Cleaning out the shed...oh my

It is the end of the school holidays and I have returned to work. As a teacher this time (!!!) instead of a teacher's aide. I'm terrified at the prospect, but that's another story.
As I only have a few days left of 'at home time' I decided not to waste them. I'm going to clean the shed (gasp).

Some background here; when we moved to our humpy in 2008 we had built a roof to park our caravan under which included an enclosed space in which to store all the stuff not currently in use. We moved our gear in the space of two days as we both had work to go to, so everything was just sort of dumped on the ground in the shed. It's still there.

The entrance to the shed, all choked up with stuff that just wouldn't fit into the mess any more.

Inside this mess. I know it looks like a hoarder's hideout.

Anything we needed from the shed was dug out and moved into the humpy proper over the years, but there is a LOT of stuff that I obviously haven't missed or needed in there...somewhere. Also, my long suffering (and annoying) partner has stored his tools in the front part of the shed during that time.

Now I am embarking on a whole new phase of my working life (and getting a car licence as part of that), I decided that it's time to symbolically and literally clean out the clutter. I'm not sure what is in there, but it's time to find out. Most of the contents of the shed will probably go to either the dump or (preferably) to other people's sheds. I have friends who can probably use some of it.

Day one;
We (my daughter and I) moved everything from in front of the doors and cleared the first little part of the tool section. Of course it decided to rain intermittently so we had to cover everything with tarps and the black snake (I call him Brian) was disturbed by all the deconstruction happening in his winter abode and decided to emerge from the mess, sending my daughter back to the house for a few hours.

It looks much bigger without the junk

One section all ready for organising

Day 2; We continued to dig out archeological finds from the mess; two drills that haven't been used in years, ten complete door locks still in their wrapping, my six crates of Fowlers bottles for preserving food. We put together some of the metal shelves we bought from Bunnings an age ago for just this purpose and began putting things away. The work is frustratingly slow as every box in there is falling to pieces, meaning that I have to pick up things (sometimes tiny things) from the ground and find new containers for them. I am enjoying getting rid of a lot of stuff though. The work continues.

You can see some order happening

Day 3; My daughter used old coffee jars (the big glass ones) to re-home countless bolts, screws, nails and mysterious bits of metal. Now all we need are some more shelves to put them on. I am returning to work this week so work on the shed will be a lot slower for a while, it will  get done though.

Things are starting to go back into the shed.

We put up some brackets to hang things on the wall. That pile of stuff behind my partner is all his to put away.

Day 5: We continue to work on the shed project...very slowly. We found a couple of old (very dead) fridges that we are using to house my partner's tool collection which keeps all his electrical stuff out of the dust, moisture and marauding rodents. I also found a series of old hurricane lamps that I had been keeping 'just in case'. I decided to put them in the humpy as decoration, and as a backup for lighting (they are still fully functional).

All lined up

I just love old stuff

I was hoping to delay this post until the shed was a shining example of organisation and cleanliness, but it now seems that that vision is a fair way in the future so this will become a two part post. It may not seem to be any neater from my photos, but I assure you it is much better. I look forward to the day when the shed is done.

Meet Primrose the Rainbow Lorikeet

Primrose, or Prim for short

Way back in January some time we had a text from a friend who had been approached by someone with a baby bird who needed care. Of course our friend contacted us straight away, because we have become known in our area as the repository of lame ducks, flightless birds and white elephants. Of course we said to bring the baby bird over and we would see what we could do, because we are in fact the repository for all creatures great and small in need of help.

Our first report said that this baby bird was a rosella, so we emergency bought a huge bag of granivore mix (for seed eating birds like rosellas). Feeling very prepared and organised, we set up a nursery cage with soft fabric as a nest and hot water jars for heat.

Our first sight of Prim

This is what a baby rosella looks like (from a bird raising site)

When our friend delivered this baby bird in a shoe box, we had a peek inside and felt a lot less prepared; she was obviously a Rainbow lorikeet (the blue head is a dead giveaway), luckily the people who rescued her had been feeding her organic baby food (fruit and vegetable mush) which is fine for either species. If she had been fed granivore mix she would have had a very upset tummy and would possibly have died.

We had some nectivore mix (for birds that eat nectar and pollen, like lorikeets and honey eaters) in the cupboard for Barry (the Blue faced honey eater) so we fed her that for a few days until we could get some nectivore mix especially for baby birds. She was in very good condition, not dehydrated or thin at all, so her transition to humpy living was relatively easy.

