Something a little Blue...

Hello Dhaaarlings...

This morning... while out watering the vegetable patch...

 Princess encountered a most delightful sight...

Not one.... but...

Two families of  Blue Fairy Wrens came to visit and show off their numerous offspring...

There were two males and each had a harem of two or three females with a gaggle of about twelve baby birds between them...

The Males are quite the showy type with their vibrant blue plumage...

While the Females are more demure in their appearance and plumage...

(Princess (unusually) didn't have her camera at the ready... So takes this opportunity to thank Mr Smissen for his wonderful close ups)

Their visit brought to mind a lovely table cloth that Princess keeps tucked away in the linen closet and brings out on special occasions...


It is a very old hand embroidered tablecloth that was given to Princess many years ago in an incomplete state.
It is a square tablecloth depicting Blue Wrens in a circular garden scene... and when it was given to me several of the wrens were unfinished and/or incompletely stitched. I have no idea of it's true age as it was given to me by one of the Empresses friends. The cloth belonged to her friends mother and was never completed due to her mothers eyesight deteriorating.


Not only did the birds need to be finished but so did the crocheted edge of the cloth.

At that stage I had never done any sort of hand embroidery and it was not until several years later that I taught myself this skill and completed the tablecloth as pictured here...
following are several varying degrees of close up shots to give you a good look at the stitching involved.

And here are some close ups of the crochet edging...

for my first effort at hand embroidery I think that I did a pretty good job...


And tomorrow morning I'll be out in the in the back yard with my camera poised to see if I can't get some of my own shots of these beautiful and vibrant little birds...