Garden Visitor

Another Spring fairy has come to visit my garden!

Needle Felted Spring Nature Table Doll

Remember the wool that I dyed not long ago? Well, this is what I've been doing with it!

This is my second attempt at a nature table doll. I think I have refined my technique a bit better. It is an ongoing learning process at the moment and I didn't stab my fingers at all this time.... Yippee!

Hopefully, I'll try to make dolls for all four seasons.

"B**bies"

I went to the Lower Blue Mountains Breastfeeding Association talk today on weaning. Little Loopity Lou is not ready to give the girls up just yet but I wanted some info about weaning when the time comes. I'm hoping he'll self wean but I have a feeling it won't be for a while yet. There's no pressure.

They where selling these cards at the meeting for $2. The cupcakes picture cracked me up and I really liked the image of the mother & child.

"Echidna"

I have 2 weeks from today until my driving test. I am currently on my "L" plates but will hopefully to be on my red "P" plates soon.

This afternoon I was out practicing for my exam (I'm still not very good reverse parking). As I was driving along, I nearly claimed my first road kill.

This cheeky little fella was walking along the roadside - isn't she/he so cute! I flicked on my hazard lights, pulled over and slowed traffic to make sure this little fella wasn't going to get run over.

The road that I was driving along was next to the rail line. The echidna had made it's way over the road to the railway fence. I wanted to make sure the echidna was safe before I left it. It was on sunset and getting dark quickly but I was happy with photos I took. I wanted to get a close up of its spines but it was too dark for my camera to focus for macro properly and the echidna wasn't going to stick around for photos!

Katie and her brothers thought it was exciting. It was the first time they had seen an echinda in the wild. I love that I have this amazing wildlife on my door step but I'm not looking forward to encounters with snakes (especially the red-belly and the brown snakes!). Well, I don't mind the diamond pythons - I have seen them in the wild before, if you call sunning themselves in the middle of the road the wild..... :-)

More info on echidnas ..... http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?id=4796

Wool Dying

I had a go at dying wool for the first time the other day. It was fun experimenting with colour.

I mixed some of the dye powders together to give different tones of green, red and orange colours It's a bit of a lucky dip to how well it will turn out for a beginner. I threw in a few slips that I tie-dyed to used up some of the dye. I plan to use the wool for needle felting, probably for nature table dolls, to sell as well as the slips at Katie's school end of year fair. I found the arms hard to make on the doll. The arms that I did seemed a bit chunky so I hid them behind some flowers.

One day I would like to grow a garden for dying wool.

Spring Maiden

I love the Autumn Maiden that Cadi made. I was inspired to make a Spring Maiden for Katie's class. This is the first time I have made a needle felted nature table doll.

Happy Spring everyone :)