I recently came across the International Fiber Collaborative website. I had already seen pictures of a garage(gas station), which had been covered in 3 foot fibre panels, but when I came across this I was amazed! The website shows how the tree was constructed, and then fibre-related leaves from all over the world were attached.
I have been very busy the last few days. No sewing, but I was offered some rhubarb, and of course I jumped at the chance. Coarse rhubarb can be chopped up and put in the freezer. If the rhubarb is left in for a while, it breaks down, so that lots of juice comes out, when it is defrosted. This makes great rhubarb wine. Finer rhubarb makes tarts or great jam. My husband is not a great lover of rhubarb and ginger jam, so I make rhubarb and orange jam. Recipe is below. 
At last! I have finished my penny rug. As discussed before, I bought this kit from a newsgroup, which sells unwanted sewing items. It was supposed to be hand sewn with cotton perle, but I decided to use my Bernina 440QE. I had never used the buttonhole stitch before on a sewing machine. My machine behaved well until I went to sew the outside edges of the small pennies. It was not too happy, but I managed. Not perfect, but I got there. For anybody who is interested, I used the following info to sew the rug. (remember I always take a note of this info, in case I want to go back and do something similar). The needle was, in most cases, moved to the extreme right.
My husband has been training one of the ponies to pull a cart. He started off with Periwinkle dragging a light tyre behind him. Then he moved onto a larger, heavier tyre. This picture shows the first time the pony was attached to the cart. Notice the polytunnel in the background. The cover was destroyed in the gales last October. The seeds are all planted for this year, but we are waiting for calmer weather, to get the new cover attached.
This picture shows Periwinkle walking along the road, with our other pony, Willow, wanting to join in the fun. You can see our house in the background. It was quite a misty day, when the photos were taken.
I bought a penny wool kit off one of the sewing sale sites recently. The kit had all the wool, templates etc. in it, all I had to do was felt the wool, cut out the shapes and sew it together. The kit was supposed to be hand sewn, using cotton perle and buttonhole stitch. I thought it would take me forever and a day to complete, so I decided I would use my Bernina, King Tut Thread and No. 161 stitch. I tried a lot of samples, and wrote down a lot of notes (see previous blog about how I keep a record of what I make), before I was happy(ish). I never think I am very good on the machine, but I try. Above is the centre of the rug. I placed the shapes down and then stitched around using the black thread, top and bottom. I got a better result when I stitched slowly and had the needle right over to the right, with the stitch mirror imaged. The rug was then backed with another piece of cream felt and blanket stitched all the way round. The outer stitching was quite difficult, as the machine had no felt to stitch into on the outside edge.
I then had to cut out 24 small, coloured pennies and 48 larger, cream pennies (24 for backing). These proved more difficult to sew, as they were much smaller. I have now completed all the machine sewing, but the pennies do not fit round the circumference of the rug. There is a gap, probably because of the machine sewing. I have a plan, which I hope to try out in the next few days. Keep your fingers crossed!