WELCOME AUTUMN, FAREWELL PARIS

Finally, finally, finally I can hear rain falling on the roof.  Although it is only a few millilitres, anything is very much appreciated.  The weather has also cooled down, so last weekend I spent a day pulling out the old plants in the raised vegetable gardens and planted some new seedlings - lettuce, English spinach, celery, dwarf beans and some Petunias.  Hopefully they will grow with lots of fertilizer and a good bag of paca poo.  I separated all the strawberry plants (and gave half away) and again this year planted some garlic in with the strawberries - nothing came near my strawberries last year and I am guessing it might be the garlic - who knows?  The best thing is that I used cloves from garlic I grew last year.

With nothing much happening outside, I have been watching a sweet potato sprouting in the pantry cupboard.  It has been there about a month, growing in the heat and dark and now is trying to produce leaves.  I think it is time to get it into the garden, though I am not sure how.

A local festivAL is being held in the town on Sunday, so I have made some little Nunos to put on my Spinning group's stall.  It will be interesting to see if anyone will like them.  I won't mind if they all come home again as I have incorporated some fabric which is about 20 years old so the items have a sentimental value to me.

And as I expected another little alpaca has been created - Paris Paca.  Just too cute...  She's off to Brisbane to a little girl called Mia.

Signature Alpaca

I found the most wonderful toy alpaca on the Internet.  Once completed using Scrumpy's superb soft grey fleece, she just came alive.....  and now she is the signature of EdgeOfHeaven creations.

I can feel a few brothers and sisters coming on...........

FIRST NUNO CREATION

  
I couldn't wait today to get all the bits and pieces of tissue silk and wool out and create my own Nuno scarf.  The tutor completed one at the workshop I attended last Saturday so I used some of her ideas and took them a step further.  In places I ended up with 3 layers of fabric and as my design was made up of a series of circles and semicircles the felted effect was raised circles, so I called my creation the Nipple Scarf.  There are 4 quite different nipples, 2 of which are pictured here.  The scarf is extremely light-weight, but will be warm with the wool down the edges.

It took me about an hour to lay it out and once completed I had no preconceived idea what it was going to look like when felted.  The rolling took about 45 minutes and then the felting took about another 30 minutes.  Of course inbetween there were lots of Dietcokes with ice to combat the 34 degrees and rests for the weary arms.  I probably filled in about 3 hours and it was wonderful watching the dramatic changes during the process.

I have lots of ideas to try, but probably won't get back to it again till the end of the week.  I can't wait......

PLANTS FINDING NEW HOMES

At last our temperatures have dropped to the low thirties and hopefully in a couple of weeks will be in the twenties.  I am longing to get out into the raised garden beds and pull them apart and replant for winter and spring, but it has just been too hot to date.

When I first planted the raised gardens this time last year I put a couple of lavender bushes in because they add such colour and aroma.  However they have thrived too well and I am preparing to take them out and plant them on the western side of the shed.  We also have a little pendolino olive tree which has just refused to die.  We left it in the olive grove for 2 years and it struggled so hard, but could not grow.  Then we pulled it out and put an avocado in its place, but I couldn't throw it away, so I placed it in a pot.  Pruned dramatically it refused to die, but also refused to grow.  So when I pulled the corn out of one of the raised garden beds before Christmas I put it in there.  Now the little tree is happy and is finally shooting after 3 years.  The trouble is, I don't want it to take over the raised garden bed, so it will find a home with the lavendars.

Three holes had been dug on the western side of the shed some months back and I didn't really know what would eventually go there.  I had been playing with the idea of a fine oak tree friends had given us, but I think the oak tree needs some friends of similar ilk around when finally planted.  Once I decided this morning to fill these holes with the lavendars and olive tree, I filled each hole with 10-20ltrs of water, some blood and bone, some alpaca poo and I am finally trying alpaca fleece in the bottom of the hole.  An alpaca breeder told me that putting scrap fleece at the bottom of the hole retains the moisture under the roots and goodness knows we need every bit of moisture we can get our hands on.  I have soaked the three plants to be moved and trimmed back the lavendar and now I will wait till sunset to move them. 

On the western side of the house I planted 8 Tagasaste shrubs on the slope running down from the tank.  They are supposed to be excellent fodder plants, fast growing, and good for water erosion control.  They have finally taken off, but our kangaroos have found them.  The tagasaste were supposed to be fodder for the camelids!  Spraying water with crushed chillies has helped a little and I had hoped spreading fresh alpaca poo may also act as a deterrent.  However the nibbling continues each night.  So today all the lavendar offcuts have been poked in the ground around each plant and maybe, just maybe, my little friends won't like the aroma or flavour.

Finally this morning some more summer produce has reached the table.  What wonderful summer colours - orange and red capsicum, orange and purple eggplant and red tomatoes and chillies.

Just to make life a little more interesting, tomorrow I return to working on a project to teach English as a Second Language at a local Institute.  So the creative side of my brain has to turn from wonderful felting to creating courses.  Give me brain food.....  my walnut tree will have to get a move on.....

WOOL IS A GLUE

 Yesterday I pursued my fascination with felting by attending a full day workshop on Nuno felting which was conducted by a very talented, creative tutor.  Most people felt using bright colours, but I really want to mainly use the natural colour of my camelids.  However I was prepared for one day to play with colourful tissue silk fabric and colourful wool and silk fibre to learn the procedures which will enable me to Nuno felt with my alpaca fleeces.  It was great starting with a blank canvas and watching 10 women produce their own interpretations of the the tutor's creations.

At the end of the day I had produced 4 items.  Each one doesn't really represent a finished article, but rather will remain as samples of techniques learnt.
The main thing we were told to remember is that wool is a glue. 

THE CUFF The cuff is made from a piece of ancient (about 40 years old) green lace and the blue wool added to the middle gathers the lace during the felting process.  Before felting, I added pieces of purple material (remnants of an evening dress made over 20 years ago) and then chunks of green silk.  The blue wool in the middle also extends at the ends to make ties with the possibility of  the article being a wristband.

THE BLACK AND GREEN OBJECT.  This piece is a work in progress and may end up a necklace.  The black strand which holds it together is alpaca wool and then I added strips of green tissue silk and then black lace and then chunks of orange silk.  I am going to play a little more with the green tissue silk and may add beads along the way.

THE BLUE TISSUE SILK.  This piece was an exercise in adding wool to the silk to produce the gathering effect.   I also leant how to add wool to the ends as well.

 

THE ORANGE STRING.  This again is a work in progress as a series of these are made and then you put them all together to make a rather beautiful necklace.  Wool was added down the middle, then I put a piece of spun wool on top which extends to make the ends and finally I added some white silk.  The felting process gathers the orange tissue silk which may eventually fold around the centre or it may stay flat.  Either look is a possibility.

My main aim of learning the technique of Nuno felting is to produce more usable products like scarves or maybe to enhance the edge of a skirt.  Then again I might just like to dabble with colour every now again and play with beads and sequins......  The trouble is the weather will eventually cool down and my vege gardens are calling for a lot of attention.  Play time might have to be after some earnest toiling outside.