A Little Yarn Bombing

A couple of weeks ago I did a little private yarn bombing project.  I was inspired by someone near and dear to me who had been doing a lot of work with rocks in her yard. Once the idea struck me, I couldn't wait to do this.

OK, so I covered 4 rocks and one brick, for a little extra humor.  

  

I began with this rock and it remains my favorite.  This one is crocheted. I made up the design as I went along, "engineering" it to fit.  

It was a fun challenge to figure out how to crochet something to fit around an ovoid.  

The rest were just rectangles that I knit on relatively large needles and sewed closed around the rocks.  I decided to make plastic tags for each rock that said 1/5, 2/5, etc., so that my victim could figure out that there were five to find.  When I placed them in her yard, some were more obvious than others .

When I am surrounded by rocks like these -

...it really doesn't seem THAT bizarre to cover rocks with fuzzy yarn.

To see some really amazing yarn bombing projects, check out yarnbombing.com.  One recent project that is particularly stunning is shown in the post http://yarnbombing.com/hello-spring.  I'd love to know how they got the fire department to help with the installation!

Just try it, already!

Bwaaahaha! That's what I told myself, "Just try it, already!", and look what happened!  I really can't believe that this worked out as well as it did.  

Because I save broken glass stuff  (I can hear you, Eric!), I had two broken wine glasses from the set that belonged to my parents, one glass with a broken base, and one with a broken top.  It occurred to me that maybe, just possibly, I could use the torch to combine the good parts to make a new glass.  I figured I really didn't have anything to lose.  

I couldn't believe that the glass didn't fracture while heating up or cooling down.  And I can't believe how well the junction turned out.  I hoped to do something besides a lump where I melted them together, but I didn't expect to be so happy with the connection.  This "crystal" glass seems to have a fairly low melting point, but not the sensitivity to thermal shock that the "soft glass" rods that I have for bead making have.  Score!

Before you start bringing me broken wine glasses to fix, keep in mind that I think this was beginner's luck!  A martini glass that I tried to re-attach to its base did not work.  So it goes back in the garden.

Uh, those weren't the only glasses to break.  This is one that I slumped in the kiln until it was flat.  I did this a while ago.

Pike Place Market Secret Message

A couple of weeks ago when I was at the Pike Place Market I noticed for the very first time what looked suspiciously like a Morse code message worked into the tiles on the wall in the women's bathroom.  I think I actually said "Ha!" out loud when it suddenly popped out at me.  I scribbled the patterns of dots and dashes down on a scrap of paper, in the process receiving some funny looks from other women in the bathroom, and looked it up later.  Yep, much to my delight, I discovered that the bathroom wall message says....

"meet"

"the"

"pro-"

"-duc-"

"-cer"

(In case you are wondering, taking photos of the walls in the busy bathroom did feel really awkward...)

The Morse code message is a play on this sign on the outside of the Market building - 

Perhaps you might call that phrase the "motto" of the Pike Place Market.  I'm not sure when that bathroom was remodeled with the new wall tiles, but I'm sure that it has been it a while.  Funny it never caught my eye before.  Nick verified for me yesterday that the same message is on the wall of the men's room.

I shouldn't have been surprised by the secret code message.  Here is the tile floor at the entry to the women's bathroom -

THAT has been there forever. Actually, the tiled floor of that very bathroom at the Market is what inspired my choice of tile for the bathroom floor in my studio several years ago.  Voila!  -