It must be spring time!

So even though the air is still a bit chilly here in British Columbia, I try to spend any semi-sunny afternoons outside weeding and sprucing things up around the house. And today, after a very vigorous weeding session, I decided to venture out in the very back of our property, which is not so much like a yard, as much as it is a swamp. I retreated back for my gumboots, which had been sitting forgotten on a corner of our back porch since the fall. My first thought was.... spiders! I just read about a case of a brown recluse spider hiding inside a person's shoe and said person ended up with a gangrened foot. I put on gardening gloves and hoped for the best as I felt for any arachnids that may have taken up residence inside my boots, but, luckily found none. 

That's when I had an idea for a very easy solution for this problem: pantyhose! I've used pantyhose before for a different project (seriously, who wears pantyhose these days? I'm embarrassed to say I had a pair left from the 1990's - in ivory!), so you could say I am a fan!

Here's what you do: to prevent spiders, or any other bugs from invading your gumboots, slip on a piece of pantyhose, tying up at the top if necessary (I only had one piece of pantyhose leg left, but it worked just fine):

The pantyhose fits very snugly around the opening, and it allows the boots to breathe. 

On a side note - last summer I noticed my cat hanging around the porch and looking intently into my gumboots, I had the shock of my life when I saw the reason for his odd behaviour - my guess is that he caught a mud weasel and carried the poor thing back to present us with it; the creature somehow either got away from him and hid inside my boot or got put in there by the cat, I'll never know. Either way, it had expired by the time I found it :(

Capacitive Stylus DIY

I have to confess to playing "Draw Something" on my Ipod Touch a lot lately. I know, I know, another time-waster, but what can I say, I like showing off my mad drawing skills.
So, out of necessity came this very simple DIY project... I noticed how hard it was to draw with my finger, more often than not, my drawing did not resemble anything like what I was supposed to draw. I looked on Ebay for a "capacitive stylus" (the kind works on touch screens such as Iphones and tablets), and even though they are dirt cheap (some for less than 1 dollar!), I know that for the most part it would take about 3 weeks to a month for delivery (shipped from China). And I did not want to wait, I wanted something to make my drawings better right away. My next thought was to look on Youtube, and I got some ideas, but most of them were complicated (one person said you needed an umbrella, for the metal tubing part, I thought that was a bit wasteful). I went rooting through my junk drawers, and finally ended up finding something interesting in my son's desk drawer - an empty bullet casing (I have no idea where he got it - but thank goodness for teenage boys!).

308 bullet casing

Finding the bullet casing was the hardest thing about this project, as the next item was something I keep handy in the kitchen - a regular kitchen sponge (a brand new one of course).

Walmart Great Value All Surface Sponge

The next step is to cut a small chunk of sponge and trim the rougher side off, you will need the softer side, it has a strange texture, cellulose maybe? I'm not sure. 

Next, you tuck the piece of sponge into the bullet casing, exposing a bit of the sponge (make it a bit rounded and adjust to make it a more precise point).

That is all! It works like a charm, way better for drawing than my finger! I think I will end up buying a prettier stylus, but until then, this works just fine.