• 35 ounces soybean oil grade—available at health food
• 16 ounces olive oil
• 16 ounces coconut oil
• 31.5 ounces cold water
• 8 ounces palm oil
• 12 ounces lye crystals
• 8 ounces cocoa butter (food stores)
• 2 ounces essential oil of almond
Let oils cool to TOO degrees Fahrenheit before adding lye solution.
This mailbox turned bike basket is so charming, it practically deserves its own address. A standard aluminum letter box is lightweight, fits gracefully over the rear tire, and provides a generous amount of storage for the goods you pick up on spins around town. The door’s latch keeps it securely closed so your items won’t slide out, even if there are a few bumps in the road.
Mount this carrier, which fits a lot more than just letters, on a flat rear bike rack.
Tools and Materials
Mailbox Bike Basket How-To
1. Cut a rectangle of fabric on the bias that’s twice as long as it is wide (the largest we made was 3 1/4 inches in diameter and required a 10-by-5-inch piece).With fabric facing right side up, fold in half as shown, and join ends with a 1/4-inch seam. Sew a running stitch around the top edge; tightly pull thread to cinch fabric, and secure with stitches.
2. Turn pouch right side out. Stuff with batting (cotton batting is firmer than polyester). Sew a running stitch around the open end; pull thread to cinch fabric. Tack shut with a few stitches and knot. To flatten, double-thread a cording needle with crochet thread and pull it through the “core” a few times. Mimic a tomato’s fluted details by wrapping the thread around the cushion and back through the core several times. Knot thread at top to finish.
3. For heirloom tomatoes, cut a circle of fabric (the largest we made was 3 1/2 inches in diameter and required a 10-inch-diameter circle). With fabric wrong side up, sew a running stitch around perimeter. Place batting in center of fabric, and gather into a pouch. Stuff with more batting, pull thread to cinch, and tack with stitches. Flatten cushion and apply details as in step 2.
4. For tops, photocopy template, enlarging or reducing as desired; cut out. Trace template onto green felt with a disappearing-ink pen; cut out. Using a single-threaded needle, sew a loop onto top. Glue top to tomato.
Note: To sew cherry-tomato pincushions, start with swatches of fabric that are 2 3/4 by 4 3/4 inches. Follow steps 1 and 2 below, but don’t flatten cushion or add fluted details. For tops, cut symmetrical, six-pointed stars from green felt. Add loops, and attach them as in step 4.
On a sheet draw a rough-sketch of a good-sized peter rabbit, the regular Easter bunny, standing on its hind legs, and holding his paws as if it were carrying an egg.
Stretch the sheet on the wall and tack it firmly in place. Cut eggs out of different colored foam or felt to represent Easter eggs. The eggs should be as large as the space between the rabbit’s paws. In each egg stick a pin.
Blindfold the children in turn and give each an egg, which is to be pinned on the sheet, and right in “Bunny’s” arms, if possible.
As the children take their turn, no matter how straight on the way they were started, “Bunny” will be surrounded with eggs, until some child pins the egg in his arms. This child deserves a prize.
A side note… at the beginning of the party let the kids decorate his or her egg with glitter, markers, paint (finger paint) or stickers. Use quick drying glue… let dry and then each kid can wear their egg until the game begins giving your party special decorations.
Use the Easter bunny at the top to guide you how to draw Peter….. BUT….. if all else fails you could draw an Easter Basket and see which child makes it close to helping Peter fill his basket.
Throughout the half century, bonnets and hats, apart from sporting styles, were lavishly trimmed, and hair was invariably decorated with flowers, jewels or feathers for evening. Indoor caps were gradually discontinued, by the 1870s worn only, perhaps, with a tea-gown or breakfast jacket and by elderly ladies; servants and country folk wore them well into the 20th century. The variety of millinery styles throughout this period was enormous, and it is only possible to indicate the main shapes, which were dictated by the hairstyles. During the 1850s bonnets became shallower and set further back on the head, developing in the early 1860s into the spoon bonnet, which had a narrow brim close to the ears, rising vertically above the forehead in a spoon-shaped curve and sloping down behind to a very small crown, edged with a bavolet at the back. Bonnet strings (or ribbons) were wide, and often not tied but held by a brooch or pin under the chin, occasionally with a tiny bunch of artificial flowers. A curious addition to the bonnet between 1848 and 1864, appropriately called an ugly, was an extra brim resembling the front of a calash, made of half hoops of cane covered with silk and worn round the front as a protection against the sun; when not in use it could be folded flat. The most romantic-looking hat of the 1850s was a leghorn straw with a very wide brim dipping down at the back and slightly at the front and a high or low crown, trimmed with a lace or tulle veil, ribbons orflowers, or possibly all three; it appears to have been more popular in France and Germany, but was certainly adopted with slight variations in England and America for children’s wear.
With the massive arrangement of hair at the back of the head in the late 1860s and early 1870s, bonnets had to be worn further forward, the front curving fronijust above the hair-line to behind the ears where the ribbons were attached, the back cut away to allow the hair to flow freely. At this time hats were also perched on the forehead; a pillbox shape is sometimes referred to as a casquette, a name also applied to a hat following the lines of the Scotch glengarry cap. The Lamballe bonnet or plateau (named after the Princesse de Lamballe) might be classified as a bonnet or hat – worn in the same way as the pill-box, it closely resembled it but was more oval in shape and tied on by strings under the back hair or chignon or, when curved down slightly at the sides, would have ribbons tied in a large bow under the chin.
Small-brimmed hats, slightly wider in summer, toques and tiny bonnets set on top of the head above the close, high-dressed hair and fringe, helped to increase height in the late 1870s and 1880s; crowns rose, with a flower-pot shape appearing in the late 1880s. Trimmings, arranged to give a vertical line, could be elaborate and even bizarre: small birds, feathers, feather wings, aigrettes, beetles, flowers, fruit and vegetables intermingled with loops of fancy ribbon, velvet and/or tulle. Fur decorated some winter hats, and toques made of sealskin became very popular. At the same time, for country and sporting activities, plainer and rather masculine hats were in vogue. Boaters, introduced as early as the 1860s, continued to be worn, straight or tilted, into the 20th century. The Fedora felt hat, similar to a Homburg, was named after the heroine in a play by Sardou in which Sarah Bernhardt scored a success. Yachting caps were worn for sailing or at the sea-side. The tam-o’-shanter, for country wear, was a soft, round, flat cap or hat with no brim and a bobble in the centre of the crown; in the 1880s it might be made of velvet, plush, cloth or crochet; a knitted version became usual later.
During the 1890s, bonnets lost favour with the fashionable although still worn by some elderly ladies, even after 1900, and for mourning with a long crape veil. Hats became wider-brimmed, worn high on the head over the fuller hairstyle; even toques were often quite large, draped or ruched in velvet, silk or tulle. Trimmings, ribbons, flowers and feathers still emphasized a vertical line
Country & Victorian Times 