A box and some birds

Here are two photos of the little box I made for the shrink plastic book. In the end I am quite happy with the way it turned out, but the colour scheme changed completely on the way through! My grandson Alexander was in the room with me while I was painting it and he couldn't believe it - Granny where did all the pink go? I just kept adding more layers when I wasn't happy till I thought I had better stop. I like the tissue paper over scrim though.

Dougal and Nikki are having a lot of fun watching the bird life in their garden at Walkerston. This little bar breasted honeyeater (about 130-140 mm long) was happily feeding the Horsefield's Bronze Cuckoo pictured above. The cuckoo grows to 160 mm when fully grown so is heaps bigger than its surrogate mother. These photos were taken out the window of their computer room - all happening in a scraggy hedge in their front garden. Obviously the birds like it.

This is a very lucky Figbird chick. The branch holding the nest blew down in a storm with the nest still securely attached. Nikki rang the Wildlife Carers who said to put the nest in an icecream container and replace it in the tree. Dougal did this, but it blew down again, each time landing right side up so the chick was still in the nest. They just attached it to the fence in the middle of the hedge (about a metre and a half below the level in the tree) and the mother has continued to feed the chick. That is one lucky baby I think.

I have not done nearly as much creative stuff as I thought I would be for the last couple of days - babysitting instead. Nikki was rushed to hospital with suspected appendicitis, but after waiting nearly all day for a CT scan and not having anything to eat in case she needed surgery, was told at 6 pm she could have dinner, she has an acute attack of diverticulitis and just needed lots of antibiotics - much better than surgery. She was allowed home today, but the family will all come here for some meals as she has to take things very easy for a few days. Thank goodness they are here in Mackay now so we can do something to help. The two little ones had a lovely time with watercolours and paintbrushes for a couple of hours today, of course I forgot to take a photo!

The next lesson for Fibre-in-form has been downloaded, I haven't even read it properly yet, ther looks to be heaps of ideas, and lots of work in the pages. I am trying to do some more with paper napkins, and I want to make some more silk paper, even though I still have some unused which I made last year - you can always find a use though and it is such fun to do. No doubt the next lesson for Catalogue Killers will appear before long also........I shall never catch up.