PEP Badge: Oddball

I submit my dollhouse castle, as well as the dolls, dragons, and decorations inside (I did not make the furniture--everything else in these pictures were made by me).



The whole castle building process is documented here: https://permies.com/t/40/132182/Building-materials-doll-house-castle

More pictures of the fairies and dolls can be seen here: https://permies.com/t/95249/fiber-arts/Needle-Felting-Share-creations-tips#989957 and https://permies.com/t/fairygrovefairies

More pictures of dragons can be found here: https://permies.com/t/fairygrovedragons

Here's a few of the progress pictures for the castle. It is made out of cardboard, held together by paper packaging tape:





Then a lot of old egg cartons were ripped up and blended with Elmer's glue, corn starch, salt, toilet paper, and linseed oil. This formed a paper mache clay that was applied to the cardboard, both for reinforcement and asthetics.



Jewels, crystals and gems that I had lying around were then embedded in the clay mixture



Then tiny dollhouse accessories of cauldron, bowl, cup, pan, bread, leeks, and various fruits and vegetables and candlesticks were made



Chimney was made from cardboard and the interior was plastered



More plastering was done with paper clay, as well as brown paper sack flooring (paper sacks cut into strips and soaked in glue)



Pouches and candlesticks were made from clay, and a shelf made from popsicle sticks



Finished interior,, both empty and decorated with my other creations



Drawbridge was made from colored construction paper and popsicle sticks, and the grass and water were painted with cornstarch, food coloring, coconut flour and glue



Here's a close-up of the four dolls:



All in all, this project took:

* 1/2 gallon of glue
* 5 cups of corn starch
* 8 rolls of toilet paper
* 6 egg cartons
* 20 pieces of recycled printer paper (i.e. kids had scribbled on them)
* 1/3rd roll of packaging paper
* 1/4 cup linseed oil
* Some food coloring and coconut flour
* 3 ounces of wool (for fairies and dragons)
* 3 skeins of cotton
* 10 pipe cleaners (for fairies and dragons)

Most of the things were free or recycled, or natural materials such as the wool. Things were colored with cocoa powder, charcol, or food coloring.  The sculpy clay was old clay bits left over from high school (I would not have purchased any).

I love how rock-solid the paper mache clay is. My kids hit on this castle with cars and toys, and it just gives a "thunk" sound like when knocking on wood. Really solid. It not only gave the castle it's castle appearance, it also gave it a ton of structural integrity. This thing is sturdier than most wooden dollhouses on the market. Those are usually made out of thin wood that easily cracks or breaks. Not this castle!

Info that might help in determining Oddball points
Each doll would take a skilled person with a lot of luck 1.5 hours to make (I know, because just before my daughter's birthday, I lost her doll and hurriedly made a replacement in just under 2 hours). Small dragon takes 1.5 hours,  larger one with needle felted hat 4 hours (both weren't as well felted as my later ones, which take much longer), the clay creations probably 2 hours (??? hard to estimate, as I was working on them while teaching my kids).  That's 13.5 hours. I don't even know how to estimate the hours it would take a skilled person to make the castle-- I spent at least 20-30 hours on it, but a lot of that was experimenting and learning and touching up. It takes a long time to physically apply the paper clay to every surface, even when working fast.

Today I made a hardware cloth compost bin. I really like the idea of having the compost bin inside the garden. it's like Ruth Stout composting, but without having to disturbing of the ground/mulch every time I need to put compost in. The soil microrganisms can get to the nutrients and break them down and incorporate them into the garden. I wanted it out of hardware cloth so the mice and shrews couldn't get in and eat all the nutrients and make burrows and poops in my garden.

Materials used:
 - Hardware cloth
 - Old wire (and tin snips to cut the wire and hardware cloth)
 - random ceramic tiles my husband found at work
 - duck bedding and food scraps

It took me about an hour, I think? I'm pretty sure someone using pliers and better cutting tools and who was more accustomed to sewing with stiff wire could do it in half an hour.

Nicole, Your castle play structure is a wonder of construction and imagination.  A big part of homesteading is keeping our kids happy and occupied giving us time to do other projects.  Your kids get a great inside castle and an outside play structure all built by mom with love.  I give you an non-certified total of 5 BB mom points.

I’m submitting the repair of this generator as part of the oddball badge. Someone (me) forgot to check the oil in the generator before running it. The bearing on the connecting arm ended up seizing. It was a $40 lesson that could have been more if I wasn’t handy. It took me 4 hours to do repair it. If taken to a shop it would have taken a pro 2 hours to repair.
I have a video of the generator running, but couldn’t upload it.

I submit making a youtube video

as this is a skill that will help me share permaculture and yarn things with a larger audience, it seemed like a skill I should develop.

I used
- two different cameras
- multiple angles
- different shots spliced together
- and I added music

I'm not really sure how to show this, so I'll show not having a video...









... looks pretty dull.

Now I'll show the footage files



and here's how I edited them



and three hours later, here's the video

Got another one here. The 4 wheeler didn’t come with a winch so I installed one. Harbor freight had a deal on one but it didn’t just bolt on. I had to fabricate a mounting plate and bracket.

The parts arrived so I could do this job today.  Chain brake on my Poulan chainsaw wasn't working.  Disassembled it to figure out which parts to get.  Pretty straightforward replacement and the parts were affordable (both of those things were a pleasant surprise).  Took a bit over a half hour to do.  Would have been much longer if the retaining clip that flew across the room didn't land in a bucket

So, I think I picked up the oddball sand badge with the two post above.

My daughter LOVES the doll that her aunt gave her, and keeps requesting clothes. I've never knit anything aside from simple hats, mittens and scarves, and there were no patterns to be found. So, I made a pattern as I went along and made a cute dress for her doll, from wool yarn I already had lying around.

Knitting stockinette stitch in the round (24 stitches on size 8 needles with worsted weight wool yarn). Then put half the stitches on one needle, and knitted the front in ribbing.



Then I cast those off, and knit in ribbing on the back for a few rows and then divided that in half to make straps (went down to size 4 needles for this). Cast those off and then picked up all the stitches on the bottom to make the skirt.



Once the skirt was made I went to sew the buttons on. But first I reinforced the whole chest area by weaving back and forth with yarn.



One button on!


Finished dress (with mitten and hat I also knitted. She lost the other mitten. Pants were also made by me. These don't count for the Oddball badge, since I didn't get progress pictures)



Back view of the straps
.

Happy daughter, tucking her baby in


This took three+ hours. Probably would take someone who knew what they were doing in knitting dresses an hour. Speaking of permaculture experiences, the ability to custom make clothing on the fly without a pattern is pretty cool. So is making natural, renewable, compostable clothing for free, rather than buying polyester doll clothes made in china in conditions that likely cause much human suffering.

I made (and taught) three different ways to make candles.

First, using a kit from Magic Cabin, I made (and taught my kids how to make) rolled beeswax candles. Here's the kids making them:



Here's me rolling one (picture courtesy of my son)



Next, I got giant 10 pound block of beeswax from Jedwards. To get bits off of it, I used my handy wooden mallet and a knife as the wedge/chisel.



Put the beeswax bits into a pot I found at the thrift store.



Here's my son dipping his candle, and with his dipped candle.



I got creative and used this to dip two candles at one time.



I also made votive candles. Here the containers are before the wax was poured



And here they are finished (shouldn't have filled them so full!)



Some of the candles we made (we rolled a total of 18 candles, but some got burnt during a power outage!):