just my way of saying: it's not all bad??

 

Dear Ones,

I have been sulking on The Situation; forgive my absence.  If I don't want to poison others with my desultory feelings of doom, what can I do but stay out of sight and earshot?  A question to be considered, but not to be answered right now, right here.  There are things going on all over, even as fascism continues to roll over us; it is  a slow march down into a deeper hell.

This little mouse is filled with lavender- I made a whole mess of them many years ago and this one was all moth eaten!  Yes, I made them to put in drawers and 'repel' moths!  This one was sitting on the bookshelf.  I decided to repair it with some really lovely sock yarn that I got for free from the wonderful Fiber & Fringe.  The wool it is made of was a from a coat I had made even longer ago, and the tail & ears are of the silk that lined the coat.

Additionally, the lavender was still very strong smelling, as it fell out continually as I repaired the holes, and you know what else?  This repaired one is so beautiful!

Moths

Dear Wings to the Flame,

Look at these gorgeous painted specimens!  Each is a marvel, and their are hundreds of thousands of these kind of biological and botanical illustrations all around the world.  Think of the great and varied efforts of these naturalists painstakingly locating every little spot and smudge on these wings, just to catalog all the flora and fauna they could find. 

Isn't it a kind of funny idea?  To catalog?  Imagine, for example, if you decided as an illustrator, to draw every kind of food package you encountered in a month of groceries, say?  Or, if you decided to catalog all the hands you'd shaken, or socks you had worn. 

To see the ponderous scale of skilled illustration efforts the the 18th, 19th, and 20th, centuries have produced in the pursuit of the cataloging of species, go here, to be directed to the Biodiversity Heritage Library's collection of illustrations; available to admire and download for free.