Butterflies

Butterflies have got to be one of God's most delightful creations!  We have sadly been seeing less of them this year than in other years.  I think it might have something to do with the hard frost we had about 2 months ago.  The warm spring weather came so early this year & everything was blooming & growing before it should have been & then wham!  I can only assume the frost is to blame.  I'm not even seeing very many of these lovelies flying around my butterfly garden!  When I do see one it's a special treat & I had just such a treat yesterday morning ... not in my butterfly garden but on one of our butterfly bushes   : )

I never tried photographing a butterfly before & it was quite a feat!  I'm sure I took at least a dozen photos.  I'm thankful I was able to get these 3 clear ones   : )

My thanks to everyone who offered their help regarding stitching with variegated thread.  I will tell you that I stitched one small each day for a total of 3 days.  The same small.  Needless to say the design is a quick stitch    : )   I first stitched using the loop start method which did not provide a good result & thus the reason for my asking for help.  My next attempt was completing one stitch at a time using 2 strands of floss & making sure the colors matched up along the strands.  The provided a more variegated effect but it still didn't look quite right.  This design is 90% lettering ... small letters at that ... with a little something in between 2 of them.  Most of the letters were wide enough apart that I had to end the stitching on one letter & then start anew on the next letter.  This made me end with, for example, a very light pink on one letter & then suddenly a very dark pink on the next. It just didn't look right.  For my third attempt I thought I would be more attentive to the blending.  When I ran out of floss I then got 2 more strands but I turned them around so that instead of ending with light blue & starting with dark blue I'd just segue from light blue to light blue.  The idea was that you wouldn't be able to tell I had started a new thread at all!  Unfortunately this ended up giving a bookends look to my stitched piece with dark blue at the ends & light blue in the center.  I decided I should have stuck with my original thought & used plain ol' DMC.  That is what I'll do when I attempt to stitch this design for the fourth time (argh!) but that's not going to be anytime soon.  I don't want to look at it again for a while ... lol!  I also didn't have the "oomph" to get started on another stitched piece last night so instead I decided to knit.  Being a bit apprehensive about jumping right in & knitting something "good" I decided to re-familiarize myself with the basics by knitting a dishcloth.

Unfortunately the stripey yarn I had on hand was not the best choice for this basketweave pattern but I'll continue along with it.  It's just a dishcloth after all   : )   I'm happy to say that the casting on, knitting & purling came back to me very easily.   I'll complete this cloth & then dive into something wearable.  Oh wait ... I just remembered that I joined a knitting exchange & I need to make something knitted for the person assigned to me.  This ought to provide fodder for quite a few posts ... lol!

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!  John & I are supposed to go to a daylily show this afternoon in Lexington. Only time will tell if we actually venture out into the mid-90 temperatures to do this.