Apparently she had fallen or been blown from her nest into a mud puddle in a storm, then picked up by a large dog who took her home to his place. The people who rescued her (from their dog) had just put her in a warm box and fed her, so she was still covered in dried mud and dog slobber. We were also worried that the dog may have hurt her, although after two or three days in her rescuer's hands she had not shown any sign of injury. As it turned out she had no injuries. Our first move was to give her a warm bath to remove the mud, which was causing her some irritation, as were her feathers as they grew in.

Yes, this is the 'baby in the bath' photo

It took two baths to remove the majority of the mud and Prim herself groomed the rest off. She was fed and changed just like a baby for weeks after that and just like a baby she cried at night and had to be fed on a four hourly basis. Needless to say nobody in the house got much sleep until she gained enough weight to sleep through the night. Luckily my eldest daughter took on all of the child rearing duties (making Prim a grand daughter I suppose), she feeds her, changes her cage and keeps her amused for hours at a time.

After a week more of her feathers had come through and she looked like a bird not a dinosaur

She loves to groom hair

She loves to groom herself

She sleeps on her back a lot of the time

Prim is a delight to have around, even if she is a bit naughty. She learned to fly very young and flew out the window into a tall gum tree, where she stayed for two nerve wracking days. She couldn't work out how to fly down and kept calling to us for food but not understanding that we had no way to get to her. Eventually my daughter and I took an extension ladder out to the tree and my daughter climbed up as far as she was able then coaxed Prim into trying to fly to her. Prim launched herself into the air towards my daughter, who leaned out as far as she could from the ladder and snatched Prim from the air, everyone concerned let out a startled squawk and Prim was safe once more. It was decided to clip some of her flight feathers to slow down her development a little. This is not something we usually do as it can be really hard for birds to develop flight muscles if they don't do it young, but she would have starved on her own as she was only just beginning to learn to feed herself.
Prim has become my daughter's closest feathered friend since she lost her galah George last year but we all love her and delight in her antics. She has  taken to screaming what sounds like "Up yours!!!" at my partner when he gets home from work (I don't know where she got that from) but she loves him and will make her way across the furniture, floor and sometimes dogs to get to him for a play as soon as he is sitting down. She supervises the cutting up of fruit and vegetables to feed all the birds (galahs, cockatiels, budgies, miners and a crippled finch) in the mornings, bouncing up and down on the shoulder of whoever is doing the cutting and screeching advice. She watches movies with us and loves to snuggle down to snooze in my knitting (all birds love knitting it seems) or in someone's hands. She sings along with music and really love the Hilltop Hoods, but isn't so fond of M&M (I found that strange as she often sounds like she's swearing). The joys of opening your house to creatures in need are many, they make all the work worth while. Prim will be popping up in posts for a while from now on, until she decides it is time to join the wild flocks and find herself a life.

Using old washing machines as garden beds

Here at the humpy we use everything again. My philosophy is to use, reuse, upcycle and hopefully compost anything that can't be of further use. One of the things that pass through our home fairly regularly is washing machines. I don't know why but I am hard on them. We use twin tubs to do our washing as we can save a HUGE amount of water by re-using wash water (and carefully sorting loads from cleanish to filthy) and twin tubs make it easier to bucket the used water out to water the garden. On average a washing machine will last for three years here before having some kind of catastrophic melt down, after which we fix it as best we can or buy another one (usually second hand, explaining the short life span). I have been stock piling the old machines in the yard waiting for inspiration to hit. My daughter was inspired to set them up as garden beds for vegetables recently.

Three washing machines and three chest freezers equals a lot of growing space

She took some timber rounds from the wood pile to use as legs for the new beds, this improves visibility under and around the beds (so we can see when Brian the black snake is around) and also gets the growing area above duck notice height. The washing machines and some stray chest freezers we had laying around were set up on their new legs along one wall of the humpy ready for filling with soil.

Since I have become obsessed with Hugelkultur I have been experimenting with places to put wood in the garden, this seemed like the perfect time to experiment. We collected heaps of old, half rotted branches from the ground around the humpy (within wheelbarrow distance) and filled the bottoms of the new beds. Then we used compost from the bottom of the chook pen (made from food scraps, straw, cardboard and newspaper all mixed with chook poo) to fill the rest of the beds. We planted peas, silverbeet, carrots and beetroot in the new areas.

