Lots of wasps around. No reason to be worried about these.
For the first photo, I was up close and personal (only inches away), using my 40mm lens. I moved very slowly, in hopes of not disturbing the wasps. There were lots of clouds, resulting in the white background. Or it may be overexposed.
Wasp nest in cow skull
The second photo was taken on a different day: fewer clouds, bluer sky, with my telephoto lens, 55mm-300mm.
Skull, wasp nest and sunflowers
The public swimming pools have closed and the back-to-school sales are over and done. Classes have already started in most of the school districts and the universities begin classes tomorrow. It’s still really hot in central Texas, but the change of the seasons is on its way.
Taking advantage of the last days of summer
I finally found some feeders that the finches like. Stock them with Black Oil Sunflower Seeds and voilà! Finches!
Definitely a natural red head
Enough room at the feeder for more than one
Trying to decide which feeder looks good
Friday Fictioneers Challenge: Write a 100-word story based on the photo prompt.
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Friday Fictioneers photo prompt. Copyright Roget Bultot
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The truck was parked in the same place, day after day. No one’s using it. It’s a sign I should take it, Jean-Michel thought.
Late Friday afternoon, he returned to the parking lot. In minutes, he broke in, hooked up a portable battery charger and hotwired the truck. Maybe there’s something valuable in the back, he thought, ever hopeful.
As Jean-Michel drove around a sharp curve, the truck’s cargo door swung open. In the police cruiser just behind, two officers saw something fall out: human, bloody, and wrapped in industrial cellophane. It’s a sign, they said, turning on the siren.
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To read other stories based on this photo, select the blue smiley frog.
I finally pulled out one project from my UFO (unfinished object) stash and completed it. It’s the pink fabric bowl. There it was, under my sewing table, already wrapped and pinned, sitting for over a year. (Ahem.) All it needed was for me to sew it. How hard can it be?
Ready for duty
Not very hard and it didn’t take very long. And I just adore it. Now it sits by my computer and all my charging cords go into it. The pink bowl was an experiment: I wanted to see what size of bowl one fat quarter would make. I cut the pink batik fat quarter into 5/8-inch strips. I wrapped the cotton cord, gluing and pinning at the end of each strip. (You’ll see what happens when I didn’t pin in the middle for the blue and orange bowl.) And voilà, a lovely fabric bowl.
Inside
I was inspired. But instead of choosing another UFO, I decided to experiment again and make another fabric bowl. What would it look like, I wondered, if I serged the fabric edge with a rolled hem in a contrasting color? For the my second experiment, I used a dark blue tone-on-tone batik fabric and orange embroidery thread.
The blue and orange bowl started out as half a yard, cut into 1 3/4-inch strips (I think). I sewed the strips together end-to-end, making one long strip; this measured just over 11 1/2 yards. Then I ironed the strip in half length-wise and serged the raw edges. (This took quite a while.) The result was one long strip with one folded edge and one edge with a rolled hem.
Not to big, not too small
I wrapped the blue and orange fabric over the cotton cord. Actually, I had to wrap it twice. The first time I wrapped it, I hadn’t pinned the blue and orange strip anywhere other than the beginning and end because it was just one long strip. (There was no need to sew the pink bowl fabric strips together end-to-end, so they were wrapped around the cord separately with each end overlapping the next, glued and pinned in place.) The wrapping loosened up in several places while it was in queue and I couldn’t get the edges to tuck in. Rats! I had to completely unwrap it, uncoil the fabric and the cording and then wrap it again, with lots of pins this time.
What are fabric bowls good for, other than charging cords? I like them for keys, watches and bracelets; the fabric bowls are soft don’t scratch (or get scratched by) these items. They are good for lots of sewing tools and trinkets. Mostly they are fun to make.
So, that’s one UFO taken care of, about a gazillion more to go.
