Wings

I've finished filling my raised garden beds. There is still almost a third of the 3 cubic yards of soil left. We plan to use the rest to fix the grading around our house, at least where the driveway and porch aren't preventing it. Our house is over 80 years old. The basement walls are in decent shape, but changing the grading to make the water run away from the house will help it last longer. The basement is not musty or anything and I want to keep it that way. The house is currently surrounded with lava rock to keep the weeds away. I had originally thought to remove the lava rock, but then we'd have to get rid of it somehow. Now I'm thinking to just cover it with the soil. I did take some of the soil and fill a few pots. We plan to put herbs in some of the pots and flowers in others. I finished the wings I was making for the girls last night. I followed this tutorial: http://sistersguild.blogspot.com/2011/06/monday-makery-pillowcase-wings.html The "feathers" are cut with pinking shears and glued on with fabric glue. That's about the only way I was willing to make them. I'm mostly happy with how they turned out. About the only thing I don't like is how they hang on the girls. They seem to hang below their arms. I wanted them to run along the line of their arms. Let's see... details: The base of the wings is a sheet that was still in good condition except for the elastic, which had died. The feathers are cut out pillowcases that I bought at the thrift shop. I cut out a template... to be honest I cut out 3 different size templates and used the one that I thought would be the best size for the wings. I had measured from wrist to wrist and from neck to knee on each girl to figure out how big to make the wings and drew out a pattern for the wing base. Taking pictures of girls who won't stand still is difficult. OK, some pictures:

These are Valerie's wings. I made these first and made them one at a time. Unfortunately, I didn't line them up as I went and they ended up a bit uneven. Mostly, I doubt that people will notice.

Here's Cordelia's. I learned my lesson and did both of these wings at the same time. They turned out much more even. Some pictures of the girls with their wings. In the last picture, you can see how the wings hang kind of low on Valerie.

I was asked today what comes next. I'm not sure. My latest sweater needs blocking before I can put it together and do things like the button band and whatnot, but I've been putting that off. I did do a gauge swatch for another sweater out of bulky yarn. I need to do a couple other gauge swatches for other projects as well so that I'll be ready to do more knitting. I also need to get back to spinning the orange yarn for another sweater. I'm excited about that project as I've never spun enough of anything for a project like that. The last couple bits that I've spun are waiting for me to do test swatches with so I can figure out what to do with them.