New Life

Hello ... Hello ... Hello.

It's been a while since I was on here, quite a while.  Around October my camera broke and I couldn't take any good photos of my wares, then I started a new project at work (that place I go from time to time), and then we found out we were pregnant, so my priorities for spare time (aka Ruby's nap time) were as follows:  sleep.  No time for crafting and no camera to take photos of any finished products.  I then rediscovered how nice it is to read a book once in a while, then a bomb exploded in my craft studio (that's how it seems anyway).

To ease myself back in to blogging here are a few things along the 'New Life' theme:

A monach butterfly chrysalis - the caterpillar climbed off the swan plant onto our deck railing and created it's new home there.  Should be emerging any day now ...

Some time last year I planted some seeds from my clivia berries.  I then read an article online about how tricky they were to germinate: that the growing medium needed to be sterilised; kept at a constant particlar humidity and temperature; and any new growth could take anything from 4 weeks to six months to appear.  Well, that's just not the way I garden.  So after diligently watering them for two weeks, I resigned myself to the fact that I probably wasn't going to be the proud mum of some little clivia seedlings because there was no way I was going to give them that much attention.  Then lo and behold - a seedling appeared after about two months.  Then a couple of months later another one appeared!  I'm rather pleased that I got two seedlings from four seeds, even though they seem to be growing really slowly and won't reach flowering size for four years.

A wellchild book cover for a friend who defied the odds and gave birth to a lovely wee boy after two stillbirths, it's not quite finished as it doesn't have his initial on it yet, but I love the cute little caravans.  This is some Robert Kaufman fabric I got from Stitchbird. 

And finally, the new life growing inside me.  This was taken couple of months ago, but it's such a lovely profile shot of pretty much the whole bubba.  We don't know whether its a boy or a girl, so if  you're a sonographer or particularly adept at reading ultrasound scans please keep any gender insights to yourself.