The Man With No Name

I promised that the Man with No Name would be making an appearance shortly, so here he is: Sheldon the Turtle as Clint Eastwood, complete with Serape' shell. I don't know if the little guy is sneaking down to the kitchen to raid the produce drawer or what, but it seems like his shells just keep getting tighter and tighter. It was painful to have to pull him out of his original and squash him into the new one.



He is missing some star buttons, one for his belt and two for his hat, but he looked so darn good in his vintage bandanna I just couldn't wait any longer to post his pics. Well, that and I'm so terribly behind on blogging, I felt compelled to put something up...

The pattern instructions didn't go quite so well this time. While knitting the shell and underpanel were exactly the same except for the color changes, the directions fell very short in explaining how it all went together. The serape was to have an open shoulder but I don't think I got that part right. There were no photos of the finished outfit or the hat to help me.


Without photos and mistakes in the written directions, I really had to wing it on the hat. It definitely has its issues (sagging and shaplessness), so we're looking for a doll sized cowboy hat to replace it with. With the hat pulled low over his eyes he starts to look a bit menacing despite the wide grin. We're trying to figure out how to give him a half smoked cigar.


Here's a shot of his tummy and you have to admit the designer really knows her Clint Eastwood. The little guy's serape even has embroidered designs that resemble Eastwoods in the film (see picture below)





One final pose for the camera, the obligatory butt shot. I don't think he needs a body double at all. Next: Sheldon as a super hero. -Tigerlily

Anatomy of a Turtle

News for updating my blog has been scarce. Seems like life has been very full and I'm exhausted by days end and yet full of what exactly? Life and it's accompanying 3 ring circus. This little guy named Sheldon has been coming off the needles in bits and pieces and I thought it might be cute to share his creation story with you. Elisabeth has a thing for turtles. She has turtles of every shape and size, including a bride and groom turtle she is hopes to use as a cake topper some day. Her favorite Pixar movie is Finding Nemo and her favorite part of the movie is the sea turtles. We've owned a couple turtles, Samson who was a runaway we found in our yard, and dear Horatio Hornblower the Sulcata, who ate my sunroom carpet and knocked over the furniture.

I found Sheldon on KnitPicks.com and bought the kit for Beth for Christmas. If you can't have the real thing a stuffed one is almost as good. Besides this Sheldon comes with outfits. Cowboy, Super Hero, Pirate... You'll have to wait for those but for now:

PART I: Sheldon is born.

The instructions for Sheldon are painstakingly detailed and while tedious, Sheldon is far from difficult. However, he is worked in the round from a very tiny beginning circle that proved a bit much for Beth and she threw him at me. Literally. So in between socks and shawls I worked on Sheldon. It took a bit to get him going and then I sailed along. First to take shape was his body, a funny legless balloon shaped thing. Stuff and add black button eyes.


Part II: How a turtle grows a shell

The shell is composed of three parts, just like a real turtle. Topside, bottom side and the very bottom, which is essentially a little cup with 4 leg holes.


Part III: A Shell is sealed

This was the most difficult part of all and one I get to do several more times for each subsequent future shell change. Doing an I-cord all the way around the shell, fastening the parts together as I went and creating that rolled edge that all turtles have around the edge of the shell. Took 4 tries at this to get it right. I had to take it out once because I failed to leave a hole for Sheldon...UGH.


Part IV: What do I do with these? Or A turtle learns to walk


Four little empty sacks remained, Sheldon's legs. Had to stuff them and then figure out where to place them on his body so they would be in the right place for the leg holes in the shell. Sew them on and stuff all of what was Sheldon's squishy insides into that very overstuffed and a bit too tight shell.

Part V: Its a Turtle, let's name him Sheldon

Don't you love his smile? I think he's happy to be here.


Coming Soon: Sheldon as the Man With No Name OR A turtle in a Serape' -Tigerlily

Have you any wool?

There is a new baby at my house. And before you ask it is NOT another dog. Nor is it a cat, bunny, or even a hermit crab. It is a spinning wheel. I placed an ad for a used wheel on a Yahoo Spinning site and wa la! The Schacht Matchless II. Double treadle. Double Drive.

