Word Lite -- easy on yer brain

I am so behind! The Rose Cottage is nearly complete--we literally only need about 4 more things to get wrapped up and we'll be done!--but anyone who looked here would never know it!

So, here is one of my infamous whirlwind photo heavy, sparing text, catch-up posts, to continue the saga of how to build an art studio in your neighbors' back yard:


STEP 24:
Call Rock Roofing (they did our house a few months ago) and have them come back in the fog and use the same super-coolio red shingles on Rose Cottage as we put on our house:

STEP 25:

Have Andrew from Salamander Construction come back and start putting up your redwood board siding.  He was very patient with cutting the top of each board just a weetle different at the top for the crazy swoopy roof!

   

STEP 26: Mask the heck out of the place before the insulation blowers arrive!

STEP 27: Wait for it to be the second worst snow storm of the year to have your insulators drive over the mountains to get to your job. Then have them Blow in this stinky, but highly effective, stuff, just before you leave for the weekend.   Exciting day!  

This is taken after our return--you weren't allowed in for 48 hours!
 This stuff is hard as a rock though! And it's a vapor barrier.

STEP 28: Call Rick's Rain Gutters to put up some nice

 galvanized half pipe gutters and downspouts. They look really old school--and they match our house, too!

STEP 29:   SHEETROCK!   Oh, yeah! Lookin' like a room!

STEP 30: Plaster.  

 

These guys were fast and awesome and I LOVE plaster.  I love the roughness and the look. It just seems "real" in a world where so much is pre-fabricated.  Smearing mud on your walls--can't get much more old school than that.

Wheeeelll, I'm no where near caught up, but I'm going to give myself carpal tunnel if I keep clicking away much longer! Hope you are enjoying this!  I know someone is looking at it because the Google tells me so.  Feel free to leave a comment.  I'm pretty sure it's fairly safe to do so.  (Is that enough qualifiers?)

For The Love of Fiber

I have about a million more pictures of the Rose Cottage project, but since this blog is supposedly about fiber arts and travel, I though maybe a little shot of a few things I have been working on lately might be fun.  Not to mention easier than the next 75 steps of the cottage project!

For the love of Bumbles

  I "unvented" a new way to make catnip toys: a needle-felted, scarily realistic, cat-nip rat.

Take a little fiber (washed, but still a little sheep-y seems to intrigue Bumbles better than scoured within an inch of its life fleece) and needle it to make a little mat.

 I forgot to take a picture of the next step where you put some catnip on it and fold the fiber around it.

Then needle it into a basic mousey shape.

Make some whiskers and a tail by braiding yarn scraps together.

Attach the whiskers and tail by needle felting a little more fiber over them.  Detail pointy nose shape.

Add some eyes with little bits of a darker color, and Viola! A pet rat for your beloved cat.

I keep getting a little scare every time I see it on the floor!

For the love of Byron

I love my cat, but I love my brother-in-law, at least as much.  A few years ago I made him a cotton throw, but it was always just a little small for him (though he loves it dearly!). I knew he would appreciate this:

It's based on the Modern Miters Afghan free pattern from LionBrand, and is made with super easy care Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick yarn.  I started it at the end of December managed to finish it in time for it to arrive right on his birthday the day after Valentine's Day. He called me to thank me even before he called his own mother!

For the love of Myself

I dumped all of my knitting notions out, sorted them by type into a gazillion saucers and then reorganized them into various pouches, and even managed to clean up after myself!

Love is all you need!

Ultimate Chile

After using a post title with a word like "penultimate" in it, you're kind of stuck with doing an "ultimate" installment even if it's a year and a half  three and a half years after the fact and you've done a million things in between and can't find the picture file where you had sorted out the last of the photos you thought you might use.  I guess I'll try to meet the challenge, but it's going to be pretty seat of the pants! Here goes:

Seth's birthday dinner in a revolving restaurant, consisting of more fish soup that had some specific name (to which there is a related poem) that I cannot recall, than you could shake a stick at.

2 buck duck bought in market in Chiloe and brought back in a basket on the plane.

Valparaiso market on New Year's Eve day

"Jumbo" on New Year's Eve day

Carts had gripper things that held them onto incline-alator!

Cool Chilean shellfish (Machas?) for New Year's Eve dinner.

Kate's lab's zebra-fish stock room.

New Year's Eve is a big deal there, too.  Remember it's the beginning of their summer vaction!

Kate and John's cool house and her gorgeous collage art.

 Best fireworks ever all along the bay that night, but couldn't get good pictures.

Night time harbour tour

Crazy long tunnel to the strangest straight up an elevator tower ascensor.

Valp'o market again

Last shot of cool graffitti art.