FRIENDSHIP!

Helen Keller wrote: 

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

How very true is this....friendship is so valuable and I enjoy the friendship we have here in blogland...

I don't post as often as I would like and I don't get to visit your blogs like I want to but know

that I think of all of you often - I miss the chats back and forth.

I would love to designate one hour a week to doing a post if I can get my work schedule like I want it.

I have been working every day from about 8 am to 5 pm on products for our October show. One would think making things every day one would be caught up...nope....some items take a process. It isn't just stitching something and calling it done. Many of my products have stages.

Last month (wow...it has been OVER a month now) since my last post I've made several

other products for the show besides the Gingerbreads and Pumpkins.

The most time consuming are my sheep and rabbits - oh I'm loving how they are turning out.

My sheep have real sheeps wool that I attached - I just need to add the legs and paint on their eyes.

They started out with just coffee dyed batting as their bodies but I didn't like them

so searching in my stash I found wool roving I have had for years and they look much better.

I made 4 mama's and 4 babies - because of the time consuming steps I won't be making more.

And these fellas were fun too - I had a problem with their ears standing up but finally got smart and added tons of Mod Podge to the aging liquid and walla!  We used cinnamon sticks for the legs.

Look at those fluffy little tails! 

Another project I loved doing were the SUGAR CONES

I had a hard time finding the right size vessel to form them until we were grocery shopping

and I saw these perfect 8 oz. plastic tumblers - they turned out great

after some trial and error in the ratio of water to sugars

Took a couple days for them to dry so when they were I sanded off the dried white sugars and softened the edges and tied them up with aged cheesecloth

Just a few things I've made - I need lots of small lamp and candle mats - people like to buy smaller  and less costly items sometimes so I like to make several of them

  

The Gingerbreads are going to be ornaments, the snowman heads

are for runners and pillows and the cats and sheep will be for runners.

I found this set of mache stacking boxes at a rummage sale last month - they were from 'Lang' and had some really primitive sheep scenes on them but I bought them to cover them in fabric.  They are really small - the largest is 4" tall and the smallest 2". They weren't easy to work with being so small.

On Monday we went to Madison to the wholesale show and we found just a few 'handmade' items.....I can't make EVERYTHING for our show, especially things like these. My talents aren't that creative or maybe I just haven't given myself the chance, regardless, we bought a few items for the show.

This particular one is a bag that hangs on a door or a knob.

We do have a few more items that will arrive in July 

sometime that will be in the Christmas line.

Well I guess I have bored you enough today - but being it is storming out I thought this would be a

good day to sit and relax and share some things with you.

The 4th is coming fast and it feels like we hardly had a summer.

The last 2 days were soooo hot here and very humid but those kind of days are rare this season - 

if it isn't cold then it's storming.

I'm not a Summer person so the cool days are fine with me...

Be safe with your 4th activities

Karen