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.
[Illustration: Ornamental sod house for the lawn.]