The Antique Coverlet/ The Bar/ The Edge

 This week I bought an antique coverlet in an overshot pattern from Back to Basics Farm, I'm going to look up which one in my Marguerite Davisons book, soon and report back. It is in primo condition!
It is wool turquoise weft and a white linen warp making this linsey woolsey, sometimes it's called winsey! If you read Anne of Green Gables, winsey is mentioned many times.  This brings us full circle back to Joanne who owns Back to Basics as she is reading all of Lucy Maude Montgomery's autobiographical journals right now! Isn't that a interesting circle?

Birdee loves it, in her former life as a super model she developed the talent of always situating herself to the best possible photographic advantage. Too bad the camera wielder is not so talented.

Speaking of handling... this monarch, it's a boy! ( how to sex a butterfly will be in the next instalment) was hatched at Man's work and then abandoned by it's handler for the week-end. It needed FOOD but was still in its enclosure, inside our house, far from any butterfly fast food.

So how can you force a monarch to belly up to the bar?

To explain in a simple way, they eat through something like an elephant's trunk.

It is curled up close to its body somewhere between its first legs and antennae.

It needs the flower to trigger it somehow to unfurl the "trunk. I don't know for sure what makes it 'know" where it can eat, I'm a woman of wool,  not science!

But instead of flowers we have a tray of sugar water so we need to intervene.

Using a beading needle ( the blunt end) I stroke the area until the "trunk" unfurls (it was beautifully curved), I dip the end of the trunk into the sugar water and it straightens right out like a hose at the gas station and it takes on all it needs. We kept him until this morning and then released him. It is cold but he was energetic and sailed right up to the roof and over heading southward on the strong north wind. Probably he is crossing Lake Erie right now!

The moral of this story? You can lead a butterfly to the bar and have him drink.

I'm officially done with September Vogue, the edge is on and I'm replete with completing. Now for the final steaming and over looking for errant strip ends or threads. It only took 3 Septembers! 09, 10, 11.

And though I hated it for all of 2010, I'm now back in the area of kind regard or even fondness.