Weeds, Frogs and a little Lunarcy

Everything grows like weeds after summer rain!

Including the weeds. This week we have been madly helping out with weed control around the Arkaroola village. It’s a crucial few days where the weeds are big enough to easily identify amongst all the beneficial plants, but haven’t started dropping seed yet. The window of opportunity is short, and for the Bindii is almost shut already.

Between that, and schooling, I have still managed a little sightseeing and a little sewing. It helps that we had a public holiday yesterday to get a few things done. I’ve got all my Lunar New Year animal appliqués cut out. And a flimsy sewn, ready to put them on.

And apart from the one, lonely boatman bug next to the frog in our colour board, there are no creepy crawlies in this week’s post. You might not have guessed it from last week, but there is actually a bit more to the Outback than bugs and flies!

The Lunarcy Grows

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.

As the weather starts to cool off here, especially at night, my Lunarcy quilt is heating up! The flimsy is done and admired. And my animal fusible-backed appliqués are cut. Here they are on non-stick paper, waiting for transfer to the quilt.

The animal shapes are cut from the Mustard Basics fabric available from Island Batik.

Just some branches to cut out next and I’ll be ready for fusing and first round of stitching.

The rest of my Arkaroola week in pictures

After we spoke last we had a few drops of rain. Not enough to puddle, but precious nonetheless.

The couple of cool days that followed were more inviting than it has been. So we poked around outside a bit more than we have been.

We know there is an echidna living under our house, because we have seen it once a while back. Apparently it has been poking around outside a little more lately too, as there are small holes and diggings springing up around the place.

We need to train it to dig up weeds! Here are two of the weeds we are trying to minimise around the Arkaroola Village area: Bindii and Datura. The Bindii has nasty burrs, the Datura is very invasive. Both are here to stay, but with a bit of maintenance we don’t have to live with them right at our back door. That is one good thing about a short growing season.

In better news, the rain has germinated a good collection of Sturt Desert Pea plants. They are right at our back door and also down the hill a little way. We are looking forward to some iconic wildflowers in due course.

There are a few other interesting things starting to flower now too. Spider wattle…. you’ll like that one when you see it, it’s a really interesting plant (no actual spiders, I promise). And native Mistletoe.

The Fauna is blooming too

Now that the place is greening up a little, we are seeing more birds. We saw a pair of Wedgetail eagles riding the thermals the other day. And my daughter is very observant on the smaller species. Here is her first Peaceful Dove sighting.

On the weekend we went for a drive to the Arkaroola Waterhole. We’d been told there are frogs there now. We certainly weren’t disappointed.

It was tadpole soup in the warm shallows!

After sitting still for a while, the shyer frogs and nearly completed frogs started appearing.

In the end they were a dime a dozen!

While my daughter and I watched frogs, my son played with our new Geiger Counter to try to find radioactive rocks.

There is some measurable radioactivity in the wider Arkaroola area, although generally not around the village. But with our boy being quite the magpie who has a growing collection of interesting rocks amassing at my back door, I am happy to now be able to definitively say that they are safe to be displayed indoors (one or two at a time!). My next trick is to collect my black light from Adelaide…. some rocks around here can also fluoresce. That would add a whole new dimension to a night hike!

Just don’t tell the Chameleon…. he hasn’t worked out how to glow in the dark yet, and he’ll most likely get jealous.

Speaking of the Chameleon, what has he been up to while I am doing all this?

Hanging out with Kathleen of Kathleen McMusing at Quilt Con! Kathleen showed a mini quilt she made for a quilt swap….. It’s a Brimfield Block made with Alison Glass fabrics, and Kathleen got it signed on the back by not one but three relevant famous-quilty types for her swap partner! The Chameleon is so impressed he reckons he’s gonna get his back side signed one day too!

Now the Chameleon’s been plotting and scheming to mix with the quilting greats, he is seeing stars. Worse still, he’s got patches on himself. With the help of Turid at Den syende himmel and her pretty scrappy stars progress, you can’t half blame him though.

Clearly Mr Clever has developed a big head to go with that big tail of his. Luckily I know exactly where he will fit in! Big heads and big tails are right on trend at Ann’s place: Laughing Gas Quilts. Ann loves to tinker with patterns and comes up with amazing results. Click over for a good look at her latest fun quilt. Isn’t it great?

And now, I’m relying on you…..

It’s quite possible that I won’t be able to blog next week, as we are travelling for a school event again. If that proves to be the case, I will leave this party open for two weeks. The Chameleon thanks you in advance for joining up… seeing your sewing takes the sting out of another week without any sewing of my own!

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!