Elvenspider's Craft Journal

This summer has been pretty eventful, to say the least. In fact, it was so much so that for the past while I had been getting some signs to slow down, such as weird occurrences and odd dreams. I didn’t care to listen until late last week…

Apparently my nickname is now ‘Speedy.’ Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious. No cast needed.

At one point [I'm guessing Thursday night] I had split a sesamoid bone in half. Imagine it as a small kneecap under the big toe. Suffice to say this has put a bit of a damper on my walking spirits as I had been hoping to Walk to Rivendell by the end of Autumn.

My pain tolerance is wacky sometimes; I wasn’t even going to go to the hospital as I thought I had only pulled a muscle, but El insisted and so we went.

I’m giving myself at least two weeks to take time away from my faster-paced tasks. I think I’ll be focusing most on reading, sketching and just soaking up a beautiful and calm summer.

Take care, all.

El and I had set up a ‘lazy’ garden this Spring [adding a total of 3 four foot square boxes] as we didn’t want to spend a lot of time working over a regular garden in the hot months but wanted to have a good supply of cheap and healthy herbs.

As the months passed, we’ve learned the secret to a lush garden was to keep plants hydrated and basically neglect them for everything else. No pesticides, fertilizers, digging or pampering needed. Weeding was a cinch and took less than 10 min every month.

While we had some unwanted bugs grace our garden, just about every bug we spotted lying amongst our plants were beneficial ones such as dragonflies, ladybugs and daddy-longlegs. No chemicals means our good bug friends could enjoy their smorgasbord without a sore tummy.

The herbs in the nearest box from bottom, counter-clockwise: parsley, chives, runner beans (trailing throughout), sage, mint (left to bolt), and rosemary. Far off [unsettled] boxes are mostly marigolds and beans for show.

I’ve literally got a surplus of herbs on my hands now and have been drying/freezing bunches for winter use. I am especially proud of my parsley which has sprigs nearing a foot in length and the potency is quite a few times stronger than ones from my local grocery store. Wow!

A quick stonework update on my recent dollshouse.

The walls outside are pretty much finished. No shingles (and other stuff) yet as I’m still pondering if I should keep going with cardboard or switch to real wood.

The windows are blocked out for now since I’d like a bit of mystery on the interior until it has more work on it.

I’m really impressed with how the stones turned out, far more life-like than I was expecting. They are all made of egg-carton and the ‘grout’ is a homemade recipe I’ve mixed up. It’s easy to apply and best of all…is crack resistant. I use it for walls and even ceiling designs.

Note: The ruler is in inches and the full height is 9″ tall.

A special thanks goes out to a plethora of online teachers and tutorials, especially the one by Carol Jones (http://www NULL.miniland NULL.ca/EggClass1 NULL.html) for this part of the project. It helped give me an idea of how the stones work together.

I’ve been working on a dollhouse (DH) for my Monster Closet post, and experimenting with new-to-me miniature building techniques.

The house is roughly 1/4 finished (sans furnishings) so there’s lots to do. I’m enjoying the stages of the project although some things like cutting hundreds of shingles, floorboards, etc. can be a bit tedious.

As it has been a busy summer so far, full of gardening and other outdoorsy projects, I expect to finish the exterior by mid July.

Btw, the side window is an inch and a half tall. The whole building tops roughly 23cm/9inches tall: about as big as a lunchbox.

It has been nearly a month since I announced I was going to try out Vermicomposting. Time for an update!

The picture on the left is how my bin currently looks. I add in more bedding every week but most of it is starting to break down and look like actual compost.

I’ve definitely learned a lot more about it from a hands-on approach, and have more useful tips I can share with you.

Keep it Simple!

After much frustration with trying to maintain a double-stacked bin, I’ve decided to scratch it in favor of single beds with no holes, save for the lids. For me, separate beds have saved much more time in maintenance and greatly reduced my worrying about issues such as worms crawling out, the bin drying up too fast, and mites wanting to roam.

The bins with holes on the bottoms are now going outside in one of my recently cleared compost bins to eat up extra garden scraps this season. I’ll toss in a few worms from my indoor bin but I’m expecting the ones already outside to want to crawl up into the bin to get the goods. Though they’re not the same as red wigglers, a little extra help is always welcome.

