Tennessee Spinners and Calendar Art....

The only minis that I worked on today was cutting up gourds, to see how many baskets, large and small I could get out of each one.

I knew that each of the small Tennessee Spinner gourds would yield three, if I was lucky. Incidentally, the Tennessee Spinners are sold on Ebay if you are interested. I can't give you the name of a particular seller. I haven't bought any from there yet....

Each gourd has lots of seeds inside. I am going to try to grow some, once it gets a little warmer.

As you can see, the top row in the photo is all one gourd. It gave me five pieces to work with. Two will be large the other three may work for mini. We shall see when I start coiling.
Here's a close up of the smaller ones. The steps are, wrap a piece of paper or tape around the gourd and cut on the line that you draw. Then drill holes about 1/8" apart around the cut edge.

Stain the gourd or paint it if you wish. Sometimes people just wax them with paste furniture wax. I prefer them darker.

I will continue with the rest of the instructions as I go.

The reason that I didn't get much done today was, I had to run some errands and visit the baby person that has been added to the family.

Tessie was very happy with a couple of the things that I did. I went to the mini museum and renewed our membership. This year,when the membership was renewed we got two calendars. One for me and one for Tessie. Very cool.

She still is not paint free in the hair. Zar did the best that he could. I am afraid that I am going to have to step in and do more.

On the way home, spur of the moment, I stopped at 22 st. Antique Mall. I benefited on this stop. I found a tatting pattern book from 1944 and a full box of #5 Perle cotton in black. That was a color that I needed. I am almost out of 310.

The only problem with this book is the bright red nail enamel on the cover....Now Tessie wants some. She is crazy if she thinks that I am going to sit down and give her a manicure. She would have it ruined in 10 seconds flat.

She will probably benefit from it though. There are some really neat patterns for edgings and some small doilies that she could possibly use. Those will have to wait. I am going to absolutely, positively, get back to the townhouse bedroom tomorrow.

See you then.