The woman who sold her to me treated her with tender loving care and it shows. The wheel is in beautiful condition and oiled to a lovely honey gold. After many hours of spinning for Margarete, the little Schacht is now going to teach me how. And, with the help of a couple of Romney sheep named Eve and Franklin, I've spun my first full bobbin of single ply yarn. The Romney is wonderful to work with and I am enjoying the spinning so much I could sit and do it all day. Well for while anyway, my legs do get tired, rather like riding a bike.

I draft. I spin. I read about sheep. Corriedale, Romney, Merino, Blue Faced Leichester, California Variegated Mutant... and of course there are all those other hairy things like angora rabbits, alpacas and llamas. And there are batts, tops, rovings, even entire fleeces!


On Ravelry, I put out a request for women in my area who were spinners, and might like to get together to spin and help each other learn. We are now meeting twice a month at the Highlands Ranch Library to spin.







While I certainly did not need another hobby, or something else to keep me busy, the thought of creating my own yarn and then knitting with it is incredibly exciting. Besides, I need all the help I can get with relaxing. If knitting is good for the heart and soul, spinning must be even more so. You find yourself just sinking into the rhythm of the wheel. Even the dogs find it hypnotic, and collapse around the wheel in a heap, watching the wheel turn or just sitting with their eyes closed listening to the hum and feeling the breeze created by my pedaling.











So I'm learning something new and expanding my horizons. I'm touching the past, reaching back even further than knitting, to the first time someone sheared a sheep, cleaned and carded the wool, and twisted it into fiber using a drop spindle....


We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. -Tigerlily

Living in a Brownelly Haze?

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

No, I didn't post a Christmas entry. The holidays did not pass well. 2009 has opened in gloom and depression and the month of January has been lousy. Everywhere you look the world is brown and crisp. Even the bird feeder, which brings such joy to my life was taken from me. A violent wind blew down into our neighbors yard. She refused to answer the door, so I was unable to get into her yard to retrieve it. After dragging out a ladder and a mop handle to try and catch it up by the hanger, I discovered it was shattered to bits. I guess the mess is hers. My poor little Red Polls have been devastated by the loss and tried to make do with thistle seed during the last snow storm. Yesterday we hit the 70's and the sun and warmth was so wonderful I threw open the windows and basked in it. How I long for the color green and the light and warmth of the sun!

And why is it when you are at your most vulnerable the world seems to smell blood in the water and descend upon you like sharks? When things get like this I hole up. I've tried to keep my head down, my mouth shut and my hands busy, to do the things that need doing and those that make my heart sing. Finding laughter is a daily scavenger hunt. I got this in the mail, and it makes me laugh. Bigtime.


And when your living in a brown L.A. haze, (I always thought Buffet was saying brownelly haze) even your creativity takes a hit, and I seemed to have problems with everything I did. Knitting, the salvation of my personal sanity turned on me. Sarah's slouchy beret came out looking like a muffin, I ran short of yarn at the very end of a second sock, so the toe had to be patched together with whatever I could manage, therefore ruining the "look" of a lovely pair of black licorice socks. And I hit scrapbookers block on Beth's England photos. Work on her England album has come to a complete stop.

But what did go right came out beautiful. First, there's these socks. I don't have a name for them yet, but the yarn is lovely and makes me think of woods or chocolate. Do you see I made the toe and heel in solid brown? I'm so proud of these!


And then there is this:

The Hemlock Ring Blanket designed by Jared Flood. Knitted in Cascade Eco Wool
in a lovely shade called Latte. A perfect match for the color of the world outside, my mood, and my favorite beverage. Brown.


A lap blanket designed from a 1930's doily pattern. Just under 4 feet in diameter it is perfect for laying over your legs when you curl up to read or knit. Or lovely to drape over a couch or even across a table as I did for the photos. Living in brown is not an altogether bad thing.

