Scorpions on the Bayou!

   Although I come across a myriad of strange bugs here, it is not often that I find scorpions around the Bayou.  Perhaps they are scurrying about the marshes but I have yet to see one and I can honestly say that I am glad that I have not.  Those things give me the willies!  After being on the receiving end of several spider bites, anything that resembles them, is on my "no like" list. I have heard tell that a scorpion sting is painful and I am not a fan of pain.  (I was also told that to combat the agony after being stung, one should immediately wrap the site with a slice of eggplant!  Now, I ask you, who goes about their daily business carrying an eggplant?)  Anyway, today I found a scorpion lurking about the living room and I had no eggplant handy!

  For those who do not know, I do a lot of crafts.  A while back, I created a good many critters from wire salvaged from my broken weedeater. (http://msbayoulady.blogspot.com/search?q=seahorse) This was fun and I have good intentions of stepping back into the mode of bending wire soon but, in the meantime, I have lent my pliers to Darling Daughter!  She is here and is crafting.  One of her creations is a scorpion.  Unlike mine, her bugs are not to be brooches.  The scorpion will be a "shelf-sitter" or knickknack or dust collector ( My niece, Heidi, has dubbed half the stuff in the Little Bayou House as the latter.)  The scorpion is made from a number of pieces of junk.  She bent wire for most of the critter but, also, incorporated buttons, watch hands, alligator clamps and a compass.  The critter is amazing and knows which way is north!

  Tomorrow, she and I will be crafting once again.  Since she and her husband are moving here, I will be storing her crafting supplies in my craft room. We are looking forward to many, many more days of creating and sharing!  I do believe, however, that I will leave the scorpions to her and stick to my seahorses!

Weed trimmer reborn!

  Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am hard on lawn equipment.  Give me any piece and I will use and abuse it until it is literally falling apart!  I have done this to hand tools, lawn mowers and weed trimmers. Each piece is lucky if it makes it through one season without being totally mutilated! Handles of hand tools seem to break with no due stress but it does not end there...I have been known to break the metal blades of hoes and shovels!  Lawn mowers seem to lose their blades, wheels and even gas tanks when in my use!  Weed trimmers...don't even get me started!  I blame it all on inept workmanship during the making of the trimmer...it cannot be all my fault!  Things are just not made like they once were!  That's it!  Inept workmanship in the factory!

Anyway, that said, not all is lost!  After breaking my second weed trimmer in as many seasons of use, Michael started taking the tools apart to see just what was the problem.  Perhaps he could salvage the unit if he did a bit of altering on parts.  That did not happen.  There was no hope for either machine..I had killed them both.  BUT!  Inside he found some great wire! I was watching him tear into the machine and noticed some bright copper wire!  Forget repairing the weed trimmer.  That wire was now destined to the craft room!  I was so elated...Michael not so elated.  He had to struggle to unwind the wire from some weird part of the weed trimmer.  The wha-cha-ma-call-it inside was wound with yard after yard of copper wire but was also armed with some sort of metal housing.  Stupid factory folks had to make it nigh on impossible to unwind their wire!  However...Michael did!  And I now had spool after spool of assorted sizes of copper wire all waiting to become some magical art piece! And it did....

After much working, I was able to turn out a relatively nice-looking brooch!  It is in the shape of a seahorse and is about five inches in length.  The really neat thing about this piece is that with the exception of the pin backing, the entire piece is "recycled art"!  All parts are reclaimed materials that would have normally wound up in the trash!  Salvaged art!  What more could you ask?  This beautiful seahorse brooch was destined for the dump had the vivid imagination of an artist not seen the possibilities in a old weed trimmer, a moth-eaten, beaded sweater and two beads from a broken necklace!  I think my project might just be the beginning of something new for me!  I might just start raiding broken lawn equipment for possible jewelry items!  So see...all is well that ends well!