Side Steps

In the evenings I curl up and work on a felted book. It is number three in a series. The first and second book are in my Guild's show "What is Out is In". At first this theme brought no pictures or images to mind. But I rolled it over and over and finally came up with conservation. In our history there has always been little or no concern regarding this small blue planet we inhabit. We dumped everything in our rivers and oceans and gave little consideration to the air or earth. But now it is very *In* to be *Green*.



My books tell the story of beetles. Beetles that are disappearing and are on the Endangered List. The beetle is something most of us eeeeyuuu and step on. But in Victorian times women decorated their clothing with metallic beetle elytra and even had gold chains with live beetles pinned to their gown as living jewels. Yet many species are disappearing and it should be marked that as lowly beetles die the ecosystem is disrupted.


My first book started with Rosalia Alpina. The beautiful blue beetle above. It is disappearing from Hungary and Germany as the Beech forests are felled. The second book is based on The American Burying Beetle. It is found only is four places now and one of these is Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island.





The third in the series will be a star book. It is what I'm working on in the evenings. The long piece is about 7inches high and will fold into a star shape. There will be no beginning or end and each page will have
different beetles, dragonflys and other small insects that are endangered.

So now I return to work. I'll have pictures tomorrow of the latest blocks for the quilt. I finished Phlox today.