Glamping, Anti-Rodent Style

For those of us who are not giant fans of having small fuzzy critters scrambling over our bodies while we sleep.

There's a GRAND new invention called the Privacy Pop!  Here it is--

It's come down to $129, which is closer, but still out of reach of the rest of us.
The rest of us can handle plopping $18 for a "pop-up changing privacy shower tent" on ebay, especially when the need is urgent, as a sojourn in a rat-, black widow spider-, scorpion- and ant- infested place looms in our immediate future.
Like this-- (not the exact one I got)


This kind has a built-in ceiling and an open floor.
Perfect!

I stitched a piece of salvaged screen into a square frame of fabric, and stitched that to the bottom.

This is not the best looking job, I know it!  But you should have seen me trying to wrestle this giant spring-steel framed thing around under the sewing machine!  One of the steel springs has to go UNDER the presser foot and then a child has to hold up the rest of the contraption while I stitch.



"If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid."
 

And it worked GREAT.  Because I went by car and there was extra room, I hauled along my featherbed-- yes, someone gave me an old-fashioned featherbed, that's feathers in a bag that you sleep ON, or rather among; and if you've never experienced this bliss, I can only recommend you listen to a song by John Denver-- so each night, I popped up my tent, shook out my featherbed very, very well to evict any rattlesnakes that might have gotten in there, crammed it inside the tent, climbed in and zipped up that zipper and zipped the world OUT.



View from the inside.

While I was sleeping peacefully, the contents of my backpack weren't so lucky.  The mice got in there and had lunch.



Didn't discover this until I got back home. 
EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!

Homemade Shoes, by Janel Shoemaker

I thought if this worked out, I would change my name to "Shoemaker" in pride!  But that's as far as I'll take the idea-- that subject line right up there  :-)

My daughter has really hard-to-fit feet.  Her little toes stick out farther than expected.  In regular shoes her little toenail gets rubbed against the side, or if we order much larger or wider shoes, then the footbed is thrown off and the whole tread is wrong.
She used to be more willing to endure ill-fitting shoes, but she's gotten more sensitive about it over the years.  We've tried various specialty shoes without any luck, and we don't have enough money or live anywhere near a place that makes real custom shoes.

This summer it's come to the point she refuses to wear painful shoes any more, so she's been going around in flip-flops or some soft leather slippers that are dark enough in color to be "moccasins".

I decided to give it a try.

There's lots of ideas on Pinterest but of course I can't use any pattern, that's the whole point  :-)

I just traced around her foot, made a rough pattern and started making tests.

What shall we use for sole material?  I think that doormat was a bit too cheerful, anyway.

It can still be our doormat, I only needed to trim off one side.

The first prototype shoes, made out of tapestry material...

With soles cemented on!

Kept on finding one design flaw after another.  Her heels would pop out of the shoes when she tried to walk, so I added elastic around the top.

But they're on her feet!
They FIT RIGHT and are comfortable.

Just don't look too closely at the patch job on the left toe... I had to make a design adjustment at the last minute before she left for summer camp! No time to make another pair from scratch.  Hand stitching in panic. I really do rise to the occasion WHEN NECESSARY!

"If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done"  :-)

I'll make more, and the next pair will look even better! 

Plastic Canvas Outgoing Mail Holder

I made one of these aeons ago and it was a cool, useful thing to have on the wall.  Recently someone admired it so I made a copy.  Here's the information in case you'd like to make one. 

As you can see, there is some lag time between photos and blogging  :-)

Front design

The back is reinforced with double layers of canvas to make it stronger.  
I was running out of that blue cord, so I switched from my usual favorite basketweave to half cross on the back to economize, then left the bottom part unstitched.  It's against the wall, so it doesn't show! 

Dimensions to cut the plastic canvas:

Making CD Sleeves from Calendars

That's the level of craft I can handle these days  :-)

It's SOOO satisfying for a hoarder type to be able to think of a use for those calendar pages that were just too pretty to throw away!

Some time ago I opened up a CD sleeve and copied it onto thin cardboard for tracing. 
 

It took some trial and error (as you can see) to get a square just the right size, but once I have that, I can fold the flaps over it and they come out perfect every time. 

Pretty, yes?

Unlike my larger dreams and plans, a craft on this scale actually ends up being made  :-)

Trying a New Craft - Braiding

At the Faire there was an SCA lady demonstrating fingerloop braiding. It looked magical.

There were also several booths selling kits for kumihimo, which also looked interesting.  I thought I'd look it up at the library first instead of plunking $17 for a kit, and found this really great book, which explained what I wanted to hear:  

And had diagrams!

From ye olde internet, I found http://members.verizon.net/~dana_gryphon/class_beginning_kumihimo.html
Which has plenty of information to get started. 
I only cut out a cardboard loom from an empty kleenex box and look what I made! 



It is just fascinating how it works, and there comes the braid out the other side.
The downside:  it would take For.  Ev.  Er.  to make any length of braid this way. 
This is all the further I got even after doing it (it is a very relaxing activity for the hands) a whole afternoon while we had some friends over.  Oops, the picture doesn't show, but it's a sample about 6" long. 
A real polished wooden stand, with the braid weighted down beneath, and a practiced worker, could probably do it a lot faster. 

Back to "fingerloop braiding" which the 14th c lady had been demonstrating.  She provided this link,
http://stringpage.com/braid/fl/fingerloop.html
I cut some lengths of thread and got started.  It takes just a few minutes to get the hang of it and then it requires no further attention and goes like lightning. 

I braided all the way down to the ends of the loops while still standing there being amazed at how cool this was.  I didn't even have time to get bored.  WOW!  Look how pretty it comes out!!  And these were just the colors of cotton thread that I happened to have in the top drawer.  

Snappy bracelets

Kids brought home some cheap white vinyl-covered snap bracelets.  They were supposed to decorate them with glue or pens or whatnot.  Andrea suggested covering hers with fabric and stood watching while I did it.  (That's the pink leopard pattern, and it was first which explains why it's the dirtiest one by now   :-) 
The boys have come up with a whole pile of the things!  That's my new assignment.

Gütermann Nähseide

Gütermann Nähseide

Okay yes, that is showing off Colemak’s shortcuts for international characters :-)

I went to the fabric shop yesterday and no fabric or supplies hopped into my basket, but this did. A tin for $4, and not empty, but with spools of thread inside. Tin made in China, thread made of polyester, so my authenticity antennae were wavering, but I just couldn’t resist that picture.

Comes with four spools of sewing thread inside!