CAITLIN'S MICE

I have just finished making a needle folder for Caitlin, it has this blackberry fabric on the outside and little mice stitched on the pages inside.  When it is first opened up there is a page with her new scissors in their place

opening it further reveals 4 pockets for packets of needles

and flannel for spare pins and needles.

I am finishing an 'orts bag' in the blackberry fabric .

 To follow at a later date- a pin keep and a floss ring tag.... more mice.

Tail note( not foot note!)

I found again the original card that inspired these cross stitch designs.

Blackberry picking by Cecilia Rowan.

AND MICE IN MY GARDEN

The sun is shining and I braved the cold wind for a quick walk round the garden and I found clumps of little mice ....... Little mouse plant Arisarum proboscideum comes up in the spring with lovely clumps of fresh green leaves and its only when you part these you find the flowers, the tiny mice.

It is a fasinating plant, a woodland native of Italy and Spain, and one gardening book describes the flowers as like the long tails of mice diving for cover.

It  appears to like the climate here,  I was given a few of the tiny tubers some years ago which we grew in the rockery in our Coromandel Garden and when we moved brought some with us to find it was already in the garden. Like all mice it seems to multiply well !!!  And now there are several clumps in different parts of the garden

Don't you love the tail on this one........