The Wigglebutt Blog

I kind of had to spend  a few extra hours a day at work recently. I usually work early and open the shop at 8 and I have a young lady that comes in later and closes up at 6. I can usually get out of there by 2:30 or 3:00. Well for a couple of weeks recently, my young friend didn't have transportation, so we car-pooled. That meant for some long days for both of us. I took advantage of being stuck at the shop by spending some quality time at my enamelling station . I have accumulated quite a few beads and I figured I had better, at least try, to make some time to make something with them. The one above is a work in progress. I just thought it was such a happy color, I wanted to include it☺ And just when I thought our "one big summer project" for the year was done when we finished the greenhouse........ I finally convinced the stubborn man that lives here that the grass  was not going to get green, no matter how ...

You are probably tired of hearing about the greenhouse  but I gotta share....It is summer after all;~) Time for all things 'gardening'☺ My new rain barrel☺ Since I wasn't keen on having a hose stretched across my driveway all summer or having to stretch it out every time I needed to water the greenhouse, I installed a rain barrel. Already .....LOVE.....IT! It rained all day yesterday and we had to empty some water a couple of times. May have to install an overflow spigot before long☺ Saturday was cool and cloudy but I was able to put these Flowers and veggies waiting to be planted in containers.  Here Here Here And a few here. (This is the perennial garden and I just add a couple new ones each year and hope for the best) Many of the ones planted last year are coming back☺ Once I got the annuals out of the greenhouse it was time to rearrange and get ready for tomato and pepper production (I hope). I don...

This is one of our sheds.  When we first moved here and got dogs we decided that they would be 'outside' dogs.   But in Alaska, in the winter,  you need to have an 'inside' of some sort, so we put in a doggie door on the  heated shed. Keeping them outside lasted about a minute;~) And they totally became house dogs. But the 'dog house' remained until about three weeks ago. (Yes, that is snow back there) I was able to cut all of the roof supports the same length with the same angles, so that went pretty quickly. But, since the ground slopes down towards the shed AND slopes down from the back of the greenhouse to the front, every wall stud had to be 'cut to fit', so that took a little longer☺ (That's not just perspective, the short wall really is shorter on one end  than it is on the other) I made the door out of 2x2s. I love my door☺ The outside is complete! You probably can't see them,...

I've been away.... I've been busy..... Every chance I get at work,  I go upstairs to my new work area to practice what I learned in my workshop . The last couple of weeks at work have been ramping up to the deadline  for changing out winter studded tires for summer tires. And, even though we have had DRY pavement for a month now, people are, (as usual) in a panic to get their studded tires off so they don't get a ticket ( $50 per studded tire) as of May 1st. So my 'extra' time has been ~ NOT...... But, before the rush I did have a chance to work on a few things I didn't get a chance to show you. I totally love the organic wire shapes And I have already ordered more of the filigree beads..... lots of them.... cuz I can't seem to do anything halfway☺

I recently had a reason to sort pennies. I had a large cider jar full of change. First I had to separate the pennies from the other coins, then I had to separate all of the pennies by date. 1982 or older ( mostly copper)  which you can heat with a torch & 1983 or newer ( mostly zinc) which you can't. They will melt.... pretty quickly as a matter of fact;~) So, anyway, as I was sorting it became clear why a law was passed a while back saying it was illegal to melt down pennies for their copper. (The copper in a penny that is 1982 or older is actually worth $0.0249. Almost 2½ times face value) The ratio was about 5 to 1, bad versus good ~ for my needs anyway.  So what to do with this? Well....... I could roll them up, or................ I could make something crafty with them☺ Oh!..... and look what is currently occupying my dining table. (It's kinda blurry:( Roma tomatoes, serrano and jalapeno pepp...

Well, I told you I was taking an e-course, an online workshop.   It started last Monday and I am having a blast! So far I have made Balled headpins. Some wire thingies and some paddle headpins. And some awesome beads. The kit that I got came with the colors I used here, but I wanted to try some other colors so I ordered a few more colors (Ican already tell I will never have enough colors LOL!) and as soon as they got here I headed up to my work area to light up the torch and it wouldn't... light,  that is. So I got a new torch. It is different than my old torch and now I am having trouble finding "the sweet spot" in the flame to hold the beads to get good color. I am ending up with a lot of 'muddy brown' beads. Eventually I will get it down and then I will show off some more pretties.

Well, it's actually an e-Course and I am so excited!! Late last year I bought this   Then I asked for this for Christmas. Since then I have been trying to figure out where I am going to be able to play with my new toys. I live in a log cabin with somewhat low-ish ceilings, except in the living room which is a cathedral style.  And since it is a log cabin with three different types of heat, oil heat stove, propane heat stove and wood stove, we have a smoke alarm on every floor and they are very, very sensitive. Opening windows for any length of time in the winter is not a comfortable proposition. So I had pretty much decided that I would have to wait for summer. Then this e-Course  came up and I just had to sign up. Still don't have a place in the house where I can set up, so what to do? I had an epiphany (gosh I've wanted to use that word for so long:). At the shop we have a very large loft space that is used for stor...