Thankful Thursday

1-I'm thankful  people aren't feeling compelled to give me dolls anymore. I like the ones I have, but there are a lot fewer of them than I had as a kid, they're chosen by me, and there aren't more of them than I have space for.  Also since these current dolls weren't a gift and no one in the family really cares whether I have dolls at all or not I am free to get rid of  any or all of them any time I choose. I like that. I am inclined to downsize periodically. It is fun logging every doll I was given as a kid, but those dolls were all passed on to others ages ago and I don't want any of them back. Happily no one is mistaking the nostaligic dolly blogs for a wish list.

2-I'm thankful for those green kitchen scrubby pads. They make the world better, particularly in the kitchen. Daddy told me in the old days people scrubbed with "some soap and some sand and a cob in each hand." I imagine that works, but it sure sounds messy, and with drains I think the sand would be a problem.

3-I'm thankful we keep plenty of flour and yeast on hand so I can make fresh bread without having to arrange a trip to town. The worse the economy gets and the more food prices rise the more I appreciate wholesome bread that doesn't cost us $4 a loaf.

4-I'm thankful my good mama taught me to make hard candy. Fun, tasty, and no high fructose corn syrup. Plus there's the entertainment of accidentally breathing in essence of hot cinnamon oil, which will clear your sinuses in a way that is not so much like a neti pot as like a fire hose. Whew!

 

5-I'm thankful  to be finished with the jeans embroidery project. I love to make things and love stitchery, but hand stitching on denim is dreadfully hard on the fingers. I wonder, how long does it take for fingertips to grow back?

6-I'm thankful  for double stick tape. When I learned to make paper beads I was quite little, my brother was a Cub Scout and Mama was one of the Den Mothers. The whole den made paper bead necklaces for Mother's Day. There was paste involved, and brighty colored paint, both things that were beyond my coordination levels and I found this very frustrating. There was the cutting of long tapered strips from magazine pages, and my scissors skills were nothing to write home about either. Although the Cubs managed to get their necklaces done (messily) for me it was an epic fail.

   Half a century on I decided to make paper bead garlands to deck our festive minimalist holiday branch. I used Hannukah wrapping paper (thank you Youngest Child) for the blue-gold-silver color scheme. I cut the strips with a rotary cutter which took no time at all. I rolled the beads on a knitting needle and instead of a pot of paste I used about a half inch of narrow double stick tape at the tip. I skipped the shellacking step as these don't need to last forever and the paper already has a glazed surface. Then I strung the beads with white pearly shirt buttons between them to add a bit of shimmer in candlelight. No more epic fail! Photographed out on the deck because indoors everything seemed to disappear against our dimly lit cluttery background.



Seat cover I made from woven plastic feed bags



Fits the seat nicely, looks satisfyingly make-do-and-mend-ish. 



7-I'm thankful  the tractor seat cover I made for The Manimal fits ok and looks all fancy-schmancy on his John Deere.  In designed it to keep rainwater from pooling in the bucket seat. I got it finished just in time to pop it over the seat before the rains started. Perfect timing, no?
    When the rain abated we scurried outside to check out my invention. Alas-when we lifted the cover the bucket seat had a good pint of rainwater in it. The plastic bag material although sturdy is apparently not waterproof. Back to the drawing board.

 

 

8-I'm thankful Oldest Child made a whole lot of Yo-Yos and gave them to me because she was tired of looking at them. I don't have the patience to make yo-yos, but I may be able to persuade myself to string them together into a yo-yo creature. Probably not a bunny, maybe a kitty.  I had a yo-yo clown when I was little, and I really don't like clowns, so an animal is the way to go I think.

9-I'm Thankful Silly Dog is not a puppy anymore. When she was a puppy she used to chew up everything all the time. Now that she's older she only chews up some things sometimes. This is quite an improvement. It would be wonderful if she would only chew up things we want to get rid of, but I don't really see that happening. 

10-I'm thankful Pandemonium is, despite his name, a skillful sleeper. It is companionable and endearing the way he follows after me and finds himself a nap spot wherever I'm working.

 

That's ten.  Off to work on baby afghans.