It looks a mess, but chooks make great compost.

The peas and beetroot are up and thriving so far.

Peas at the back so they can climb the wire trellis against the wall and carrots in the front

We use pretty much anything that will hold soil to make garden beds here;

Old tires

Tanks cut in half

A trailer someone left here too long

Tell me about how you upcycle your rubbish.

New crayons from old

I have been in a real crafting frenzy this week, it's school holidays and for the first time in almost five years I don't have uni assignments pending. So I am taking this opportunity to make a heap of stuff for my Etsy store and markets, clean out some of the junk from my craft room and just plain enjoy not having to limit my time on craft stuff to get work stuff done.

When I go back to work (as a teacher this time!!!) I will be back to the daily struggle of trying to find time to do any craft, but for now...let the good times roll.

Today's offering is making new crayons by melting old ones. I cleaned out the crayon boxes at school and ended up bringing home a bucket full of broken old crayons and pastels. They have been sitting in my craft room for a term or two and today is the day I do something about it.

Lots of old crayons.

First the research;  

I found instructions for melting them directly into ice cube trays.

How to make crayons from scratch.

How to make play dough using old crayons.

How to make candles from old crayons.

How to make lip gloss from old crayons.

There is so much you can do with broken crayons that I started to wish I had more of them. 

First I tried to melt them in a silicone mold to make cute little duck shaped crayons. That's when I discovered that different brands and colours have a different melting point. Some melted and some didn't. So I melted them in a double boiler to avoid the lumpy duck outcome.

Some melt faster than others.

I spooned the melted wax into my duck mold and waited...
The resulting crayons were cute but a bit brittle, so I decided to add a little bit of beeswax to each melt to give the crayons a softer, smoother texture.

My duck mold has seen a lot of wax today

I added grated beeswax to the pot

That did the trick and the crayons were lovely little coloured ducks. My next refinement was so obvious I completely missed it while perusing all those tutorials; I decided to crush the crayons before plonking them in the double boiler to melt. I put them into a plastic bag and whacked them with a hammer until they were mush. So satisfying, and they melted faster and a lot more evenly.

My crayon crushing system

More colours.

I wiped the pot out between colours, but a lot of staining remained, this made the colour outcome somewhat...exciting and unpredictable. Just the way I like it.

My end result is some cute, but not really crisp and neat, duck crayons.

Some of my finished ducks. They are fairly neat on one side but very rough on the other.

But they work.

I am thinking of making up little packs of recycled crayons for the markets and my Etsy shop. What do you think? I have no idea what to charge for them, given that they are a waste resource, but someone may as well be using them rather than just throwing them in the bin.
I am also thinking that this activity might be fun to do with the kids at school, we could make little hearts for Mother's Day.

I wonder what else I can make from these old crayons?

Making resin drop spindles

I have been wanting to try molded resin for quite a while now; I see all those gorgeous You Tube videos about embedding wood or flowers or dead butterflies in resin and it gets my creative nature going. So off I went to order some resin online...

I did the usual internet search for tutorials and such, You Turn TV had the best information and explanations I could find about how to choose, mix and embed items in resin. Armed with this information, my resin kit, a few molds I bought on a whim on Ebay and piles of otherwise useless junk from around the house I set about making some resin stuff...

The resin and hardener that came in my kit.

Too short pencils, beads and glitter, my test embedding materials.

Resins all have a two part mixing system; you add a chemical hardener to a resin base to make a liquid which will harden to a solid over time. The time it takes to harden varies wildly due to resin type (there are three main types), brand (many, many brands) the weather (faster setting in hot weather) and quite possibly the way you hold your mouth while mixing it (from my own experiments). My kit said to mix two parts resin with one part hardener, all the kits I looked at had a different ratio or measurement method; some measured by volume, some by weight, the one I bought measured by volume so it was easy to do. Epoxy resin (which is the kit I bought), has a long pot life, meaning it takes a while to harden once the resin and hardener are mixed together, this allows me to fuss around with it quite a bit.

My first step was to find a few molds to hold the resin while it sets. I had a couple of pendent molds and a set of ring molds that I bought on a whim so I dug those out of the overflowing craft room. I also found some round takeaway containers that had formerly held tartar sauce; these little beauties sparked the idea of making spindle whorls because they were exactly the right size and depth. So I now had a project in mind...resin drop spindles.

