Thatch
If you are going to make a thatched roof, soak your thatch in water and straighten the bent straws; build the roof steep like the one shown in [Fig. 57] and make a wooden needle a foot long and pointed at both ends as shown in [Fig. 59]; tie your thatching twine to the middle of the needle, then take your rye or wheat straw, hay, or bulrushes, gather it into bundles four inches thick and one foot wide, like those shown in [Fig. 60], and lay them along next to the eaves of your house as in [Fig. 58.] Sew them in place by running the needle up through the wire netting to the man on the outside who in turn pushes it back to the man on the inside. Make a knot at each wisp of the thatch until one layer is finished, let the lower ends overhang the eaves, then proceed as illustrated by [Fig. 66] and described under the heading of the bog ken.
If in place of a simple ornament you want to make a real house of it and a pretty one at that, fill up the space between the walls with mud and plaster it on the outside with cement or concrete and you will have a cheap concrete house. The wire netting will hold the plaster or the concrete and consequently it is not necessary to make the covering of cement as thick as in ordinary buildings, for after the mud is dried upon the inside it will, with its crust of cement or plaster, be practically as good as a solid concrete wall.
[Fig. 57.] [Fig. 58.] [Fig. 59.] [Fig. 60.] [Fig. 61.] [Fig. 62.]
Ornamental sod house for the lawn.
