Fabrics, family photos and fantails.

Having moaned in the past about my traditional pincushion not working for me; I have in the meantime found a brilliant pattern for another one. It can hold my small works in progress, small scissors and reels of cotton. It has a flat bottom and can be created from tiny scraps of vintage fabrics.

I added the little strawberry with iron-sand in it, from the original pincushion, that sharpens your needles. Now I down loaded this pattern quite some time ago, and I'm pretty sure it was one of Anna Maria Horner's, but when I looked it doesn't seem to be on her blog anymore. Lots of other cute free patterns though.
The bottom has a piece of stiff cardboard sewn into it, so no more rolling away when you put it on the end of one's comfy chair. I'm pleased with how it came out and use it all the time now. The fabrics came from aprons, kitchen cloths, an auction piece, sewing room scraps.
This is my hallway display. I dusted and cleaned, and re-painted all the photo frames. These were all different colours and it looked messy. I have painted them an ivory white , left little bits of gold paint on them, and some have now had small pale coloured buttons added to the frames.

I feel it has pulled them all together as one collection, and it looks much calmer.
I added an old cream bottle full of buttons in the same pale shades and some orange "lanterns" still from my Mum. Now I still feel I should re-paint the little hanging display cupboard, the wood is too dark; you can't see what is in it.
My man and I went to Christchurch a month ago to see Pa-L and we visited a lovely garden there. I found a bird's nest in a tree, I guess from a fantail, but I could be wrong.
A fantail in our own garden. This was a lucky shot, those critters never sit still. I really like the fantails, they are very cheeky and will fly around your head. Unfortunately they are not instinctively afraid ( predators have only been in NZ for about 150 years) and our cats think they are a great toy to catch. Sad...

There is an old Maori legend that says if a fantail enters your home he brings a message from Tane, the forest god, to tell you that some mis-fortune will happen to your family. In other tribes it is a good message.

I am afraid to say that I half believe in it: in 10 years of fantails visiting our garden, with doors wide open for at least half the year, a fantail has only been inside 2 times. The first time my Mum had a heart attack that night, and the 2nd time she was already in such a bad way that I shoo-ed that bird out quite upset. I told it we already knew.

Perhaps silly , but I have heard that in the big red chainstore in town, when a fantail gets in their high ceilings, no-one is too willing to take the responsibility to help the bird escape.

Hmm....

Stranger things have happened in this country. Like when a tribe managed to re-route the highway , because there was a mythical monster threatening to cause accidents.