three years, as of today. This is post #1,252. And you still seem to be coming back for more! It's amazing!

OK. Down to business. Since it has been three years, Tessie took over and decided that there should be a drawing with a gift for each of the three years. Here's what she came up with. I didn't argue. We all know how that turns out....

It's starting today, and running through the end of the month, 12 midnight. The three winners will be announced on March first.

Rules...1. You must be on my list of followers of the blog when you place the comment. #2. You have to make a comment on this particular entry. This is the only place that you can comment for it to count. #3. This isn't an official rule, but Tessie insists that I put it in. You must be a Tessie fan! Sorry. She made me type that....

The prizes will be custom made for each winner. You can have a choice of either a chair or a bassinet. You will have a choice of natural or white wicker. I will have lots of fabrics to choose from for whichever piece you choose. There may be a couple of extra small surprises to go with the piece that you choose.

Now go ignore me for a bit. I need to paint the walls of the weaver's room and start drilling holes for new wicker pieces.

See you tomorrow.

Bits and Bobs

For some reason I like that term. It's kind of like my mind. Little pieces of this and that are wandering around in there today. Kind of scattered thoughts.

I woke up this morning to another one of those "Now I know what I want to do" stream of ideas. First of all, I am going to call the Glencroft, the "Clockwork Cottage". So many of the Steampunk ideas are built on cogs, wheels and clockworks. I remembered that I have a couple of old pendant watches that still work that might be interesting as wall or stand clocks in the house with a little tweaking. In my own house I have lots of clocks. I seem to collect them unconsciously. They just follow me home and fit themselves in here and there. So Clockwork Cottage, it is.

Now if I could just figure out how to eliminate some of the other categories(Glencroft). I went to layout and then to labels. It will only show me part of the list. There doesn't seem to be a way to get to the rest of it. Does anybody know how to get to the rest of the list? Help!! Admittedly, I need to go through all of the earlier posts and change some of the labels, but I really don't want to start from scratch!

I am currently digging through my different stashes to find bits and bobs for the cottage. I found this bunch of stuff in with my mini fashion supplies. I think that some of it has possibilities. It's just another pile to sort. The two watches on top are the ones that April gave me yesterday. She says that I gave them to her. I am kind of chickening out when it comes to tearing them apart. It seems a shame since they both still work. Oh well, they were Wal Mart's best for around five dollars. That was many years ago. It just goes to show that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get a good watch or at least one that runs a long time. And just think. No batteries to replace!

I have been saving little circuit boards for a while now. I want to design a rug for the house based on one of these. I have made a couple of the smaller ones into earrings for myself. If you study them, some are very pretty. After all, some of that stuff stuck to them is gold. think I am going to have to get my husband to tear apart a few more infernal machines. That's one way to clean out the garage.

Another stash was some slabs of real marble that I bought at the Anaheim NAME national convention. Not the last one, the one in the early 80s. Yes. I have had them that long. I keep saving them for the next project. I think that this might be the one. In the same pile are miniature shells. See that stuff in the corner of the box that looks like emaciated rice grains? Yup. They are shells! I think that I may have to edge a mirror with those. The shells beside the box remind me of turtle shells. I wonder if the master of the house would mind a pet turtle.....

A good Steampunk man has to have his tools and weapons. Consider this the "before" shot. Some of the Steampunk sites have all kinds of fantastic weapons. These all look pretty bad now. With a little spit and polish, they will fit right into the Clockwork Cottage.

It is time for me to stop messing around now and get back to work. I finished the weaving on Carolyn's chair. She wants something kind of "pinky greeny" for the fabric. I am off to see what I can do.

See you tomorrow.

I Was Kidnapped!

Honest. I was. April did it. Technically, since she is my kid and she forced me to go with her, I call it kidnapping. We were to meet for coffee this morning. We did. Then, in her car, she forced me to go to several thrift shops and an antique store. I am so glad that she did!

At the first thrift shop that we went to, I found this for a dollar. It is a little book called"A Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools". It was published in 1963. The amazing part is the illustrations. Someone painted hundreds of them in full color.

Nikki, if you need some friends for your new mushroom men, just yell! There are some fantastic looking mushrooms in this book. I will be happy to scan some of the pages for you.

Two thrift shops later, I pounced on these!. And I do mean pounced!

They are "Take a Seat" chairs. They are resin cast. I again paid 1.00 each......The last time I saw them at a miniature show, I think that they were about 15.00 each. The director's chair even has the texture of the canvas on the red part. There is a rolled up script in the pocket on the side. The other one is labeled Patio chair. They both have all of the original tags on them. I am jumping up and down almost as much as Carolyn! I found chairs! They are sitting on the mushroom/toadstool book in the photo.

I just want to say thanks to April for the kidnapping! It was fun. I only had to pay $3.00!

Now more about the lights. I found a couple more to fuss with and then I built another one from scratch. I have worked on one of these, but I will probably add more as soon as I tear the two watches that April gave me into little pieces. I finally have a few cog wheels and other little parts to play with. The one that I worked on only has some 26 gage, brass wire wound around parts of it so far. I think that the shade needs something.

This is the one that I scratch built on another one of the picture hangers. It is just starting to get interesting. I need to build some kind of shade for it still.

I used mostly parts from that batch of broken jewelry that I bought the other day.

So much for the works in progress. I am going to stop working on them for a day or two and finish Carolyn's chair. As soon as that is finished, I will get back to the Glencroft.

See you tomorrow.

And the Winner Is......

When I got up this morning, the first thing I did was check the mail to make sure that no more entries had come in before midnight. Nope. Then I pulled up the file labeled contest and started making little slips of paper with every one's name on them. Mind you, it was about 5:30 AM here. Luckily, my husband was getting ready to go play golf, so he pulled out the winner.

I put all of the little slips in a bowl. The odds were 17 to 1. I didn't get a lot of entries for all of the traffic that I get through here every day. Did I mention that I hit the 50,000 mark yesterday? Oh well. Better for the people that entered.

I know. Shut up and tell us who won! OK. It was Carolyn Petry. I don't know a lot about her. She has to be a wonderful person.....She said in her entry that she actually sat down and read my blog from the beginning, drinking lots of coffee( probably to keep her awake).

Anyway Carolyn, please contact me as soon as possible so that I can find out what fabric you would like for the cushions and I will need your snail mail addy. Don't wait too long or I will have to choose a second runner up! And if that person doesn't contact me, I will have to choose a third runner up, and so forth and so on......I have 16 more slips of paper in the bowl! Just kidding.

Now I'm the one waiting for something to happen.

Happy To See You!

I have two more to add to the follower's list this morning. They are Marga of Todo Miniaturas. http://todominiaturas.blogspot.com/ She has food in mini that looks sooo realistic. And Zaphia of O Mundo de Zaphia. http://o-mundo-de-zaphia.blogs.sapo.pt/ For some reason, on my list she shows up as not having a blog. I went over to Debbie's and found that she has a wonderful one!

Welcome to you both!!!

While I am here, I will tell you that you have a 1 in 10 chance in winning the chair so far. I plan to finish the chair, all but the cushions today, so that it will be fast to finish when someone wins.

Stay tuned for more later today!