A Mitey Issue

Mites…I never expected they would be such an issue for this bin. A few here or there is fine as it’s a sign of a healthy bin but sometimes new bins can get an explosion of them and mine was no exception.

While they didn’t really appear to want to leave the bin, it made me uncomfortable to think that they just mite be exploring the house. My first quick-fix of this was using masking tape on the bottom lid under the bin to deter them from crawling out.

This idea worked well but they still crawled all over the top lid so if I were to put it to the side while checking on the worms they’d hop off onto the floor. Oh no!

I’ve also discovered mites have an uncanny ability to crawl right across a thick layer of petroleum jelly so my best deterrent right now is the tape. I read watermelon could be used as bait to remove them but mine don’t seem to like it!

Small vinegar traps are the next option I’ll be trying out. Another idea I may try is to just leave the lid completely off with a layer of newspaper over top and tape along the inside rim.

Summing up

Even with the mite problem, my worm bin is doing pretty good. The worms are voracious eaters and have consumed much more of their bedding than I had expected. This was quickly balanced by adding in a good amount of newspaper and cardboard each week. I’ll keep doing this until the bin appears to stay at least 2/3 full and looks a lot more like compost, then I’ll prepare to start up a new bin.

With all that I have learned about vermicomposting I only wish I had started up a bin earlier!

New Bin Tips

• Some worms will try to crawl out of the bin for the first few days. They’re just confused and not yet used to your bin. Put them back in and leave a bright light over the bin to encourage them to hide below.
• A tablespoon or two of crushed egg shells mixed into the bedding every week helps the worms digest their food better and reduces the acid in a bin. Alternatively, you can add a small sprinkle of it with each new serving of scraps.
• Don’t bother with purchasing a humidity monitor for your bin. Looking for condensation on the lid or touching the soil is more than enough to tell if your bin needs more or less moisture.
• You can keep high moisture down by keeping the lid off, rotating the compost every couple days, and/or adding in new dry bedding.
• While the worms need moist bedding to breathe/move, the bedding shouldn’t be wetter than a rung out washcloth. It shouldn’t be dryer than that either! Keep a misting bottle just for this purpose and don’t be tempted to mist every time you check on the bin. It’s not a tropical plant.
• Put the garden tool you use for aerating the bin on a layer of masking tape so mites don’t crawl off it and onto your floor.
• A little mold will appear on occasion. It sometimes happens when newspaper shreds or food are clumped together. If it’s a big chunk of mold just toss it out and aerate your bin.
• Every new worm bin could use a good litre or two of fresh soil from your garden to start off.
• Don’t bake or alter any garden soil to kill the organisms, the worms need these the most otherwise they can get protein poisoning from too much food (and not enough bacteria) and begin to look disfigured or die.
• Adding new soil however may introduce new creatures (like mites!) so keep a sharp eye on your bin.
• A stabilized bin can basically be ignored for a week without an issue. A new bin needs to be checked on every day.
• Don’t fret too much about your bin unless something is really wrong with it (ie, all worms look sickly or are dying). If you’re paying attention to your worms daily you’ll soon recognize the starting signs of a bin’s instability and can prevent the issue from occurring.
• If you tell others about your worm bin, expect to have people you don’t even know ask you about your bin and refer or introduce you to others as The Worm Lady/Guy…

That’s all for this update, I hope you found it helpful for your own bins! If you have any tips to share please feel free to comment.^^

This is a partial tutorial on how to compost with worms indoors. There are lots of tutorials out there with quite a few different ways of composting so if you’d like more information then search for words such as, “Vermicomposting” or “How to set up a worm bin”.

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We’ve finally gone ahead and ordered a pound of Red Wiggler (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Eisenia_foetida) worms for vermicomposting indoors. They will arrive in a few days and the bin is already half-rotting. They’re going to love it!

I was a little hesitant earlier in the year to get the worms as I wanted to thoroughly research the topic and feel confident enough about knowing everything to do with setting up a worm bin before I started. I certainly didn’t want to make mistakes and end up with a smelly mess! It turned out vermicomposting is really quite simple and easy to maintain.

