The postman was my favorite person today. Four back issues of Selvedge arrived. Hours and hours of inspiration ahead!

A few nights ago my son and I ventured out to our carriage house to look for a missing key. No luck with the key, but while scanning the shelves we did find this:

It seems that a mouse found Home Sweet Home in an unfinished bird house that my husband bought years ago from a craft store. We laughed when we imagined how excited that little guy must have been to discover his dream home while scavenging around our shelves. He surely must have thought he was a blessed mouse. A new home with a window view of the yard. No fear of the cats. And a 50lb bag of sunflower seeds just a few feet away! Mouse heaven!

We left it alone. I’d much rather he lived in his own home, than trying to move into mine.

The bathroom linen, with no assistance from us, spontaneously decided to take up sculpture.

Honestly, this is exactly the way it fell on the floor.

Two weeks. Still no internet access. Calls to the phone company have proven futile. The family has resorted to iPhone access for the most basic of Googling. Prayers to the internet gods may be required…

Just a quick update: Kentucky is a disaster. Lots of areas still without power. We’ve been lucky there, but our internet connection is down and probably won’t be back for awhile (our telephone line is currently lying in a cornfield), so no new pictures for now, but I have a lot to post though once we’re back online.

I absolutely detest dry, forced-air furnace, winter air. It sucks the life out of wood, wool and me. So a few weeks ago, after putting up with ugly room humidifiers for too long, I decided that we needed some water features in the house. I wasn’t positive they would completely fix the dry air problem, but the thought of falling asleep to the sound of water trickling over rocks was enticing.

First we looked at indoor fountains in local stores and online. Most were too expensive or too ugly. So in the end we decided to make our own. We made three: one large fountain in our bedroom, a small fountain for my son’s room, and a medium size for the family room. This one is my favorite.

How We Did It:

Bought
1- large shallow bowl – $50.00 (Pier One Imports)
1- aluminum candle holder on legs – $6 (Pier One Imports) Note: this needs to be a non-rusting metal or plastic
1- bag medium size decorative rocks – $3 (Michael’s Crafts)
1- bag medium size clear glass discs – $3 (Michael’s Crafts)
1- bag small clear glass balls – $3 (Michael’s Crafts)
1- x-small water pump  – $20 (Feeder’s Supply Pet Store)
1- small piece of clear 3/4″ plastic tubing to fit pump – $1 (Lowes)
1- large bag pea gravel – $5 (Lowes)

Total: $91 (the large bowl was a total splurge…you can make this for a lot less using a less expensive bowl)

Equipment
Razor knife – to cut the plastic hose
Drill
Metal drill bit – same size as the hose

Putting it Together
Using a drill bit the same width as the clear plastic tubing for the pump, we drilled a hole through the middle of the metal candle holder. We set the metal candle holder in the center of the large bowl. The bowl selection was important – I wanted a large shallow bowl to expose as much water to air as possible, but it also needed to be deep enough to completely submerge the pump (which measures about 3″x3″x2″). This bowl from Pier One was perfect.

Next, we attached a small 2″ length of the clear tubing to the pump and set the pump underneath the metal candle holder. This pump, from our local pet supply, has little suction cup feet so it stays in place at the bottom of the bowl which is nice. We then pushed the hose up through the bottom of the candle holder and let about 1/2″ of the tubing stick up through the hole.

Then we filled the bowl with just enough water to cover the pump. Before plugging in the pump, we held a cupped hand over the top of the hose to keep it from shooting water all over the place in case it was turned on too high. Then, with the pump shooting water up into my hand, we adjusted the pump until only about 1″ of water bubbled up out of the hose.

Finally, we rinsed all the rocks to remove any dust and then placed larger ones on the metal candle holder, strategically placing them so the water would roll over them. And then added some pea gravel, larger rocks, glass disks and glass balls to the base of the bowl.

Total Time: about 30 minutes (mostly spent adjusting the pump and rinsing and arranging the rocks)

This fountain is putting at least a pint or more of water into the air each day. I know this, because that is how much I usually have to add to refill it. And the sound of bubbling water throughout the house is wonderful.

Here is the largest one we made for our bedroom.

The only difference: This very large bowl was only $34 from Lowes. And instead of using a metal candleholder I used large sticks from the yard, cut to size, to hold up the pump hose, a small piece of scrap slate as a shelf and the rocks. The group of small twigs sticking up in the back add some decorative height, but also hide the electric cord from the pump. We used the same bags of rocks and gravel left over from the other fountain, so this one only cost $55. It holds about a gallon of water too, so I only have to add water every few days.

“I should know better.”

1. I just realized that I paid for my 2009 Selvedge subscription TWICE. Wrote a check in September, then forgot about it. Got a renewal email and paid by credit card. Got two receipts this month. Uh oh. Hopefully the nice folks over in London will forgive my stupidity and fix this…otherwise I will have to tell the husband my fiber magazines just cost more than the mortgage payment on our first house. Not good.

2. I totally underestimated the amount of hay three Wensleydale sheep can eat. It’s January. I only have enough hay to feed the flock until next month. That will still be 6-8 weeks before the grass starts growing around here. Will they starve? No. Will they start costing me a fortune in corn and sheep feed? Yes.

I have made the decision to move from LiveJournal to my own WordPress blog. My hosting company provides the service sans advertisements so it wasn’t a hard decision.

The focus of the blog is going to transition to more art-centric topics, rather than daily anecdotes. I am realistic enough to know that my first person narratives can be utterly lacking in interesting content. For those who may still want to visit the old blog the archive of past entries will remain at http://houndscroft.livejournal.com for as long as they see fit. I have moved a few past entries over just to set up tags and categories and test things out.

-Tamara Lepianka