Straw, Lace & a Banner

In my last post about my roadside gathering of wild flowers and weeds I showed a picture of what I did with this straw from a field.

I had an e-mail asking me to show exactly how I put it together to make it stand on it's own so here it is.....

I took a handful of straw and knocked it on the table until all the bottoms feel down where they all touched the table. 

Then I held it tightly about 1/3 of the way down.  Gripping it tightly higher up makes the bottom sprawl out.

I had my husband tightly tie the lace around it while I held it.

The straw is strong enough it will then hold itself up on a level surface.

After that I also made a little festive autumn banner for the mantle......

..... the new kitten was so happy I got all that stuff out for him to play with  =)

I'm sad to report that the orange kitten died this week.  He had health issues and we did everything we could to care for him for the two weeks we had him.  After our second visit to the veterinarian last week he appeared to be a lot better, but then he died during the night.

The black kitty is healthy as can be though.  Felicity is already trying to teach him to climb trees, it's so cute, I need to get some pics.

She still looks for the orange kitty though, which is sad, but at two there isn't any way to really explain to her what has happened so I just hope she will forget about it soon  =(