100th Day 2017

 100 day was actually a couple months ago already at my kid's school.  In fact, they just started their last quarter yesterday!  But I wanted to make sure I had a record of what we did for posterity.  I was determined that they would win prizes this year!

First up is Si who was a 100 pip Lego.  The secret?  Plastic shot glasses.  (oxymoron?) Really.  We glued them on with E6000.  Then spray painted the whole box green.  Number 100 is actually on his head.

I dipped on of the shot glasses in a darker green to make the "bottom" of the Lego block. He got a first prize!

WP had a coat made of those air bags that come in mailed packaging.  After Christmas we easily had 100.

A little clear packaging tape and some time - et voila!  He got a second place.  We were all disappointed.  The popping of the coat was great fun, though.

Beeswax and Bee Rescue

 When I'm not sewing or doing mom things, I occasionally deal with honeybee things.

 This past weekend I filtered out my beeswax.   For candles and cosmetic uses, it needs to be as clean as possible.  I started out by melting it in a crock pot purchased from the thrift store for this purpose.

 After melting and filtering, I poured it into aluminum loaf pans to cool.  You could literally see it cooling.

Four loaves of wax - about 5 pounds.


Also related to bees - by word of mouth, I was contacted by a lady who had wild bees in her milk shed.  She is selling her place and wants the bees rescued.



   This is me cutting a larger hole in the ceiling to try to find them. They weren't up there.

They were in the walls!   This is a picture looking up, those are combs hanging down.

 Here they are!

So the 13 combs in the picture above were mostly pollen and honey - no brood or live bees.  The above picture is pollen filled comb.

This picture is honey in the comb.

This is what a cross section of pollen comb looks like.  The bees pack in the pellets of pollen in layers, pushing it in with their heads.  This is the food for baby bees.

This story isn't actually done, because I have to go back and find the rest of the bees.  It was a pretty chilly day and I needed more/better tools to open up more walls, so I am going to go back when things warm up and the bees are flying so its easier to find them.

Stay tuned!

Family Friday 3.17.17

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Seeing as I married into Irish, we always do a bit of celebrating.  Tonight we'll be heading to a party - with kids.  Should be fun.

It's been forever since I've done a family Friday - so let's do some catching up.

We got the snow from the storm that came through earlier this week.  Near the lake they got close to two feet.  We got around 8" or so.  Today its melting.

Basketball season wrapped up and we've moved right into baseball.  Baseball tryouts were in between the last basketball tournament games.

With the freakish warm weather we had for a while we did some yard/woods clean up and had our first bonfire of the year.  Goodbye Christmas trees.

WD got braces put on.  I think it makes him look older.

I've been bottling (and selling) honey.  More on this another time.

Part of our Christmas present from my parents was a night at the water park.  We went last Friday.

Tomorrow is Si's 7th birthday. He requested fish for his birthday dinner. Seriously.

And so we are busy.  But when is a family of 7 not busy?

Kitten Love

I know I mentioned in a previous (long ago) blog post that the week before Christmas we had kittens in the house.  Well, it was certainly a couple months of adventure!

On the one hand, kittens are of course, absolutely adorable.

But they get into absolutely everything.

We kept them in a bathroom for a long time, until they managed to get over the gate, no matter the modifications I made to it.

Three kittens of the litter of 5 made it.  We have kept one - the grey one.  His name is Alf. No not the alien.

He is also known as Alfred and Alfster and Alfie

It's hard to be a kitten.  It requires lots of sleeping - even in odd places.

The two tabbys went to a classmate of my daughter, so we get occasional updates, which is fun.

My Mondo Bag

After seeing the pattern around on the internets for a while, blogs and instagram, I bought myself the pattern for the Mondo Bag. (my blog record shows I bought it way back in November)  It is a Quiltsmart pattern if you're interested.  I've had the pattern since before Christmas.  I was waiting until I had some selfish sewing time to get it started - which was in February.  It was also a chance for me to get to know my new Singer Featherweight.  More on it in another post.

I started with a bunch of strips from a couple jelly rolls of Gooseberries.  They were originally purchased for a signature quilt, but I have a lot of left over.

If you have purchased or made this pattern, you know that it comes with preprinted interfacing on which you are supposed to fuse your 2.5" blocks.  Well, I sort of hacked the pattern.  You see, I didn't want to never be able to use it again.  I also didn't want to cut all bazillion 2.5" squares.  So I strip pieced into fours.  Then cut 2.5" strips across and laid them out according to the picture.  Then I sewed the strips together into the right sized rectangles for the pattern.  After each rectangle was pieced - THEN I fused (my own-unprinted) interfacing to the whole rectangle and proceeded to follow the instructions from there. (mostly)

The inside - looks like a flower opening up.  This being my first bag I didn't do any extras like pockets or key tabs.  I tend not to use those anyway, however well meaning I am.

The strip piecing made more of a pattern of the squares than random, but I think it looks pretty good.

This is the bottom where the four rectangles meet up.  Doesn't bother me that the squares meet up.  Its the bottom, after all.

I confess that I did not consult the pattern for the length of the straps, so I think mine ended up rather long in comparison to the bag - but at least I know they'll fit over my shoulder!

Mondo Bag

So would I make another Mondo Bag?  Definitely - it was a fast and easy project. I did it all on my straight stitch feather weight.

True Confession: I thought it would be bigger.  After all the hype written in the pattern about the size - I couldn't actually fold up an entire queen size quilt it in.
On the other hand, now that I understand the basic concept of how it goes together, I could make any size I wanted......
After all, I've got more jelly roll strips!