"A cheerful heart is good medicine..."_--(Prov 17:22a)

-Tigerlily

A Time For Tea

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? - how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

Rev. Sydney Smith LADY HOLLAND'S MEMOIR

Life at our house has been very full. Full of activity, full of stress and typical of holiday time everyone is a bit cross. But then everyone in the U.S. is a bit cross right now. When Anderson Cooper reports to you that this could be the worst economic crisis since the 1930's its a bit hard not to get upset. Beth and I have given our gifts to Heifer International again this year despite economic setbacks. And, while I'm still partial to the knitting basket myself, (for obvious reasons), this year I chose a share of a goat, share of a sheep, a flock of chicks and a gift of bees. Beth chose trees and a share of a water buffalo. It feels good to know somewhere someone will receive a crate full of fluffy yellow chicks, a bee hive buzzing with bees to pollinate crops, or maybe with the help of people like you, a water buffalo to provide a family with milk and cheese.

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea. ~Bernard-Paul Heroux

Winter's cold is creeping in and the holidays brings thoughts of auld land syne. What better time to think about the comforts of home than now? And in times like these that try the soul, what comfort is drawn from a hot cup of liquid! No, I'm not talking about coffee, I'm talking about that stuff we once threw into the Boston harbor. TEA.

When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything. You're a bit cold? Tea. Your boyfriend has just left you? Tea. You've just been told you've got cancer? Tea. Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt? Tea dammit! And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out. ~Jslayeruk, as posted on Metaquotes Livejournal, in response to the July 2005 London subway bombings

I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o'clock. Oscar Wilde, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST



In the more than sixty years of Queen Victoria's reign, the afternoon tea had become a national pastime in Great Britain. When the clock struck four, every kettle in the empire began to whistle and every tea table was set with all manner of delectable's to appease the appetite and restore the flagging spirit. The observance has become a treasured custom, a moment best described by Charles Dickens as one "in which we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another."

The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither. ~Lu Tung, "Tea-Drinking"

We love tea at our house. We love coffee too, but hot cups of tea throughout the day have become standard around here ever since we tasted our first cup of P.G.Tips. And now with snowstorms becoming a regular occurrence, and Castle Moscow back open for business, those hot cups of creamy tea will sustain us in our darkest hour. And with all that tea comes tea pots, and with the collecting of all those tea pots, the need for tea cozies goes without saying. I've lately become obsessed with knitting tea cozies. You may remember the orange cozy pictured above. I've now knitted a silly pineapple cozy to befriend it.





Four layers of thickly gathered ruffles wrap around the pot, their edges dotted with brightly colored beads. This cozy reminds me of Carmen Miranda's ruffled skirts. All it needs are a bunch of grapes and some bananas to sit atop its spikes.



Those darn spikes were tricky, and even knitted double took some ingenuity to get to stand up. My layers were too wide and so thick after gathering that any water put in this pot will probably stay hot for an eternity. I left gaps in the skirt to allow the spout and handle to peek through.










I'm not sure when I became obsessed with tea. I think it goes back to all those books I read in my childhood. I've always loved everything to do with Britain. To love Britain is to love tea, or at least the idea of tea, and who can resist terms like jam pennies and Victoria Sponge? Cucumber sandwiches with real butter, bangers and mash, beef pasties and fish -n- chips. Battenburg Cake, sticky toffee pudding, treacle tarts. My desire to try Paddington's sticky buns has been an life long obsession.

Tea! thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid,... thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wind-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate.

~ Colley Cibber, LADY'S LAST STAKE

Battenburg Cake

“A cake distinctive for the two-by-two check pattern alternately coloured pink and yellow. The cake is covered in marzipan and, when sliced, the characteristic checks are exposed to view. These coloured sections are made by dying half of the cake mixture pink, and half yellow, then cutting each resultant sponge into two long, uniform cuboids, and joining them together with a little cream, jam, or icing, to form one cake. The origin of the name is not clear, but one theory claims that the cake was created in honour of the marriage in 1884 of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter to Prince Louis of Battenberg. The four squares of the cake are said to represent the four Battenberg princes.”

