No Knit Scarf

I got this idea from Martha Stewart. It didn't take much time at all to do it. She used a very heavy weight yarn. (I couldn't find anywhere) I am sure it came directly from one of her llamas. And she only had to use 8 strands of yarn. I doubled that with the heaviest weight I could find. She used 4 sections, I used eight. It worked OK, I wish it were a little thicker. Anyways CLICK HERE if you want the directions.

Musical Block Tree

Years ago my mom made a block tree with all kinds of little ornaments and miniatures. So this year all her girls back home got to make one. She sent me the stuff to make one too.
I love the little camera.

Here is how to do it.

-Decide how big you want your tree to be. Next, make a circle using the bottom row of blocks.

Measure the diameter of the circle. And add 4 inches to that. =This will be the measurement for your wood base.

-After you have found/cut your own wooden base be sure to drill a hole in the center of the base about 3/16" . This hole allows the music box to attach to the pedestal wind up feature for you music box.

-Paint your base the color of your choice, except for the part that your music box will be glued to.

-After it has dried, glue the music box to the wooden base lining up the winding mechanism with the hole.

-On a separate piece of wax paper circle up your blocks (one row at a time). And using a hot glue gun, glue the inside touching corners of each block joint. Try not to get glue on the top of the block or it will make your next row sit crooked. Let it cool so that the circle of blocks is somewhat stuck together . It will still be ply able, so be careful.

-Do all your circle layers this same way. (the pictured tree rows contain 14,12,10,8,6,5,3,1 blocks for a total of 59 blocks)

-Carefully stack the rows of blocks (circles) on top of one anther to form your tree shape. Make sure your tree is in a symmetrical cone shape. And start gluing. Gently lift the edge of each block as you glue the whole tree together.

-After the glue has hardened, you should be able to lift the whole tree and place it on the wooden base. After centering the base, glue it down.

-Screw in the music box pedestal.

-Now the fun part. Glue on all of the little miniatures and fun little toys to the tree. This is a great time to find little ornaments on sale. Just clip off the hooks and strings. Or you can find miniatures in the doll house section of craft stores. And buttons make great decor too.