It's Friday!!

Finally! It seems like forever since I had a day off of work. While I am very grateful that I have a job, when so many people do not have one, it seems at times as if I never truly get any time to myself. The last few months I have been either working at the clinic or "working" at home trying to get everything done. I have a list a mile long of things that have to be done, and no time to do anything.

My husband put in the garden yesterday since it was raining and he got home at 11am. We have 4 varieties of tomatoes, green peppers, zuchinni (seeds), cucumbers, and this year, leeks! My raspberry jungle is quite out of control (no time to thin this year) and I should have quite the bumper crop. I just hope this year that it is not raining everyday like last year. It seemed that every raspberry had little black spots on them.

Today I have to do the banking, grocery shopping, and take my son's new cell phone in to the store. Apparently even though it is a 3-phone family plan he cannot call me. His phone thinks it's number is mine. He tries to call me and gets his own voice mail. Weird. My husband and I can call each other and him, and he can call my husband. Just not me. And really, that was the whole point of it, since he is now 18 and I want to be able to reach him and vice versa as needed. Sigh

I think today I am also going to try to cut the rest of my bamboo canes into sections. I got half way done last weekend and ran out of time. Plus my dremel gets a bit hot since the bamboo is quite hard. It tends to grab and kick, which loosens the "nut" (sorry do not know the right word) and then it just will not spin. Once I have the sections cut, I will be shaping them and sanding them. Ohhh and drilling the holes, cutting the cords, drilling the holes in the wood circles I hang them from, and so on. Hmmmm...I might get a little caught up in it and forget to go to town! Maybe I had better do all that first.

Here is to a (hopefully) productive weekend!

Monday again

It is Monday again, and it feels like the weekend never happened. Have you ever had one of those? Not fair, really! I had so many things I needed to do, I never really had any time to myself.

I did manage to finish my bamboo windchime (see previous post) and start cutting more canes. My dremel starting to kick and buck (the bamboo is very hard) so I had to stop only half way through. I still have 4 more canes to cut into sections, then I need to shape, drill and sand all the sections. I plan on measuring out all the cords I need, and drill all of the hardwood circles too.

I have some "ideas" for unique clappers and pieces for the bottom for the wind to catch. So far, using the pieces of the bamboo I cut out of the sections as the windcatchers seems to work fine. I just do not want to make them all look alike.

My husband and I went to the garden center to buy the plants for my vege garden yesterday. Apparently here in our area, I was about 2 weeks behind everyone else. So many had bought them the beginning of the month then had to replace them all due to frost kill. So end result? I did not get any romano tomatoes, zuchinni or even the peppers I like to plant. We ended up with 2 varieties of tomatoes I have never tried (Heinz and another one), and bought a pack of zuchinni seeds. There will be lots of time to have those grow, so I am not worried about that.

Hubby did not plant them in the garden yet, he had a headache when we got home, and I was too busy trying to clean house and a million other things on my "to do" list. As it is going to be raining tomorrow, we will try to get those in the ground then.

I have to work all week, so will not have much free time. So I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Bamboo Windchimes

Finally! After months of preparation and practice, my first set of bamboo windchimes are up in my shop on Etsy!

What a wonderfully Dremel day!

Yesterday was a wonderful, warm sunny day. It actually reached 22! I spent most of my day outside, weeding flower beds, planting my gladiolus bulbs, and also put in a little holly bush I had gotten after Christmas. I am not certain that one will survive though, we shall see. I buried an overripe banana at the base of my rosebush, which will give it lots of wonderful potassium and hopefully help it grow and flower quite nicely this year.

I now have my flower beds ready for the woodchip mulch that my husband will be getting for me next weekend.

I also spent many hours removing excess stain from some bamboo canes I had purchsed. One of which I plan on building a little trellis for my rose bush. The others will be cut into smaller pieces to make some windchimes. I do so love the sound of bamboo windchimes, so mellow.

My copper pipe pieces have now been punched and smoothed, and the red stamping has also been removed. The next step is to design the actual windchimes I will be making with those. I used my Dremel for the smoothing and for the removal of the red stamps.

For the first time, I also attempted to use my Dremel for sanding and buffing some polymer clay beads and pendants. All I can say, is that I am glad these were practice pieces. The felt and cloth buffing circles are not quite what I expected. I will have to figure out how to make denim circles, and sandpaper circles out of my wet/dry sandpaper.

I did manage to make some moderately straight holes for the beads though. There are about 4 of the 10 that did not work right. Again, it is definately going to take practice and a lot of trial and error in order to learn how to use my toy effectively, to acheive the desired effects.

Today, I will be cutting my bamboo, drilling holes in them, and designing the actual windchimes. Later on, I will post some pictures.