The Battenburg Cake Cozy

Inspiration for the Battenburg Cake cozy came from The Gentle Art of Domesticity by Jane Brocket. Her inspiration was the actually edible Battenburg Cake, traditionally eaten in Britain. You’ll need 2 skiens of each color. The beads are optional. This is the same pattern I used for my orange tea cozy and comes from Rowen.




My own attempt at making a Battenburg cake has had to wait while I search out a source for marzipan...











Of course the most important part of having tea isn't the cake, but the tea. English Breakfast, Darjeerling, Earl Grey, Yorkshire Gold, Murroughs Welsh tea, Taylors of Harrogate... Hot and steaming from the pot with sugar and milk. It soothes the rumpled spirit and warms the cockles of the heart. We have become tea snobs at our house. We've had the real deal from Britain, and now not just any tea will do. Our tea of choice is P.G. Tips, or Red Rose (which has the added advantage of coming with a tiny china animal in every box.)

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. ~Henry James, PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Did you know that the world is suffering a crisis with honey bees? Its called Colony Collapse Disorder. Without bees we won't have food. You can help by attracting bees to your yard with the right plants that provide food for bees. Diverse plants attract different types of bees. You can even start your own hive. This is my bee hive or bee skep cozy. I have some issues with the way this one turned out, so I'm reworking the pattern. The little brass bee buttons are buzzing their way around the outside looking for a way in. I don't think this pathetic hive is going to do much for the bee problem...

The Bee Skep Tea Cozy

Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?
Rupert Brooke, HEAVEN

It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon it says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!" After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature, and into life: spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!"
~Jerome K. Jerome, THREE MEN IN A BOAT

The last cozy is one for Beth, to remind her of all the great tea and scone she had throughout Britain. She mentioned wouldn't it be funny to have a tea cozy that looked like a Scottish thistle? I stumbled on the pattern for the lumpy bumpy tea cozy below and thought it just might work...

Scottish Thistle Tea Cozy

"Never trust a man who, when left alone with a tea cosy, doesn't try it on!" ~Billy Connelly


















A real honest to goodness Scottish thistle.
And the resemblance is uncanny!

Meanwhile, let us have a cup of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things. Kazuko Okakura THE BOOK OF TEA

Truly Thankful

Thanksgiving day has come and gone, but being thankful lasts longer than the turkey and pumpkin pie. Last year at this time we were all thankful that Quincy was still with us. And, after another close call this summer, Quincy is just a few days from celebrating his 10th birthday. We had a gorgeous autumn with colors almost as lovely as the picture above. Sarah is weeks away from graduation. Beth is writing for MTV and Cinematical now and went on her first set visit. The year has been very busy and very stressful for everyone, but we're all still here.

This was the best Thanksgiving I can remember in a very long time. The weather was lovely, the food was perfect, and I've tried to take a snapshot in my head of the day, to treasure in my heart for always. It was just us 4 and it was like old times. Like my girls were little again, and I thought life was bliss. I heard Sarah laugh at the table, and I haven't heard her laugh like that for ages. The girls didn't fight. No one was sick. No one was missing, except those who have gone on before, and I think they were here too. Life is changing and changing rapidly, and who knows what the next year might bring? We may never be together like this, in just this way, ever again.

This is the first year I have ever experienced getting to the table without being completely worn out. Everything went like clockwork. Everything turned out perfect. That's why I thought it was so important to record this, I may never experience anything this close to perfection ever again. This was epic in the annuls of Thanksgiving dinners. I want to thank Martha Stewart for her butter and wine basted turkey recipe. This was the second year I used it and I've never seen a more beautiful turkey.

I want to thank Vitamin Cottage for my free range organic turkey. It was the best turkey I've ever had. For once, the house wasn't full of that horrible cooking turkey smell that always makes me ill. I actually wanted to eat the turkey when I finally got to the table. The house just smelled good, like spices and fruit. And speaking of fruit, I want to thank Martha again for the pumpkin challah bread/stuffing recipe that I have tweaked over the last few years. I finally achieved stuffing perfection. Half panetone bread, half pumpkin challah with a bit of chopped red onion, sage, majoram and a whole orchard of dried fruit, this stuff is heavenly.

