Butterflies

I've been looking after a caterpillar farm over the holidays (as you do) and, yesterday, a butterfly emerged;
a little, female cabbage white.
Here she is, fresh out of her pupa:

(you can tell she's a female by her slightly green colour
and the two spots on each of her top wings)

...and here she is taking her first flight:

Watching her wheeling exuberantly up into the air filled me with delight.

As you can probably tell, I love butterflies,
both the real life varieties and the arty~crafty kind.
These two reside on my fridge door:

The first one was created by one of the children I worked with last year and the second was bought from an art market. By the way, the second butterfly is much, much smaller in real life. They were both made with overhead projector plastic, permanent felt tip markers, thin magnets (the kind you find on the back of junk mail calendars) and a dusting of glitter. One of these days, I'm going to make some myself (and if I had a dollar for every time I've ever said that I would be a very rich woman indeed.)

I try to encourage butterflies into my garden by growing plants that they can breed on. I have milkweed in my back garden for wanderer butterflies and nasturtiums in my front flower beds for the cabbage whites.

Nasturtiums come in such a wonderful array of colours:

As well as admiring butterflies I've been crafting, of course.
I found a sweet crochet lacy scarf and tried to track down the pattern but came to a halt when I reached this blog because it's written in Chinese (I think). So, with the help of Dot Matthew's directions for the Fancy Fans Stole, I worked out the pattern myself.
This is what I've come up with so far:

I think that it's working up prettily but, with warm weather really and truly upon us here in Perth, I won't be wearing it anytime soon.
I'm having fun anyway.

I hope your week's blessed with fun too.
Butterfly kisses to you.