felt phone pouches

Well, looks like my ribs aren't smashed after all. They feel so much better today, they must have just been bruised.

Mind you, the painkillers the doc gave me helped some...

Still, its so good to be able to breath normally again!

I finally got around to taking pics of some phone pouches I'd made. Most of these were made before Christmas as gifts and the last one I made this week for myself.

This one was for a friend named Matthew (hence the M) its my first attempt at making something 'masculine'... I used a felted grey jumper and some suede fabric to make this one. I used some of the elastic bottom of the jumper for the side of the pouch.

I made this one for my friend Patrice. She's a cat person. As in, she owns a cat. Well, so does Matthew, but I couldn't really give a guy a pouch with a cat on it... just didn't seem right...

The pics aren't great... I apologise. Somewhere in the mess of the casita is my lightbox. I'll get it out again one day.

Patrice's pouch is made from felt squares, tan inside and dark blue outside. I use hair elastics for the ties on most of these.

The one on the left below is made of a piece of felt square on the outside and a bit of felt I wet felted on the inside. Its much thicker than the blue one as my wet felted bits are thicker than bought squares.

FYI The little critter on the outside is meant to be a monster, not a cat. Just so you know.

I rolled the inner lining over at the top and made a simple close with buttons on both sides. I decided to keep that one for myself cause I love the little critter, but my mobile was too long for it. I had to do some surgery and re-make it.

What I did was undo the fold over top, add another piece of the wet felted stuff, back it with some leftover tan, and add the buttons and elastic to the front. I think its much cuter this way.

Then this week I got bored sitting around doing nothing so I made another pouch just 'cause I could.

And cause I never put away all the felting stuff.

I've always loved the etch-a-sketch ipad covers and stuff I've seen on Pinterest so I made my own.

I used the same felted grey sweater I used for Matthew's pouch for the body, I even used some of the elasticated knit from the sleeves to make a kind of neck opening.

They may not be the most practical cause you actually have to take the phone out to use it, but they're fun and they offer a certain amount of protection from rough handling. They also keep the phone safe from scratches when inside a handbag. 

The only thing that concerns me a little is that my poodles have shown a taste for felt and I'm worried that one day one of them might grab the phone in its pouch and think "Yummm, this is nice. Soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside."

z

the big questions

Seeing as the this whole busted rib episode has slowed me down, I've had a lot of time to think.

Most of the time I try to drown out that voice in the back of my head that asks the hard questions. Like:

Is this all there is to life?
Am I on the right path?
Is this job what I want to do forever?
Should I aggressively try to build up my own grooming business and work for myself?
Should I try to be a serious blogger?
What alternatives are available to me?
Why was I born?
Where is the chocolate?

Most of the time I succeed in silencing the voice.

Its easy enough to do.

I put on a dvd. I read a book. I make things.

Just looking at my To Do list is enough to befuddle my brain into numbness.

But the questions remain. Lurking. Waiting for that moment I let my guard down and don't have a power tool or clippers in my hand to fend them off.

Really. What do I want to be when I grow up? I'm still asking myself that question. My body is slowly falling apart but my brain is still that of a lost 13 year old.

I've said this before and I stand by it: the more choices you have in life, the harder it is to make a decision.

I'm so lucky. I'm creative and there are so many things I love/like/want/enjoy doing. Its hard to pick just one and concentrate on it.

It irks me to see people with little talent and creativity make a success of their lives, but its cause they pick something and work at it. I take my creativity for granted... I can do almost anything I put my mind to, so I do something, master it, then move on.

Story of my life. Jack of all trades, master of none.

I do a little bit of everything and in the end, I get nowhere.

I can figure out how to do things and I can actually follow through with them. I even finish things occasionally 99% of the time. But how can I pick something and concentrate on that and become successful at that - in a way that translates into an income?

Ah.

Now there's a hard question.

z

busy bees

When I say 'busy bees', I mean real bees, not me. I'm lying around the house trying not to move and work up a sweat in the heat. 

And not to put strain on my aching ribs which have put a limit on the amount of oxygen I can pull into my lungs at any given time...

Do you have bumble bees where you are? We do. I'd never seen these bees till I came to live in Tasmania. They're big and round and drone kind of like the Boeing 747 of the bee world.

Have I mentioned I love my new camera? Its a cherry red Nikon Coolpix L830 that I got almost new on ebay.

Have I mentioned I love ebay?

