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Tag Archives: butterfly farming
It’s all tarts, shrunken heads and butterflies over here!
Yum, mixed up berry tart
Happy Tuesday from Hell. It is mightily hot here in Maryland. Next Wednesday the weather site says it might be 82 degrees, but it’s all August otherwise. ( you know they’ll take away he 82 by then too!) I know that some like it hot …visit jim. He’ll tell you all about how much he looooooooooves this weather. Plus he’ll show you how to make heirloom Ceviche and show yo the rest of THESE-
Why re-write the book right? He has written very cleverly about it all, so if you want the story, step over there and then come back.
In other areas of our existence, BUTTERFLIES!
The 2 Gulf Fritillaries came out and w.o.w. Oddly, all of the butterflies in this project emerged overnight, so we never got to see the magical breaking-out. They were so lovely. We set them free on Saturday. It is such a cool feeling to watch the girls faces as they open the tent and watch them flutter away.
Ok…. Lots of crafts and stuff going on here. I’ll have my ETSY shop up and running any day now. I’ll announce it to my millions of readers as soon as it’s a GO 
Have a great day and stay cool!!!
“Wow. That was just about all she could say. Wow.”
(said Lilly with her purple plastic purse.)
Happy BIG red-orange Friday to you!
It was obvious that it was going to be the theme of the day….
In the garden–
AND IN THE HOUSE.
While we snorted and rolled around the beds. ( SOMEONE snores in this house.) Look what was happening down in the RED room–
The rest of the cocoons continue to do their twisty dance. See how the two brown ( Gulf Fritillary) ones are at weird angles now? They seem to change each day. The remaining Red Admiral cocoon is about 2x the size that this one was– so we’ll see what comes of that!
Thanks again to the oh so nice folks at Shady Oak Butterfly Farm! They have been ever so nice. We call when something curious happens and they are always so genuinely excited about our little friends. This has truly been one of the coolest projects we’ve done in a while.
Red orange on the sticks, splashes of it anyway–
Those Jaywalkers are coming right along. Ok, ONE of them is. It is a really fun knit. Just enough to keep you awake, but really easy too. I am enjoying them and will REALLY enjoy wearing their lovely loudness!
More to come over the weekend. I have some yarn-a-soaking. The fruits of WAY too long a time spinning a sheep called Oreo. A nice fluffy brown fuzz of a sheep. Next I am going to get into some of that Mama E tencel blend.
We’ve got strawberries now. Why is it that something always gets to them before we do?? And what is it?? Come on over and check it out.
The Dark Mark
I noticed that Rosemary had a BUNCH of band aids on today.
Me– Hey– that’s a LOT of band aids there, miss. What’cha have going on there?
R– ( very dramatically) I have a baaaaad boooooooooo boooooooooooo.
Me– Oh yeah? What kind of bad booboo?
R– The BLAAAAAAAAACK kind.
see?
Sharpies are practical magic.
NO butterflies yet. The cocoons do odd things though, they twist to different directions some days. they still show no signs of translucency, which is apparently the first hint of the big day. It’s really fun watching the mystery.
I’ll have some sock and spinning pics a bit later, so don’t move!!
knitting a chrysalis
I ACTUALLY FINISHED KNITTING SOMETHING!
Here’s that baby sweater( aka the sk8tr hoodie) that I thought I’d never finish. It turned out pretty darn cute. I needle felted the patches for its sk8tr “flair”, and has i-cord edging all around. Its made of Ultra Alpaca. I got to meet the little dude last night. He’s a total cutie and will look great shredding in his sweater. He’s 4mos., so he’ll have to go to baby sk8tr camp if he’s going to learn any good tricks while the sweater still fits. Maybe he’ll need to start walking, I dunno. Kids are so advanced these days…..
Thanks for the pix catwoman!
I think for the Summer I am going to focus on smaller pjts. I have a pair of jaywalker socks started in a really nice color that mama-e conjured. Pics of that on later. Also I have a gaggle of Knitted babes in pieces. And a lot of spinning to work on. My stash from MDS&W from 2007 hasn’t been spun yet!!!!!!!
Here’s the chrysalis update too. Those worms have been knitting away and have made their snuggle sleeping bags. I don’t know how long we’ll be in this phase– very exciting though.
Caterpillar girls
A really exciting thing has been going on at our house! A visit to the Shady Oak Butterfly Farm’s site and we’re now a foster family for 4 lovely, wiggly, squirmy caterpillars! 2 Gulf Fritillarys and 2 Red Admirals arrived overnight with a pretty swank caterpillar pad. They arrived in little cups with host plants for each. After the metamorphosis events, we can plant the plants in our garden and hopefully carry on the cycle au naturale. Here’s what came out of the box:
meet the red admirals-
and here are the lovely gulf fritillary twins–
The girls and I are totally in love with the project of hatching these friends. We check on them all the time, and it’s really fun to watch them eat and eat and EAT!
On the first evening, this very accommodating sweetie took a walk up to the corner. We watched and watched, and it became evident that it was forming silk and getting set up to PUPATE!!! WOW! By the next morning it was really still, and just sort of hanging in the tell-tale J- formation. If you look closely you can see how it formed a protective bit of silk across the corner to keep it from harm.
THEN, by the next day, THIS–
The other red admiral is very shy. It tends to curl up in a leaf to do any sort of business. We think it shed it’s skin after the first day, in the privacy of a leaf. It came out to eat a bit more the next day, and today looks to be doing some pupating of its own. Again in privacy. Sheesh. Doesn’t it know that NOBODY gets any privacy around here??
The gulf fritillary lovelies continued to ravage the passion flower vine ( it’s host plant) while all of this was going on with their friends. Yesterday they seemed to be LOADS bigger– here they are on their edible roller coaster–
Tonight they are off the plant– which has VERY few leaves left and walking about the top of the tent. We are thinking that tomorrow might be the day that they start their change into their fabulous red-orange couture. They look even BIGGER tonight.
Here are what the caterpillars look like in the end, and what we hope we’ll get to see emerge-the links are some Wiki on each
Gulf Fritillary Agraulis vanilae
Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta
I’ll be keeping you up to date on the changes here. We’ll be doing this again with some Monarchs in a few weeks. Next year maybe eggs and chickens??!! Then we’re obviously ready for SHEEP!!
P.S. LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND!!