I’ve decided to go with a double stacking bin for my first indoor worm bin. There are holes on the bottoms of both bins so the worms can crawl up to the next bin when the first is composted and I can continue the cycle indefinitely. This video tutorial (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=aFFTNv2cE34&feature=fvw) via TheCompostGuy has a nice setup which is quite similar to how I’ve set up my own bin.

Here are the pics I’ve got of my first bin, sans worms. The first one is of the first layer of cardboard while the other has some food scraps. The second bin will have to wait until the worms are done with the first.

Tips I’ve found useful…

• You need Red Wigglers (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Eisenia_foetida) for these types of bins. The bigger earthworms in your garden like deep soil and don’t compost things as fast as the wigglers.
• To collect your greens put them in two air-tight bins. I use old margarine containers by the kitchen sink. When one is full I toss it in the freezer for a day and fill up the other in the meantime.
• Freezing scraps and letting them thaw out in the bin not only helps to decompose the greens faster, but helps to keep the worms cool in the hotter months!
• Make sure to check the moisture and ph of your bin every now and then, you don’t want it too acidic or wet: the worms will not like it and may die.
• Your bin won’t ever overflow with worms, but they can easily double in population in a couple month’s time. Remove some worms so that even more will grow by planting some in your compost bins outside or better yet give them to friends and teaching them how to compost with worms indoors.
• Glossy magazines won’t work well in the compost but non-glossy colored newspaper can still be composted.
• A healthy worm bin should only ever smell like fresh earth. If it smells rotten then you may have too much wet/greens in it. Correct it quickly by removing some green and/or adding in some dry brown material to soak up the moisture.

If you’ve got a worm bin already going or are thinking of starting one up let me know as I’d love to hear about it!

Update: Nearly a month after starting this worm project I made a new post about my insights and struggles with the worm bin. Please check it out!

This is my first ever crochet project. Seriously. I have named it The Granny Ball™.

Perhaps surprisingly to some, it is also my first crochet failure.

If you’ll believe, this was originally intended to be a granny square. Like, those squares you crochet then sew together into a blanket… Somewhere in there I slipped a stitch, discovered the decrease a row later, and then decided to keep decreasing till it became a ball.

While I think doilies are cute, I never really liked the thought of actually crocheting anything till today. Perhaps it’s due to a forgotten childhood ‘granny trauma’ of being almost smothered in crochet blankets or whatnot. I’ll never know why, but I do know this new hobby is going on the shelf for a long while.

As I don’t like to be wasteful, this is now a toy for my house bunny. It has been stuffed with tissue paper and I’ll be keeping a good eye on her as she plays with it. Bunnies are notorious for attempting to eat anything that isn’t bolted down, and they’ll probably give it a try even if it is!

Just finished making the first rug for my Lotro diorama, the building itself is still a WIP. If you play the LoTRO (http://www NULL.lotro NULL.com/) mmo then you’ll definitely recognize this rug as it’s not only a housing/vendor item (http://www NULL.dawnsong NULL.org/LotRO/housing/floor_small NULL.htm) in game, but is also found in many prominent buildings of Bree. (click image for full size)

I absolutely adore this rug. I’m not even sure if it will match the theme I have in mind. But nevertheless it was very fun to do! And was also my very first embroidery project.

As you can see, I’ve also included a photo of the underside so you can roughly guess as to how I stitched it together. I also took a bit of crafting liberty with the edging and it flows just as nicely.

The cloth was made of a stretchy canvas-like cotton I had on hand. It dyed ‘okay’ with my own dye mix but I had the red strengthened with permanent marker to give that extra richness.

I also wanted the rug to look a little used and not as battered as the ones in the major buildings of Bree. What turned out was better than I had hoped for, especially considering I was first intending to make the rug as a knitted piece!

I hope you like this rug as much as I enjoyed making it.^^

I love to craft in real life far more than I do in MMO’s but unfortunately I rarely feel as productive as I do in game. I had thought to myself, “Perhaps I have too many hobbies?” but then immediately squashed out that negative thinking!

I love hobbies. I have polymath tendencies to constantly want to learn and try out new things, and all the more if they’re rare or uncommon loves which fit well with my values or goals in my life.

