Chilling and Crocheting

 
Yesterday I was impossibly tired. Worked all day and all night anyway. So Saturday is my chill day. I get to give myself a break and not feel guilty if I don't accomplish anything.

That said, I started to feel "project-y" around 4:30. No, I didn't do all these today.



Ann asked to see what crafts I have been making to put at Shagway Arts Barn this summer. The answer is lots of various stuff. Some I had previously made, some is new.

Over the past week, I made the patriotic mat and coaster set and the round ombre brown/yellows basket.

Today I tried the square basket. We will have to call this a prototype. The results aren't good enough to suit me yet. I did manage to solve some of the issues I don't like about crocheted baskets, but the implementation in this particular one isn't stellar. Nevertheless, I like it as a starting point.



Tomorrow is bell choir, and in the afternoon I'm leading a hike. My energy better be back in the morning! And there should be trail pictures tomorrow.

	See Fooling Around
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Q is for Quills

 
This is called having a button and pinning a vest on it. Sort of. As is turns out, one of the key pieces of this post is in a baggie somewhere in my office and I can't find it to show you a picture.

Yes, I have a bag of porcupine quills. "Why?" you ask. Simple. I want to try some Ottawa quillwork. This is not the same thing as quilling, which is a curled paper craft that my buddy Ann likes to do.

In January, I read a book called Ottawa Quillwork on Birchbark put out by the Harbor Springs Historical Society a number of years ago. It was in a friend's private library, and it had pictures of significant quillwork boxes from their collection. It also included instructions on how to do the several techniques.

I found a few pictures of the kind of thing I'm talking about. NOTE: I DID NOT MAKE ANY OF THESE. I just would like to.







The pictures are arranged from simplest technique to more difficult.

Those of you from other places in the world than the USA may be wondering what quills are. They come from this creature, the porcupine.



Each quill has a small barb at the end. If you have a dog that tried to get too friendly or too aggressive with a porcupine, you know what happens next. The barbs stick in skin like a fishhook, and must be removed with pliers.

However, except for the barb, which you can cut off to craft with, the quills are somewhat like a softer version of a feather shaft. That's kind of what they feel like.

Anyway... some day, I hope to at least try a small project using some of these techniques.

	See A Diversity of Wildlife for where a porcupine lives
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O is for Onion Basket

 
You didn't think I'd get all the way through the alphabet without something crafty, did you?

I'm showing you a project from 2002. It's an onion basket I made in a class. I've enjoyed making baskets since my first simple one in Girl Scouts. I'd like to make some that I collect the materials for myself, but there are just TOO many things I'd like to do.



So, this one isn't very "natural," but I use it all the time to store onions. It's very practical.



The reason it's on my mind is that on this A-Z Challenge, I visited Petra, who made a potato net! Now, there's a simple little project that I really need. You can see it at This Good Steward. You have to scroll down (or read her poem on the way).

I commented about the basket, and she said she'd like to see it (I AM reading all the comments, even if I'm not responding). So...at Petra's command (and because it's a nice "0") you got the onion basket.

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