The end of the Royal Show… and some show and tell

Well, my attempts to keep our saltbush plants from being trampled had partial success.  The bunting was apparently attractive enough that it was stolen several times (but survived gale force winds for a couple of days).  I had initially planned to make very time consuming and beautiful bunting, and there are great tutorials for making it online.  Then, as I contemplated the enormity of the task, a friend told me she would just take her overlocker to each triangle and then overlock the triangles into a strip and that she had success doing this in the past.  I decided that I’d take this lower fi approach, and it was a great use of some of my huge stash of bias binding (which I used to join the triangles on some strips) and some fabric that I bought as offcuts from bedsheet manufacturing years ago.

It took plenty of time to make metres and metres of it anyway and I was glad not to have made over engineered loveliness for this particular application, especially once so much of it was stolen!  After I had replaced about 4 metres of bunting once I was dismayed to find that it had gone within a day.  And, the antique overlocker my grandma gave me when her eyesight reached the point where she hadnt been able to use it for years had a hissy fit and needed to go off to be repaired.  This is unusual.  That overlocker is a workhorse and has responded to irregular maintenance for many years.  My grandma died years ago but I often think of her while using her very dependable machine.

So, in short, the last replacement piece of bunting is extremely low fi… triangles zig zag stitched onto a piece of recycled cotton thread I rescued from a sad old jumper.  However, with one day of the show left to go, it was still there when I went to pick some leaves from the tree, and I found two geckos living under bark at the base of the tree when I checked under it for white ants (sadly, evidence of white ants as well as geckos).  I’ve never seen lizards on this tree before, so this was very exciting!

Here, finally, are my three braids from the twice-run  Eucalyptus dyepot.  I am not sure that the extra-long heating time has made any difference at all, but the low heating temperature has retained the softness of the roving very well.

Meanwhile, I have sieved out all the leaves and bark, added more dried leaves and my smallest piece of iron pipe, applied heat, and we’ll see how that goes… Finally, here is another tea cosy.  It’s made from merino dyed with Eucalyptus–for the orange– and Silky Oak (Grevillea Robusta)–for the yellow– with felted shapes spun into the yarn.  Once again, this is based on the Fun and Fast tea cozy by Funhouse Fibers.