What do you do when you have a day off?

Make more bird toys of course!

I actually started this monster of a toy last night; the Boy had finally found the chunks of cholla that were hidden in a bag in the garage and I figured I'd incorporate them in a toy somehow. The toy starts with 4 strands, eventually each strand gets divided into three and each of those individual strands get a piece of rope added to create a total of three strands at the end. The base is made of cotton rope, and there are many many hardwood beads in there as well as coins of cottonwood and chunky willow (on top of the chunks of cholla of course).

I'm quite proud of it and it's very heavy!



But I didn't stop there. Last time I blogged about homemade toys, I posted a picture of a toy I made from a leather butterfly base, well I finished one I had started and completed two more as well!



One thing I was really starting to run low on was foot toys - so guess what else I made?



I used a lot of leather lace as a base on these, it works really really well! The cotton rope was a bit more tricky, given it's bigger diameter and smaller holes in the beads.

Finally, I had a few very easy toys left; filling up some skewers!

Mother Pluckin' corkscrew skewers -



Expandable Habitats regular skewers (small and medium lengths) -



The smaller one was filled using mostly pieces I've salvaged off some of the corkscrew skewers. The small guys don't really like wood slats that are cut along the grain so I'll give them to Léa to see if she'll be as picky. All the corkscrew are now filled with pine slats that were cut against the grain - which are much easier to destroy!