It has an incredible 30x optical zoom (incredible when I had a 3x with my old camera). Its very handy when you want to take pics of animals in the distance. Like the geese.

Of course, full zoom needs a tripod or you just get blur, but I have one of those. A Velbon tripod, in great condition.

I got it on ebay.

Naturally.

Did I mention we're one goose down? We had three geese originally, they had 3 babies. Two girls and one boy.

Unfortunately one of the girls got into the yard before Christmas and the dogs killed her.

I was really upset. But to be fair, they did leave her when I called them. It was just too late. They'd already broken her neck and she died in my arms.

Wayne and I buried her near the dam.

Everyone said "Why didn't you eat her? She'd have made a great Christmas dinner"...

How could we? She was our goose. She wasn't bred to eat.

One of our new chickens is going broody. She's trying to nest in a sky box in the chicken coop. No forethought on her part. I mean, what'll happen to any chicks she has soon as they step out of the box?

Splat.

Anyway, we've been taking her eggs and she's been getting increasingly cranky about it. Wayne thought that maybe we should just catch her and let her go broody in Stalag 13*. That way any chicks won't have to skydive before they can walk, and will be less likely to be crow food.

I'm not sure I want chicks.

We have 4 chickens and currently get 4 eggs a day. Its hard for us to keep up with that. Sure, with the new law saying that people with under 20 chickens can sell eggs without going through all kinds of regulations and stamping of eggs, which cancelled out the previous new law which made it illegal to sell home laid eggs without accreditation, we can sell our eggs to support our chicken habit...

But having chicks means getting roosters as well as hens.

And that means we have to make a decision: what do we do with the roosters? We can't drive them up the highway and dump them on the side of the road like so many people do. We can't bribe people to take them, or smuggle one into every visitor's bag as they're leaving. 

We can't eat them cause by the time we know they're roosters they'll have names.

Sheesh. 

Mom was wrong. I'd never make a good farmer's wife!

z

*Stalag 13: Original dog kennel on the property when we bought it. Its been used to incarcerate escape artist dogs, house roosters (given to us by a friend for the pot, and accepted by Wayne who thought 'no worries' then found he couldn't kill and eat them cause "they were cute"), and raise various clutches of ducklings to save them from aforementioned crows. I was considering converting it to a green house for winter, but hey, winter is months away and who needs a green house in summer?

anatomy of a fall

I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon. The pain killers no doubt helped some. I think I'll live.

On one of my short breaks from the ugly purple recliner I thought I'd take some photos for you.

These are the culprit tyres.

And this is a diagramatic re-enactment.

I don't care if that's not a real word.

Ouch.

Imagine me lying on my side, elbow bent underneath me bottom left, my feet up between the two tyres. Not a pretty sight. Luckily no one around with a smartphone.

Please note the gravelly clay soil. Much like cement.

On the upside, I'm getting to catch up on computer and mobile phone stuff... On the downside I'm not crossing things off my never-ending-renovation-To-Do-List.

Speaking of smartphones, did I mention my new mobile phone? New to me anyway.

I had an el cheapo mobile phone which I bought when I lost my old mobile about 4 years ago. It cost me something like $75. It was simple. Took calls, made calls. Took photos which were impossible to see on the tiny screen, and refused to open multimedia messages.

I'd been wanting a new phone for a while. Not a long time, but I was getting there.

Then one day I ran over my old phone.

I swear, I did not do it on purpose! Many won't believe that, but I swear its true.

In fact I have no idea how my mobile ended up on the other side of the driveway, near the gate.

Anyway, while lamenting my carelessness great loss on FB (as you do) cause I was going through an especially broke stage and couldn't afford a new phone... and at a time when my grooming work should have been booming, but wasn't, due to a lack of aforementioned roadkill phone...

... someone offered me an old phone.

Its a 2 year old Huawei Ascend and its my first ever smartphone.

A steep learning curve which I'm enjoying.

I am ever so grateful.

I am a big believer in doing good for people cause good will come to you from unexpected sources. I'm always giving things away to people who want or need them rather than sell them for personal gain. I've never been a "what's in it for me" person.

Then, when I need something, someone kind will give me what I need.

Like a mobile phone. Or old carpet, or a doona cover.

So I've spent today working on a logo design, editing and cropping photos, cleaning up files on my computer, learning about apps and figuring out how to fix an "insufficient storage" error on the phone.

Anyway, I leave you with a couple of pretty pics of the tyre embankment which shows that one day, this will be a pretty wall of plants and not just a row of tyres.

z