Grasshoppers and their ilk

I used to really love grasshoppers.  Not that I don't like them now.  But I rarely see them anymore.  And they used to be my friends.  This was when I was in elementary school and lived in Egremont, Massachusetts, and played outside a lot.  I had lists I would keep, with the names of my favorite grasshoppers.  They had silly names, like "Brownie Jr." and so on.  I was convinced I was playing with the same grasshoppers, every day.  Maybe I was.

One of my favorite kinds of grasshoppers are the tiny little almost translucent green grasshoppers that have little gold dots on their legs.  And the gold looks like real gold.  Maybe it is. 

One of my least favorite grasshopper things is being bitten by a grasshopper.  And getting grasshopper "tobacco spit" staining your fingers.

I hated when I moved to Virginia and was introduced to "camel crickets."  Camel crickets look like demons compared to grasshoppers and normal cute chubby black crickets.  I also like katydids, although for some reason I assume they are less intelligent than grasshoppers.  Katydids are the slow witted, but kindly grasshopper cousins.  Please, no backlash.

Anyway, I made a little grasshopper out of fimo to inhabit the violin scenery.  That's what brought up this whole topic.



Still experimenting with the camera - having trouble with lighting as usual. 

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crazy salad

I picked some stuff out of the scraggly garden.  What we have here are greens including: arugula, radish, pineapple sage, 2 kinds of lettuce.

Then there's a radish, a kohlrabi, a baby onion, brocolli florets.

And in the herb dept: fennel, oregano, parsley, coconut thyme, basil, rosemary, dill, marjoram.

I took all this stuff plus some storebought carrots and some tidbits from jars, and made a crazy salad:



I was going to write about grasshoppers (not eating them) and show a little grasshopper I made last night out of fimo, but that will be the next installment. 


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I'm wondering who invented needle felting

So,
I'm wondering who invented needle felting. Because it's a very strange craft. It's tiring, not to mention semi dangerous and the product is often rotund. For those uninitiated in the process, you basically take some loose (wool) fiber and stick it a million times with a long sharp needle that has holes in it. The fibers jam together and you can make a shape after stabbing it many more millions of times. I made some sort of felted plant-life out of the green wool roving m. gave me. (Thanks, m.) It's another piece to stick some how onto that violin.

Today I tried two new things: besides the felting, I tried the much heralded flip animation function on my digital camera. I made a little movie. There's no sound though. This is a test run for what might be an on going series starring none other than this little fellow below. In this movie "pilfered needle felting," our hero has come across this small felted item (mentioned above) and has decided to take it home. Excuse the low production quality. I plan to kick it up a notch next time.






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