Let me just say, that Charlotte is Soooo proud to be accepted for Altered Bits' Printed Art Zine!!
AND SO AM I!!!!!!!!!
Wow! Can you feel my excitement? I can't WAIT to see it!
You can't see me, but I'm jumping up and down right now. Thank you, Alicia!
A couple of years ago, I began taking a chair caning class offered for free at my church. I had always wanted to learn chair caning, so I was really excited. Well, I love it. The weaver in me really enjoys the process and setting the "warp" is much less of a hassel for me!
This chair is my latest project. I chose the Daisy Button caning pattern for this chair. This pattern is an advanced pattern, meaning only experienced chair caners should try this. (This was only my second chair caning project.) I thought, since the first one went so easily, and with my weaving background, how hard could this be?
EEK! I'm lucky to still have a hair on my head! After laying the basic pattern, it took me three tries and 12 weeks of classes to get just the Daisy pattern completed! (the classes only run in 6 week segments, once a week. I had to wait a year to pick it back up) The Button part of the pattern, tying, binding and more tying (don't ask) took the rest of the 4 classes.
I was determined to conquer this pattern and in the end, I did. It may not be the finest example of this pattern, but it is complete and I am very happy with the results. I'm on a search for my next Victorian Era piece of furniture that needs recaning.
I'm not the only weaver in the house. We have a Momma and Daddy finch who are both quite skilled at weaving a nest. AND populating that nest as well!
The two finches came to our home as a family Christmas gift. They've been named Coco (Mom) and Puff (daddy- no pun intended by my little kids, but funny none the less). Coco and Puff immediately set to work building their nest in the retro fitted hamster house turned finch house. Coco first laid 2 eggs almost immediately, but did not sit on them enough to hatch them. Just as I was about to remove those eggs, about 2 weeks later, she laid another. At that point, I couldn't remove the previous 2 because I didn't know which was which. After that, she laid 6 more eggs in about 10 days. This time, Mom and Dad are sitting on these eggs diligently! I wonder if, since these two finches were randomly chosen from a cage full of finches, that Puff wasn't the baby daddy of the first two eggs, so Coco didn't try to hatch them, fearing that Puff might not want to take care of someone else's kids? He certainly doesn't appear to be that kind of guy to me, but she may know him better.
At any rate, all but one of the second set of 7 eggs have hatched.
When they grow and get bigger, I'm not sure how they'll all fit in there. They are awfully cute, though, and amazing! They are SO tiny! The head of the baby is smaller that the beak of the parent. That little guy you see here with its mouth open has a head the size of a large pea!
Here you can see about three or four of the babies and a couple of unhatched eggs. The eggs are about one inch long. I am so amazed by this! They're all so tiny!
(I'm trying hard not to sound too much like a doting grandma, since I'm a person and they are birds....)
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