Second step was to prepare all the junk to be embedded, I just cut up some pencil stubs and mixed some glitter and stuff. I collect the pencil stubs from work (schools use a huge number of pencils every year and when they are too short to be sharpened again they are thrown out, unless I'm there), the glitter and bits were saved from craft activities I had done with my daughters in the past. I then mixed up my resin and hardener; this took a while as you have to make sure the two are well combined then wait for the bubbles to clear, it took about five minutes to do this part.

Third step was to pour the resin into the molds with the embeds in them. I made some spindle whorls with pencil stubs, glitter and beads in them.

That is one of the little takeaway pot filled with pencil stubs beside my resin ready to be poured.

Some filled molds, yes I did spill some resin and make a HUGE mess of the table. The little round things are the ring molds.

I tried the bottoms of plastic cups as molds too.

 The next morning....after the resin had all set I took everything out of the molds. Only breaking one whorl in the process. I also scrapped up all the bits of resin left sticking to the table after I spilled one of the molds. It had embedded the newspaper onto the table top (luckily nobody here notices a new scar on the table) but it peeled off eventually. I ended up with three usable whorls, five rings and a couple of pendents.

I borrowed my partner's drill and drilled some holes in what I thought was the middle of the whorls. As it turns out they are all slightly off center due to my poor measuring skills, but that has worked to my advantage as the finished drop spindles keep spinning for much longer than my more balanced ones (that was a happy accident). I stuck some dowel through the holes and screwed in a tiny little cup hook at the end, I also strung them up with a leader thread so I could test them.

All the pieces I made had to be sanded down to get rid of any sharp edges or lumpy bits, but it didn't take too long. I just used the sanding attachment on the drill.

Drilling a hole in the whorl

 They work really well and look kind of pretty too (at least I think so). I will be selling these little spindles at the next market stall, or maybe on Etsy. Making resin whorls was so much fun I just might include it on my list of permanent craft activities. It uses up all those little bits and pieces of stuff that I seem to collect, like too short pencils and a half cup of mixed glitter. It makes a surprisingly beautiful whorl for a drop spindle and it's a lot of fun...on the down side though, it can make a mess, it's basically plastic and needs constant purchases of resin and hardener. Still...it is a lot of fun.

What do you think?
I will post pictures of the rings I am making in another post. I'm trying to figure out how to embed fabric scraps and feathers into rings and bangles.

Our dog pack

A lot of people have a dog or dogs; where we live most people have at least three. Many years ago I met a man who had a beautiful blue heeler, she was a young dog at the time and was very friendly. He told us we couldn't pat or talk to her as she was being trained, so we didn't. He used an authoritative manner with her and often spoke roughly to her, he never hit her in our presence and I don't believe he did out of our sight either. He was very proud of the tricks she could do (sit, lay down, roll over, climb a ladder, etc), but never praised her for them. She had to stay in the car when at our place because she attacked other dogs. That blue heeler was later put down (by her owner) because she bit a child. This was a lesson for me as I had watched her go from a social, friendly pup to an antisocial, insecure, watchful dog. I know heelers can be nippy and often have social issues, but I believe her problems were caused by lack of socialisation and not being secure in her place. I took this lesson to heart and changed the way we live with our dogs.
We don't 'own' our dogs, they belong to our pack (or we belong to theirs); we all live together and have our roles to play within the family. People are often surprised that our dogs don't fight with each other or cause trouble among the other beings that live in and around our humpy. They assume that we must have a training program and keep the dogs (who are after all predators at heart) under strict control. The truth is far stranger and less exhausting than that; we simply treat them as part of the family (because they are). They are supported by the other members of the family and have the same expectations placed on them, they have to contribute to the well being of our home and they have become used to cross species co-operation. The rules in our humpy apply to everyone and are fairly vague, in general boiling down to the simple phrase 'do what you want as long as it hurts no-one'. We don't make rules about dogs on furniture, they sleep where they want, but they are not allowed to chase any living thing with the intention of harming it. They are confined to the yard unless we are with them, which is a rule designed to keep them safe, however they do come for a wander through the bush when we go walking. They can socialise with anyone who visits the humpy (and I take special note of those they choose to avoid), whatever the species.

