Mouse and Cat

Meet my needle felted mouse....and my real live cat. 

I started a new hobby called Needle Felting.  It is very easy to do if you can think in 3-D.  You treat the wool like clay (sort of) and just mesh the fibers together with a special needle that has barbs on it.  The mouse eyes are tiny beads sewn in.  His hands, which are going to hold a tiny book, are made from unraveled wool embroidery yarn.

Look it up on Google...there are millions of pages of instruction and pictures. 
A fun place to see a wide variety of styles of felt artist work is Etsy. 
Etsy is an online sales venue for craftspeople.  It is fun to just look through.

I hate ticks!

It is sort of funny I should post that title since tomorrow afternoon I start the spring semester Bug Club for the after school enrichment program the PTA organizes!  But I do dislike ticks because I once had Lyme Disease...a sneaky disease from tick bites.  You can find more on ticks on our Waddell web site.

Here is a picture of me in my ANTI-TICK suit!!  I treated it with a pesticide that kills ticks on contact.  You do not put the spray on you, just on clothes.  When I garden or go in the woods I wear it.  I look like a crazy lady but I feel safer.

Here is the picture on the pocket :-)

Floating Around

 (This post is really from last August...those of you who know wildflowers would have picked up on the discrepancy :-)
I don’t spend all summer at school, you know! This year I am trying something new…nature photography from my little boat.
AND, before you can get mad at me for not wearing a life vest, I want you to know I have one now and I do wear it. This boat is made for fishermen. It is easy to get right up to the shore when I spot a flower, then I step out, and click away.

I am in love with my new pontoon boat. I was saving money for a new laptop but then we stopped in at Cabella’s (a sport supply store like Disneyland in Michigan!) and I left with this boat:-)

This is a Cardinal Flower. Hummingbirds are said to love it (they investigate anything that is red, including bottle tops!). It grows right along the edge of ponds and streams.

 

Did you know there are clams in fresh water? I really never thought about it and always associated clams with ocean clam flats. This big one was just floating in the water so I think it was dead….but I put it back in case it was just going “walkabout”.