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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from the past

Last night I watched Portrait of Jennie.

Next time I'm unable to work on projects, have writer's block, or something of that nature, I hope that a strange person from the past will come be my muse and inspiration.

It's odd that I saw that movie, because just previously I had watched part of Somewhere in Time which for some reason I can't stop watching even though I've seen it a million times and we joke about the agonizingly slow scenes of Christopher Reeves staring into space. As far as time travel goes, I think the self hypnosis sort of technique used in Somewhere in Time is intriguing because you'd actually be able to do it without having a lot of scientific gadgets, flux capacitors or mail order catalogs. Well, if it worked, that is.

Mossy, flossy

I do really love moss. Even though I tried to grow a moss garden and it failed... instead I can make a moss garden out of things.

Above is a project I'm working on. The "canvas" is a violin. Smurfs are not involved, even if I did make smurfy-type mushrooms.

Oh and I took this picture with my new camera even though I don't have a lens cap and also maybe should have turned off the flash.

To be continued...

Shopping Online: A Love/Hate Relationship

So, today I was out all day, then at work all night, then I got home and my NEW second try version of ordering a digital camera online had been delivered.

It's a long annoying story: basically the first one was not as advertised and then I had to mail it back and then had even worse trouble shopping locally, then finally found what I wanted in refurbished (read: discounted) on ebay, and then kept losing the auctions, and then finally one ended on one of my night's off. So then FINALLY it was on its way. So... great, I thought.

But they left out the lens cap. So, once again, something to worry about. I already emailed them asking to send it, and I just hope they do. I'm getting tired of the whole thing. But I've gone too far to give up now. Plus, if I had had a decent camera, I could have taken a good picture of the little chirpy baby bird I found on the ground today (I didn't touch it and it was gone by the time I got home from work).

In another online/shopping event, I checked on my on-the-verge-of-expiration etsy treasury (see previous post), and a bunch of people commented that it had been on the front page. And that's exciting, but hey! I didn't get to see it. That's what I get for staying offline so long.

And the reason I was offline so long was because I was trying to be constructive. I spent the past couple hours organizing my fabric supplies (too much) so pretty much all of it (but one box) is in one location, and in proximity to the sewing machine. I organized the fabric sort of by themes such as "shiny," "fluffy," "theme/patterned" and so on. Some of the fabric I know I'll never use (maybe due to sheer lack of time before I die), so I hope someday to get some people to make a giant pile of fabric for a mountainous swap.

you might find it here

I decided to take a screenshot since the treasury will expire before everyone gets to see it.

clickety-click