posted by Lily on embroidery

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okay – after a great deal of computer-thwarting which resulted in me consuming two chocolate crackles, two very crappy biscuits and a very large glass of milk, this post is brought to you by one of my lovely students, Peonie! :-)  She cheerfully let me use her Mac to shrink the photos for the post!  So with no further adieu …

Little A is clearly her mother’s daughter and has spent the last few days with Mellitupple, our resident mulberry sprite, tied to her waist (literally!) concocting wonderful stories about her. In these tales, we all live on a small, self-sufficient farm – effortlessly of course :-) – and Mellitupple lives way down where the bush is still thick, in the trunk of an old mulberry tree. However, she is very reliant upon us, sneaking up each morning to steal milk from the cow to churn for her cream and butter – to eat with her mulberries of course! In fact, she’s a mischieveous sprite and I’m trying to convince Little A to write her stories down for us – they’re very sweet.

However, such a sprite cannot live in isolation and so Little A has been pestering me for Mellitupple’s companions – Lemondandy, Pellirosa and Springjinny to name a few! So today we drew up the next garden sprite and here HE is – Blossomblue.

He is a Jacaranda sprite – which for those of you who are not familiar with these glorious trees, are tall, elegant, and wispy trees that flower quite magically each spring. Come the beginning of October, their bare and brittle branches suddenly pour forth with thousands of small, delicate, purply-blue blossoms. Brisbane and Grafton (a small town in Northern New South Wales) are particularly famous for them (oh! I’ve just read that Adelaide is too) and where they bloom, the very air, let alone the ground, becomes rich with an almost touchable purple mist. They are a sheer delight.

Now Blossomblue’s home is in no way endangered – Jacaranda trees are positively revered in Brisbane – but he’s a shy creature who doesn’t like to impose, so Mellitupple has taken him under her wing, or should I say, mulberry.

So many lovely blues and purples to choose from – very dreamy palette – despite the fact that there is almost no variation in colour amongst the local jacarandas – no matter which suburb you’re in, they’re all the same – jacaranda blue.  But Blossomblue, being a magical creature, is allowed to be a little more esoteric.

He also has long feathery fronds – well, as feathery as wool can be!

Then it was on with arms of purple and polka dot legs, sew him up and turn him out. I hate this part – strangely enough, I always feel very claustrophobic and get all jittery – oh no! oh no!  he’s stuck!  he’s stuck! I can’t breathe!  >Pop<  Oh thank goodness that’s over until the next one!

I visited Spotlight on Friday so we now have 2 kilos of stuffing – yay!

And he’s done.  What a sweet little fellow.  I tried a different style of nose on Blossomblue – yeah, I think it’s cute.  And his eyes and smile make him look very easy going company.  I don’t think he’ll be sneaking around our farm, stealing milk.  More likely to sit peacefully on the verandah…