Arkaroola Time Warp: Colour & Inspiration Tuesday

Time is a bit Weird in the Outback

I know this can happen anywhere, but it seems to me that Arkaroola is in the grip of some strange sort of time warp phenomenon thingy. I work really hard, do and see so many things and yet time stands still. Nothing changes, every day is the same. But then I find that the calendar has skipped an entire month….. and everything has changed while I was looking but not noticing. And it still feels like no time has passed….

But it must have, because I have finally done some sewing. Lunarcy is coming your way very soon! If I don’t go batty first from the flies first, that is ….. yuck!

Everyday brings new surprises, so be careful what you wish for!

After the caterpillars of last week, I wished to see a Hawk Moth. For some reason, I thought that this would be an accomplishment. The very next morning, one was waiting for me in the bathroom. The Chameleon did a happy dance and felt a little smug about how the gods must have smiled upon him.

Two days later I couldn’t go outside at night for having to fight my way past battalions of them. Just trying to rinse and hang our bathers was tantamount to a suicide mission.

And two days after that, they were all gone again. Mr Mew is very confused…. he is wondering if he just imagined a cat heaven full of huge moths…..

We’re still all mad here!

Here are some of the other interesting things we have seen this week. All the local water holes have now dried up, so there is no more looking in muddy pools for fun now. But it seems that the ideal time span has passed since the rain for all the moths, flies and beetles etc to have metamorphosed into their adult form. By night the moths had just about obscured the view; by day the flies are now at least as bad! And as the insect life has been phenomenal, so has the vertebrate life that feeds on it.

As you can see, we have bats….. I managed to capture one on camera feeding on the insects outside our kitchen window.

We also have rats…… not. But so I thought for a few moments! Suddenly I was noticing poop scattered everywhere around the outside of the house!

Then I took a closer look and saw some telltale signs that said “Not rat poop. Lizard poop!”. I guess if you mix a lot of geckos with a lot of moths, it only stands to reason. Although listening to poop talk to you perhaps does not.

Speaking of poop and reason, it appears that madness is genetic. Here is my son in the Arkaroola pool. He is being a submarine, complete with periscope. The name of his ship? It is the HMS Emoji Poo….. 💩💩💩 of course…..

Moving on from those scatterbrained rantings…… On our evening walks we have spotted some other bizarre fun things.

Antlion lairs…… a larvae sits in the bottom of that cone and eats anything unfortunate enough to fall inside to the bottom. The adult nocturnal fly looks innocent enough…..

Juvenile Katydids…. this one’s a girl. And no, not because her name is Katy….. that large curved appendage on her back is her egg laying machinery. Which she won’t need until she moults at least once more to get her wings.

And lots of large, insane green beetles. These run like they have squadrons of Hawk Moths after them if you even so much as glance at them. This one ran down its branch, up another and took to the air in what looked like a blind panic. Only to land right back on the top of its original branch. Go figure!

Nature is so much stranger than fiction!

And so, this is how Lunarcy begins!

Crazy distractions aside, I have finally got my sewing station set up and in use. I have cut all my main blocks and inner sashings for the Lunarcy quilt from my Island Batik fabric I showed last Tuesday.

Disclaimer: Island Batik supplied these fabrics to me free of charge to create the prototype Lunarcy BOM available here soon at Clever Chameleon for the remainder of 2020.

And I have sewn them into 12 blocks ready for appliqué like so. Pretty!

I have also sewn the blocks together with sashing of the orange Leaf Vine – Nasturtium fabric, and it’s looking good! I don’t have a photo though, as it was trying to rain today and the lighting was too poor.

Sadly, it didn’t succeed in precipitating here at all though.

But back to the Lunarcy quilt – having a flimsy now ready for the appliqué stage means that I have now nearly finished double checking my yardage calculations and the BOM can start very very soon. Yay!

Until then…..

There’s abundant Life at our Weekly Party!

This week Enzo recommends the Log Cabin Tree of Life at For the Love of Geese. Denise has generously supplied a free paper-pieced template for you in her post if you would like to make your own version of this project.

The Arkaroola crazed green beetle recommends his cousin the Quilt Bug at Aussie Kilted Quilter. Of course!

And the Chameleon recommends the flies! Always. No contest! Especially the organic free-range flies raised at Arkaroola. And those at Maggie’s place.

These Shoofly blocks are Maggie’s latest progress at Making a Lather.

Follow the links to each of these fun posts.

And since there are no flies on you…..

Tell us – what are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? We want to know so we can visit and be inspired. Link up a blog post, an IG post or simply a photo from your computer.  See if you can get the Chameleon to turn quilted with happiness. We’d love to see your quilting colours!

• Link up your latest or recent quilt/sewing excitement. All quilt construction stages welcome – finished quilts, quilt blocks – even fabric pulls! Or inspiration sources!
• You have 50 characters in the link description…. tell us who you are and what your fantastic project is.
• URL links are not necessary to link up…. non-bloggers 100% welcome! If you don’t have a URL, you can link up with just a photo.
• Take a moment to visit some friends who came to the party – leave a little love and make their day. And a link back to Clever Chameleon is always appreciated.
• Do it now……. before you forget!

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The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!

Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest, IG or FB. All your follow options can be found here. Don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour & Inspiration Linky parties!