I'm thankful for spilling the ginger into the pumpkin pie because it gave it a real kick, and for Uncle Bud (whoever he is) for the best pumpkin pie recipe ever. I am thankful for the doggies, who lined up in a fat roly poly row and watched all the proceedings without tripping me once. I'm thankful for each and every one of them, and all their brethren that have shared table with us over the years.

I'm thankful that Beth was able to kick me in the teeth earlier in the week when I was being a Highlands Ranch snob and bitching about not finding the CD I wanted or the coat in my size, for saying, "be thankful you HAVE a coat." Yes. And a home and food and a wonderful family to share it with. I'm thankful for my health. I'm thankful for the cronic cough, carpel tunnel, fibro myalgia, acid reflux, jaw clenching, teeth grinding, and just plain pain, because I am living, and I still can't wait to get up each and every day.

-Tigerlily

Charlotte A. Cavatica

"And so, talking to herself, the spider worked at her difficult task. When it was completed, she felt hungry. She ate a small bug that she had been saving. Then she slept. Next morning, Wilbur arose and stood beneath the web. He breathed the morning air into his lungs. Drops of dew, catching the sun, made the web stand out clearly. When Lurvy arrived with breakfast, there was the handsome pig, and over him, woven neatly in block letters, was the word TERRIFIC. Another miracle."

Late in August, summer before last, some of you may remember, I discovered a very large spider residing in a window well outside our basement. Her huge web was a true traditional spider web round and perfect, the kind one always imagines and artists always draw. She was shy and a champion at avoiding my camera lens. Once it was determined she was not a poisonous spider, I stopped fearing her and just settled down to enjoy her work. We dubbed her Charlotte despite the fact that she turned out to be a "cat faced spider" instead of a common barn spider. We enjoyed her giant webs throughout the summer and it was with great joy we discovered our Charlotte had an egg sack tucked into one of the corrugated valleys of the window well. Our Charlotte guarded her "magnum opus" with uncommon bravery, and as the days grew shorter she could often been seen basking in the late day sun, obviously languishing as summers glory faded.

Charlotte I

Our local butterfly and insect museum said cat faced spiders were uncommon in our area, and they would love it if we would bring her in and donate her to the museum. Summer was ending, and she would die shortly anyway. We could not bear to separate Charlotte from the eggs she had guarded so fiercely all summer, and felt she deserved to live out her days free. Charlotte lived long past the expiration date given by the museum, surviving snows in October and November. The last time I'd seen her she was faded and weak, huddled in the folds of the metal. After one particularly brutal storm in late November, she simply disappeared. Her final web fell into tatters and the window well was overrun with disgusting Daddy Long Legs and other insects who no longer feared to venture there.

That was the winter of the great snow that crippled Denver for a week, and it seemed as though the snow storms would never stop coming, and we feared for the little egg sac buried so long in frozen ice. Spring came but we never saw any baby spiders, the egg sac still remained moored, dirty, gray and sadly vacant. We mourned the loss of not only Charlotte but the babies she had worked so hard to preserve.

Summer passed without the discovery of any spiders as wonderful as our Charlotte and despite some pretty terrific webs and promising spiders, nothing resembling her beauty nor the breadth of her web has ever come to grace our house again. Then in May, as Beth and I potted plants and hung baskets in the courtyard we made a discovery. A small spider and a perfectly formed round web had taken up residence in the corner of our front porch. The spider was obviously not one of the kind we typically see, and the web design looked very familiar. I was positive it was another cat face, but Beth wasn't so sure.

"It does look similar, but this spider is so small in comparison to Charlotte, she was really big."

"But, I didn't discover Charlotte until August, maybe this is a baby. It has the same brown and white striped legs and the abdomen is shaped the same. Maybe it is a male. Aren't male spiders smaller than their female counterparts?"

"Yeah..."