The biggest problem however is trying to keep everything together and not losing track of what needs to be done and what issues or specific crafting mats have stopped me in the past. It can get very overwhelming in the mind to remember it all, not to mention, there is often an over-flowing of materials in the craft room as well!

The more hobbies one has, usually the slower a crafter is; since they are learning and sometimes relearning their trades with each new project. Mistakes happen as one tries to re-focus their specialty and it can get ugly as well as discouraging.

Well, I was chatting with El today about this and how I like to attempt new things and mentioned how I dislike feeling so bogged down with trying to remember what goes with what and what mistakes to avoid.

Then it dawned on me…

I was suddenly reminded of a certain little Scholar item in Lotro called the “Torn Craftsman’s Diary (http://lotro NULL.allakhazam NULL.com/db/item NULL.html?lotritem=1501)“. It was such a wonderful thought, having an old and worn craft diary. But it also seemed like a silly idea. “I already have an idea book, what would a craft book do for me?” I thought.

Then I realized the mistake in that thinking, “Wait, cooks have recipe books with special family recipes (which they adore) and tons of family notes on them…so why not polymath crafters?!” Immediately I went searching for ideas on the Internet on how to categorize such a wonderful diary.

Having found absolutely nothing of use, I decided to set about my own list. Sure there are countless instruction books out there, but I saw nothing online which could help a multi-material/polymath crafter to organize their trade.

So here is my experimental list. You are very welcome to help me add ideas to it, try it out, and share your thoughts on how well/worse off it made your crafting experience.

Materials

• 1  Binder (or a bound, blank book if you’re really brave)
• Lined, blank and/or grid binder paper.
• Page dividers (5 will do. You can color a section if you’re using a blank book)
• Clear paper protectors
• One-page yearly calendar (see below)

Front page is your mission statement and index. Your mission statement can be anything truly inspiring to YOU, even a quote if you like. I do recommend adding in what YOU want to come out of your book, as it will feel more personal. eg, “This book is to help me bring about more joy-filled crafts, more organization, better use of crafting time” and so on…

You can then list the index for the sections, like I did:

1. WIP: One page per current project, denoting start time, what gave you the motivation to do this, what expectations you have, what questions/blocks you forsee and how you are dealing with them, etc.
2. Finished: As above, only you can add the end date, and a picture of the completed project with notes on where it went (sell, gift, etc) and what you liked most about doing the project.
3. Recipes: Add your favorite paper mache mixes, polymer blends, best baking times, moss-growth tips, or whatever your crafting needs are.
4. Special Notes: Add a calendar here of your usual crafts around certain holidays (so you don’t forget!), what projects/recipes you absolutely will never, NEVER try again (and why). Best places to buy certain craft items, or urls to online shops/blogs you don’t always frequent save for certain times of the year.
5. Future Ideas: If anything plucks at your creative chord, write it down! One day you might be bored or without a muse so one quick read over your ideas section will have you jumping and ready to craft again.

Each section is now easy for you to find and place and move your project ideas depending on where they’re at in terms of ideas or finished products.

With the binder style, you can move a WIP straight to the Finished section, a bound book will make planning a bit more difficult. But nothing looks as pretty as an old, leather-bound diary with tons of completed crafts and ideas brimming within. So it’s up to you what to try out.

And that’s it, now let’s all get to crafting. And please let me know how it goes; I would love if you would share a picture of your craft diary or blog about it.

Note: I’ll be giving updates over the year as to how my craftman’s diary is working out. I absolutely love this idea and I’m grateful for LoTRO for having that Scholar item in the game to inspire me.

I’m also thankful for my husband El who is such a wonderful encourager to follow one’s dreams. Thank you!

Happy Ostara…Easter… or whateveryouwanttocallit! I hope you’re all having a great weekend.

I very much enjoyed the holiday this year. Had lots of fun dressing up like a bunny and bringing smiles to people’s faces wherever El and I went around town.

Also tested out our new camera this week. It is working wonderfully, and here’s proof:

If you’d like to see more of my Easter/Ostara bunny images (and other art) then feel free to hop! on over to my dA site (http://eirien-r NULL.deviantart NULL.com).^^