TREMENDOUS

TREMENDOUS… yes, I experienced a tremendous event recently.

Each winter, during my Mexican retreat, a group of women friends get together for a traveling adventure. This year we decided on the colonial city of Morelia in the state of Michoacan.  Eight of us toured city and countryside with a personal guide for 7 days; the entire week was tremendous. The highlight of the trip was our visit to the Butterfly Sanctuary in the small mountain puebla of El Rosario. Here the monarchs spend five months each winter, CLUSTERED on the branches of the trees. At first I thought the orange tint of the trees was because of a bark beetle problem or the like, but it was only the MILLIONS of monarchs nestled closely together, waiting for the right daytime conditions to take a short flight in search of water. On the day of our visit, the sun was out, with nary a breath of wind.  Around noon, as we began our short hike uphill to the edge of the forest, we found ourselves surrounded by monarchs…in the air, on the ground, in our hair, on our backpacks, everywhere! At trail’s end, we were able to sit and just take in the magic of the day. Now that was TREMENDOUS!

I’m in a “using up my stash” stage now, so pulled out my scrap bag and found some butterfly worthy swatches, located a piece of interesting green for the background, and set to work appliquéing them on. Now what? It was awfully BUSY and I wasn’t sure where to go next. (That seems to be my mode of operation…one step at a time, take a look, see what evolves…) I was digging around in my stamp collection yesterday and discovered a lovely butterfly stamp. How about a little bleaching? I was curious if bleach would work with the appliquéd stitches (too bulky?). So I held my breath, crossed my fingers, and began stamping bleach product on my piece. I love how the bleach creates dimension, a sense of layers. It’s still busy, but it truly represents the masses of butterflies on that TREMENDOUS day.