Flowers for your hair and ears too!

I had a lovely birthday today, just working away on all my projects. Here are a couple of the items I finished and will be taking to the market with me on Sunday. I'm very tempted to keep the earrings for myself but decided since orange is not my color I will make myself another pair in a different color. These are so much fun to make. I hope you'll like them as much as I like them!

Itty Bitty Bunny ....

look she has found the rest of her family! Click on this link to find her http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4be1da5de56c8eef8e87f91a/white-bunnies

Thanks to Angela at http://www.etsy.com/shop/decentartworks?section_id=5440464 for putting this treasury together and including my Itty Bitty Bunny, who is still looking for a home! Go visit Angela's shop she's got lots of beautiful pictures, I loooooove all the Belgian photos.

Pretty FLower Brooches

since I've started working full time at Wegmans I just don't have the time to make all the things I have in my head so I really have to pick and choose what it is I do want to make. I started making these organza and other silk like fabric flowers and found it to be a great quick project for in between doing laundry, doing dishes, etc. All you do is cut out the pieces of fabric, you then singe them very carefully over an open flame. I then sew them together and put some beads in the middle, glue and sew a hat pin or other type of pin on the back and voila ... a beautiful brooch. What I like about them is that I can use new as well as used material, have a blast with picking colors and they always turn out so fragile and pretty even if I say so myself. Here are a couple pictures of the ones I made this week. I'll be taking them to the market this Sunday so I'm not going to put them in my Etsy shop yet.

Bunnies, kittens, etc ... I can smell them now!

Today at work I had been spray painting and using painters pens which I use every day doing my job, when Chef Tina (Cooking Department kind of chef) came walking into my studio. She stood there for a few moments and took some very deep breaths. I was about to apologize for those smells when I realized she was enjoying those smells!? She said it reminded her of her dad when she was young he had a home business painting and the smell made her fondly think back of when she would visit with her dad. So we started chatting about smells and what they remind us of and why. Here are a couple of smells that make me go back in time ...

The smell of fresh cut grass ... when our dog comes back into the house after the lawn has been cut he smells like bunnies! ... as a little girl I used to help my grandfather gather the fresh cut grass and help him put it into the rabbit cages, I especially liked helping when they had babies. So the smell of fresh cut grass on our dog makes me think about all those wiggly little bunnies.

When the handyman at work cuts wood ... for making display stands, etc. he does it just around the corner from my studio it makes me think of kittens! My grandfather was a furniture maker and he had a huge workhouse (werkhuis is what we used to call it in Flemish) full of industrial machines. We used to have 15-20 cats around to keep the mice population under control in het werkhuis so we always had litters of kittens. They used to smell like the woodshavings since the cats usually ended up giving birth underneath the big machines in the woodshaving piles! So, every time Gary cuts wood I think of piles of kittens.

The smell of a diesel engine ... reminds me of an old boyfriend ...

The smell of a fresh cut pine tree ... reminds me of the first year I went to get a real Christmas tree and carried it across town with my best friend ...

I'm sure there are more smells that reminds me of happy things. Funny how it only makes me remember happy things, I've never associated smells with bad times .... except our dog just farted laying right here next to my chair ... geez dog ... good timing I must say ... time for me to leave the room!!!!

Love to hear if any smells take you down memory lane ...

(the bunnies in the foto are Sweet Pea an Little Miss, these were French Lops we had when we lived in Marshall Virginia)

In the paper!

So today at work (Wegmans) somebody came running over to me to let me know she saw my picture in the paper!??? I went and grabbed a paper to look and I'll be darn, there I am ... needle felting away in my stall at the Farmers Market in The Plains on Sunday. The reporter had come over to take pictures of me working and asked some questions. I'm honored I've ended up being the one he picked to put in the paper! Thank you Fauquier Times Democrat! Just one correction, the market is on Sundays ... not Saturdays, and I won't mention my last name got misspelled, I realize nobody is perfect ... :0)

Time out for the fish bully!

So, what do you do with a fish who's suppose to be a community fish but turns out to be one big bully!? We purchased 2 of the same as we were told that's the way to do it, by the fish experts of the local pet shop. We had 2 gold fish, one sucker and 2 blue gourami's. All seemed well until the 2 gourami's started to chase each other and didn't seem to like each other too much. Kinda hard to tell if a fish likes another fish I guess except you can definitely tell when they do NOT like each other. Scales go flying, fins get destroyed, etc. Anyway, the one gourami ended up dead in the water one day so we fished him out of the tank and made him go looking for Nemo. Now things calmed down in the tank until Mr. Mean (the other gourami) decided he better let those 2 darn goldfish know who's the boss of this tank. You must know my daughter brought those 2 goldfish home 1 1/2 yrs ago from school one day. They had done some kind of an experiment with goldfish and with parental approval they got to take a couple of them home. We ended up with 3 of them but 1 decided he needed to go look for Nemo so we were left with just 2. They measured about 1 inch and had a gray and white color, these 2 babies have grown into 2 big (and I'm talking 4 and 6 inches) orange beauties. Now the gourami measures about 3 inches I would say but he's decided to take on anything that moves in the tank. We've also gotten another smaller fish, can't remember what kind he is but I must say he's the smart one compared to the goldfish. This little guy hides in a log as soon as Mr. Mean decides to start moving his one-man-troop around! Now the goldfish on the other hand just hang out until they get bitten or pushed by Mr. Mean, then they take off and both of them try to fit into a log that's really made to fit only one fish. A couple of times I've thought I'd had to rescue them as they looked stuck but they managed to get out by one of them backing out and the other one just wiggled his way through the rock pile on the other end. Dumb fish!!!! Sooooo, we had to empty the tank the other day and stuck all of the fish in a 2 gallon tank for about 2 hours until the big tank was up and running again. We kept an eye on Mr. Mean when they were all hanging out in the small tank but they all behaved and did whatever fish do. But then, hoorayyyhhhh did we succeed without even realizing what we succeeded in ... when we put them all back into the big tank Mr. Mean was either in shock or thought he'd been put in time out (with his enemies) and behaved like a good fish should behave! That has lasted for about 3 weeks now and believe it or not ... he's now back at doing what he was doing before, chasing the other fish and stressing them out. I have now threatened him by putting him in with my Beta and see who will win that battle but since I'm an animal lover I just can't do it. But, something needs to get done ... the kid and my husband are ready to flush him down to see Nemo ... not sure if and when this will happen but we got to do something with that darn fish!!!

The Market and getting interviewed!

Had a great first market at the Archwood Green Barn in THe Plains today. A big "thanks" to my new and returning customers for making my day.

Then I had pictures taken and interviewed by a reporter from the Fauquier Times Democrat newspaper, how exciting is that! I was busy needle felting a new scarf when he came by and asked if he could take pictures while I was busily felting away. Needless to say it was a great morale boost for me and made my day even better.

Been working on some new items for the market and my Etsy shop. Made a couple brooch flowers, one I put on the kid's hat I had made and another one just by itself. The brown brooch sold today so I'll be making more of them. Here are a couple pictures I took with my phone so they are not the best. Thanks for dropping by and reading my blog.