Sharing Butterflies, Sewing, and Butterfly Surprises

The butterflies have now lived past the time we read they should live, so we think we should let them have at least a day or two of freedom before they reach the end of their short lives (about 4 weeks total). But first we took them out and had some fun holding them and looking at them up close. Sunny and Ida are so wonderfully gentle with them. Here are the two sisters sharing a butterfly, pasing it back and forth.

Later in the day we did some sewing.

The sugarwater-soaked paper towels that we had placed in the butterfly pavilion had what looked at first to me like spores of mold. However, after calling Insectlore, the company that provided me with the five original caterpillars, I learned that the spores were actually butterfly eggs!!!

They were extremely tiny. Here is just one (sorry it's out of focus) next to a penny.

After my phonecall with Insectlore, I looked more carefully, and some of the eggs had actually hatched!!! There were little miniscule caterpillars all over . . . and they were so tiny, that they could go right through the holes in the net of the pavilion.

Here's one next to a penny. So tiny!

I learned that they like to eat thistle, which fortunately grows plentifully in my garden. In no time they made the thistle leaves look like lace.

Playdough, Pippi, och Prickar

Pardon the Swedish word in the title for those of you who don't understand Swedish. I was going for alliteration. Prickar means "freckles", so it is very appropriate, if you read on.

I didn't get around to pulling the camera out during the actual play, but I thought the table afterwards merited photos. Today we combined the play dough with small plastic animals.

Sunny had all of hers in a circle around a clumb of dough . . . sort of a surreal watering hole of sorts.

Josephine slowly and carefully lined up a whole row of animals down the entire length of the table.

And somebody left this imprint of a scorpion in a piece of dough.

Later in the day the girls dressed up (well, they are actually dressed up all day long, but they changed to new costumes).

Ida was transformed into Pippi Longstockings. She insisted on having her horse along as well.

Here I've tried to zoom in on their faces . . . pardon the poor resolution, but I wanted to show that they all wanted to have freckles, so out came my lipliner pencil. It all began with a dire need for freckles on Pippi, but then everyone else was so enthalled with the look that we ended up with freckle-faced princesses as well.

The playhouse gets a floor.

Wedding

Yesterday all the baby dolls were baptized in the sand/water table. I so wish I had taken photos. But today there was a wedding, so I did get some photos of that.

Bride: Josephine Mårtensson
Maid of Honor: Sunny Bjers
Flower Girl/Ring Bearer: Ida Bjers
Officiant: Rachel Mårtensson (thank goodness I could not take photos of myself . . . they made me wear my grey houserobe)

(I must add that the green dress that Sunny is wearing is the flower girl dress that I had worn over 30 years ago . . . my grandmother had sewn it herself, without a pattern, to match the dresses of the bridesmaids. Her hat is one that belonged to my mother and was worn in the 60's. Josephine is wearing her Lucia gown--traditional mid-December event.)