Tufa pots and soap

Only days away from our first craft show of the year. We’ll be heading for Pinetop on Friday and I have to say we are both looking forward to a couple of days away from the heat. I wish the alpacas could come with us. I know they must be getting just as sick of the 100 plus temps. On the positive side, the evenings are defiantly cooling down and the animals have been responding to that by leaving the comfort of the fans and coolers early in the evening and browsing the pastures. I even caught them at quick pronk.
I’ve been trying out some new projects; felted soap and tufa pots. Tufa is a type of porous stone that is used for making planters. A fake version can be made using a cement mix. We further modified the recipe to use items available around the property and I made a couple of pots. The results were less than satisfactory. I think I made the mix too wet so the sides kept slumping down. Genius that I am, I used a big glass mason jar wrapped in plastic to keep the center open. Ever try to chisel a glass jar out of a lump of concrete? The jar survived, the pot, not so much. My second attempt I used dirt to fill the center. That one came out a bit better, but it’s still pretty ugly, a pot only a mother could love.
Not one to be easily discouraged, I’m already making plans for how I will change the next batch.
The soap came out much better, though Brian is a bit dubious about it (people are grossed out by a hair on soap, and you cover the whole thing with it???? He can be so supportive.) Even dressing them up and displaying them nicely did little to change his mind.

Men.

Pinetop-Lakeside Art show and other odds and ends

Hi again. I’ve been remiss in keeping up with the blog. It’s getting to be that busy time of year again. I’ve been spending most of my time getting all the odds and ends projects finished up for the upcoming show in Pinetop. I hadn’t realized just who many different projects I had worked on over this summer until I started trying to get them packed up. Hopefully I’ll come home with a few less, but no matter what, I’m looking forward to this show. We have several people coming to demonstrate different fiber arts. There should be at least one person spinning every day, plus we’ll have to drum carders that the public can play with and I’ll have a small frame loom if anyone wants to try their hand at weaving.
The show info from the Pinetop-Lakeside Chamber of Commerce website:
Sep 26, 2009-34th Annual Fall Artisan`s Festival 9-4 pm both days $2 admission
Located at the Mountain Meadow Recreation Complex
Contact Information: Ruth McBride @ 928-367-4290

For all the people that have been wondering, Luc has recovered from his heat stress and no longer gets his daily dip in the pool. Go Luc!

Yet another project, here is some bamboo I spun and dyed. For some reason, I ended up with just about as much dye on me as on the yarn. Apparently I was in slob mode.