More of the Busy Week

Last Saturday some friends came for a visit.  We were walking around the backyard, and one of them saw a patch of grapes that hubby and I had missed.  We went out Sunday to pick and got another 8 1/2 pounds of grapes.  I turned some of them into booze, the rest will be more juice for jelly. 

I had actually forgotten about the rest of the grapes.  I just put them on the stove.  Eesh, that would have been bad, all that work molding in the fridge...

I went down to the ditch this week and picked some more cattail leaves.  The ones I'd picked before are all dried and ready to try out some basketweaving.  I suspect that I'm going to enjoy it, so wanted to get more supplies laid in. 

I tied the first ones in bundles and hung them to dry, and that worked pretty well except that the leaves shrunk and the bundles fell apart when I took them off the wall. This time, I took a stout needle and some 1/4" ribbon and strang them together to hang dry.  There weren't really any problems with tying them in bunches, but this will make them easier to handle when they're dry.  Once the bunches fell apart, the leaves were rather cumbersome. 

Basketry is going to have to wait, though, because Halloween is coming up before you know it, and I have to make costumes for the grandkids.  Thing 1 is going to be a velociraptor, Thing 2 wants to be Spongebob, and Thingette wants to be a butterfly.  I've started working on the patterns.  I'm knocking out the butterfly first because it will be easiest.  Spongebob won't be too bad, but the velociraptor is going to be a real challenge. 

I'm really pretty excited about putting these together.  It's going to be fun.  I've really got to get busy, though.  I'm pretty good as a crunch player with this kind of thing, and there's really plenty of time to get these done, but the kid will be driving me crazy if she doesn't see progress.  She's a worrier.

FT