Well, that small spider was a baby, and she has continued to grow all summer long and her web right along with it. It is a cat faced spider and a female, as the "cat ears" soon became quite visible on the rear. Could this be our Charlotte's granddaughter? In fact, could she be her daughter? I recalled a sunny day in early spring, when I had rounded the corner past Charlotte's window well taking out the garbage, and had run smack into a thin strand of web and noticed several more in the air and on the fence. I had immediately recalled the scene in the film Charlottes Web when the baby spiders emerged and launched themselves into the air. The phenomenon is called "ballooning" and I had walked right into it. I searched, but couldn't find any spiders. I went about my business thinking about what a coincidence that it had happened on the very spot our Charlotte had laid her own eggs.

But was it a coincidence? We'd had a terrible winter that year. The following spring and summer were cold and wet. The following winter was equally bad. This spring however, had been exceptional, perfect even. Was it possible the eggs had laid there fallow, waiting all this time? The egg sac had remained glued to its spot looking exactly the same as always. Once we knew for sure that this new spider was in fact another Charlotte, Beth got curious and went to check the egg sac. It was gone, the remaining webbing empty and bedraggled. Could it be? I'd need a spider expert to say for sure.

One Half of a Web

With much more scope for the imagination than her mother had in the window well, this Charlotte spreads her webs over the entire porch corner and connects them to the hanging baskets below and on either side of her. This corner is very protected, in even the worst of winds, rain or snow, this little area surrounding our front door remains sheltered and clear. Even in the gustiest of winds, her web rocks back and forth with the baskets, but the web anchor strands remain strong. The web is always full of gnats and moths, and we have witnessed her gobbling down freshly caught fly on several occasions. No saving them up for later, this Charlotte is a vicious and bloodthirsty killer who devours these choice specimens before our eyes. She is an extraordinarily huge spider in comparison to her mother, probably due to her exceptional diet, and her abdomen is easily the size of a dime.

Photos of Charlotte II have been impossible because she prefers to stay curled up in her corner, sleeping away her days, and only venturing out in the darkness to make repairs to her web. As dusk falls she creeps out to bounce in the web's center, see the sun go down and watch us water the flowers. It has only been the lightening quick wolfing down of those fresh kills that has garnered us much of a look at her.

"Far into the night, while the other creatures slept, Charlotte worked on her web. First she ripped out a few of the orb lines near the center. She left the radial lines alone, as they were needed for support. As she worked, her eight legs were a great help to her. So were her teeth. She loved to weave and she was an expert at it. When she was finished ripping things out, her web looked something like this:"



It has become a ritual for me to check on her each morning and see her fresh web glistening in the morning sun. New and perfect, free from bugs, it sits poised for a new days catch. Each morning I expect to find "Some Pug" woven into the intricate design. Sadly, neither of our Charlotte's has been a writer.




But now it is fall, and the pots must be emptied and the fountain put to bed for the winter. I carefully and very reluctantly removed the one strand of webbing anchored to the last hanging basket so I could remove it. The web instantly collapsed and I was overcome with guilt. After a night of magic and spinning, I went to fetch the milk and looked up to see Charlotte's new web. Anchored to each side of the L shaped porch roof and eaves, it sits like a trampoline, and I can look up directly at it. Since I had the ladder out so I could reach the hanging planters, I decided it was time for Charlotte to give it up for a photo shoot.

Charlotte II

This Charlotte A. Cavatica, is unfortunately not as beautiful as her mother, Her coloring is much lighter, the exact shade of our house paint, probably a protective measure provided by nature. And because of this coloration, she lacks the definitive markings that complete the cat face on her rear. She does have the same long delicate hairy legs striped in brown and cream, and sharp beady dark eyes, and like her mother she is shy and quiet. Reclusive.

A Full Web

To date there is no egg sac, at least not one we can see tucked anywhere. Perhaps Charlotte II will die an old maid, ending her mother's legacy. I hope not. I hope that come next spring babies will once again launch into the air and when one hatchling asks what was my mother's middle initial, Wilbur can answer A for Arania and that baby will choose to stay behind, finding the porch an ideal spot for catching flies. Perhaps she will even become a writer....

-Tigerlily