Search Results for: Blue Bailing twine

The first day of grazing also means now more hay.  No more hay means no more  bailing twine for my Blue Bailing Twine art.

This morning, after letting the sheep and donkeys out to graze, I tied the last two pieces of blue bailing twine.

It’s good timing, the piece feels finished to me.

In the fall maybe I’ll find another place to tie more.  Or maybe I’ll feel differently and want to add more this this piece.

Above are the first few strands of blue bailing twine that I tied onto the gate post.  That was on November 10th, 2023, the day we started feeding the animals hay.

When I started it last fall I didn’t expect that  I’d be adding bones, glass, feathers, plastic, pottery shards, wool and slate to it.  That’s the fun and creative part, it goes where it goes.

I tied in the things I found on the farm.  Above is a piece of slate, wool and a plastic bread tie from a bag of old bread that I fed to the donkeys and sheep.

And here is a pottery shard from an old crock and a bone I found a few years ago.  It was perfect, chiseled by the teeth of rodents on the outside and hollow on the inside.

Like a very long bead.

Zip was there for the making of my Blue Bailing Twine.  He often sat  between me and it or rolled around, belly up, when I was working on it.

He seemed to want to be in the photo of the finished piece.

You can follow the whole process of making my Blue Bailing Twine here.

I’m a bit behind on posting my progress on my Blue Bailing Twine.   A couple of days ago I wrapped the top of the post with twine thinking I’d weave a backing behind the bone.

Then I found the old rusty hacksaw blade in the barnyard and decided to weave that into it too.

I could have been cleaning up my studio, but it was so warm and sunny out I was looking for an excuse to spend some time outside before Bellydancing Class tonight.

And weaving the twine was a good way to move on from working on my Meditation Tree and the Cat Pillows.  

I found the neck of the broken bottle under Ed Gulley’s wind chime.  Before the snow today an early flower was leafing under it. When I went to look at it I found the broken bottle.  So I tied it onto my Blue Bailing Twine.

After that I tied on the bone.  I found it in the woods a few days ago, hollow as a pipe.

It seemed too big to hang like I did the other bone, so I attached it to the gate post instead.

In a couple of months I’ll  no longer be feeding the animals hay.  When that happens I’ll be finished tying my Blue Bailing Twine on the gate post for the season.

But I don’t think I’ll  be done with it for good.  I can see adding another year of Bailing Twine to it.

I found the broken bottle necks on the farm.  They come up from the ground when it rains with the other shards of glass.  They were too pretty to throw away, so I had them in the houses on the window sill.

But as I was tying two more pieces of twine onto the gate post, I thought they would be the perfect addition.  I had three and over the past couple of days, I tied them all to the gate post.

I believe I’ve fed the final bale of last years hay to the donkeys and sheep.  So from now on, no more orange twine.  The rest will be blue twine from this years hay.

You can see how my Blue Bailing Twine has evolved from the first two strands until now on my Pinterest.  Just click here.

I’ve been saving up the bailing twine these past couple of weeks.  It was too cold to take off my gloves and tie the twine from the hay bales around the gate post.  When I heard it was going to warm up, I figured I’d just wait.

I had a nice collection tucked into the handle of the metal pail where I keep the cat food.  Today I used them all up, tying them together while Zip played with the hanging strands.

As I was knotting  more twine on my the gate post this morning I thought of the photos that DawnMarie sent me.

She was on a favorite walk when she came across some twine strung on a cow fence.  It was a splash of color. So unlike my linear, sculptural twine. More of an abstract painting the colors softened and layered and even blended.

It makes me think for my next piece, maybe I’ll unravel some of those strands, loosen them up and see what happens.

The photo that DawnMarie sent me.

These warm days have me knotting the bailing twine that I didn’t when it  was too cold to take my gloves off.

Today I wove a square, yellow, plastic tie into my baling twine.  It came from a bag of old bread that I’d been giving to the donkeys and sheep as a treat.

That nibbled on bone is like one long bead.  I’ve had it for a few years and finally found just the right place for it.  Now it’s a part of my Blue Bailing Twine that hangs from the gate post.

I try to wait for the warmer days to tie the Bailing Twine on the post. So far the really cold days have been had lots of warm days between.   So I can easily keep up with cutting the twine from the bales and tying it on the post.

The orange twine is from last years hay.  I feed that to the animals on the warmer days and this years hay on the colder ones.

When it started snowing I opened a bale of this years hay for the animals.   Tomorrow I’ll have another piece of blue bailing twine to add to the gatepost.