Sunday, January 18, 2015

The Road To Hell ...

This little car is taking me along the road paved with good intentions.  Actually, it is one of the treasures I dragged home from the markets last weekend and I was enchanted by it.  I don't know exactly why, it is made of plastic and might ave been a token from a board game or a free give away toy.  It looks most incongruous in its new home, sharing space with a wide range other odd things which have taken my fancy, including an old nail buffer, a belt buckle, a religious token and some thimbles. Still a lot of spaces to fill, luckily! 



The road to hell is paved with good intentions and I have to admit my good intentions flew out the window this weekend,  Despite having vowed not to start any new projects I have started three recently, and without completing anything.  I couldn't resit a one inch hexagon template and printed out sheets and sheets of them on scrap paper, thinking that after all it was only a way to use up all the tiny pieces of fabric I had accumulated at the end of various patchwork projects.  Then it seemed like a good plan to use up the leftover silk tie scraps in the same way.  So far so bad, but this weekend I also began a Lucy Boston inspired (patchwork of the crosses) hand pieced project using yet more tiny little leftovers.  The only positive I can think of justify this bad behaviour is that I wouldn't be crazy enough to go to less than one inch pieces, to this is where it will have to stop.


I have to say though that I am loving hand piecing all the miniscule pieces together, even though it is laborious and time consuming.  This is the cotton version but I suspect the silk one will be even more enjoyable (apart from the fact that the silk is hideously slippery and frays badly).


 The weather has been hot and dry for a while and even the insects seem to have sunk into a slothful state.  This moth stayed on the glass of the front door for the entire weekend, I'm not sure whether it believed itself to be on an enormous sheltering leaf or if it was just too exhausted to move away, but it was very pretty all the same.  Even a baby mantis was slow to move away when I disturbed it.


But the most worrying thing was that the swan plant is flourishing and forming seed pods, without having had a single Monarch caterpillar on it all season.  Usually by this time of year the plants are just a few sticky stems and all the foliage as been devoured by hungry caterpillars.  I heard the other day that in the USA the monarch population is reduced by 90% this year and it seems that ours might be similarly affected.  In my case I suspect wasps but perhaps there is some other cause.  Hoping for a better season next year.

At least the gloriosas are finally responding to my command and blossoming their hearts out.  And the colour has intensified too, perhaps it is the dry hot weather or maybe that is just what happens as the season progresses.  Whatever the reason, it is a big improvement.