We have three full time dogs and a part time dog in our pack. They are part of our family and help us live busy and fulfilled lives (sometimes by creating the work that makes us busy). They each have interesting life stories (well, interesting to me) which I would like to share.


First we have Jessica,

Jess...our one obedient dog.

Jess is a rescue dog...with a twist. One morning, many years ago when my kids were small, my youngest daughter came to me and said she had dreamed we owned a dog who was black with white around the neck, short hair and a white tip on her tail, her name was Jess in the dream. The day after this one of my good friends text me and said that a dog had wandered up her driveway in a terrible state. This dog was very thin, had hair missing and a wound on the back of her head like she had been whacked with a pipe or something. She was looking for a home for this dog, when I told her about my daughter's dream she said that this dog matched the description. Of course we set off to meet her and see if my daughter somehow had the ability to dream things into reality (and if so to implore her to dream up a Lotto win).
When we got out of the car the dog, who was very timid, poked her head out from around a corner. My daughter called softly "Jess?" and Jess trotted over and sat on her feet. After this miracle we naturally took her home, fed her up a bit and treated her head wound. She came with some fairly serious neurosis though.
Jess is a compulsive eater, we think because she was starved at some point in her life (perhaps all of it); she can't go past food and will eat until she is sick, then come back for more. This has led to her becoming very over weight. Before she joined the family we fed our dogs from one central bowl which was kept full at all times. People would ask us why our dogs didn't fight with each other and I would point to countless David Attenborough documentaries about pack feeding habits; in the wild the alpha dogs will eat first followed by the betas then the pups. That's the way our dogs fed...all lined up to wait for their turn at the bowl. After Jess became dangerously overweight we had to change to individual feedings so we could limit her food intake. She also chews wire fences, gets obsessed with individual beings (a guinea fowl was the main one until last year) and is allergic to preservatives in her food (her hair falls out). We love her though and she is the most loyal and best behaved dog in our family.

Then we have Spot.

Spot...the dementia patient.

 He joined us 17 years ago when the people we sold our TV to said they would pay our asking price if we took the last puppy from their litter. We said yes and a tiny bundle of black and white shaking fur arrived the next day. He has been my elder daughter's closest friend for such a long time. In his long life he has been dressed in doll clothes, pushed around in a pram, made to complete obstacle courses and been the companion of many a long walk. Now he is old, he has lost most of his sight, can't hear much and mostly forgets to go out to pee. People sometimes ask me why we keep him in the house when he makes so much mess and needs to be led wherever he goes, which is a lot of extra work. My answer is always; "Would you make your grandfather live outside just because he's a lot of work?". Spot has given us his whole life and I believe he deserves to be loved and treated with respect for the rest of it. He is still always the first to eat and barks at random stuff just like the other dogs even though he has no idea what he is barking at.

Bandit is the final full time dog in our family.

Believe it or not his parents were both black.

 His family line has been with us since we became a family. My partner thought that buying me a $10 miniature poodle puppy who had been rejected by her mother and had to be fed every two hours with an eye dropper would be a romantic gesture, he was right. Gizmo (as that pup came to be named), grew up and got pregnant to a local Silky terrier named Ambrose and had Pucky who in turn grew up and got herself in trouble with a Chihuahua cross Pomeranian named Chopper (who dug under the laundry foundation to be with her). The result of Pucky and Chopper's union was Busy, who lived with us for 16 years and had one puppy with a friend's dog (after a proper wedding arranged by the kids), that puppy is Bandit. He is the smallest and the loudest of our dogs, he is very sweet about taking Spot out to the toilet; he walks in front of him and leads him out the door then waits for him to be finished and leads him back in.

Our part time dog is Val, the product of a marriage between Spot and Jess arranged by the kids.

Jess had 14 pups but we could only afford to keep one. It broke my heart to have to find homes for the other 13 pups, and I often wonder if they are OK. Val is my eldest daughter's dog and lives with her most of the time. She still visits now and then and lives with us when my daughter is working or away.

Out in the yard

These two are good friends.

 Our dog pack works like any pack; we have an alpha male (Spot) who thinks he's in charge and an alpha female (Jess) who is really in charge, we have two betas (Bandit and Val) who just try not to get in trouble. We have no fights and very few behaviour problems (aside from Jess' issues) despite not having a training program or being in total control. What are your dogs to you? family pet, or just plain family.