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Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is Shari Doty!

Shari Doty (Sharikrsna, #607) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level Tatting Merit Badge!

“I ordered needles, and using my Stitching Room book, learned needle tatting. I had already been shuttle tatting. I have already made six ornaments, a collar, a hatband, and edging for a baby carrier I sewed for my neighbor. One heart shaped ornament was a pattern from 1917!”

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  1. Winnie Nielsen says:

    Wooo Sheri, and his is benautiful as you first project!! Congratulations on learning and making a tatting project because it is not easy at all.

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Hear Ye!

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is Ann Gee!

Ann Gee (#7351) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert Levels for the Sew Wonderful Merit Badge!

“I went thru the 3 steps, Beginner through Expert. On the lst step, I took all of my supplies out of a plastic bag and put them into a nice sewing basket.

For the second challenge, I went online and found stitches and copied them onto fabric. Even though I’ve been a hand-sewer for many years, I found these to be very interesting.

For the 3rd, I made the carry-all tote, and it came out very nice, may have to keep it and make more for gifts. Made the chicken potholder for my niece, who raises chickens.

I was very satisfied the way everything turned out. I took a denim shirt and appliqued several fabric animal designs on it plus my Sisterhood badge and some buttons.

My new sewing basket is much nicer to take to classes and to be able to find things more easily.”

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  1. Winnie Nielsen says:

    Ann, I enjoyed hearing about your creative solutions to the three levels of the badge. Your denim skirt sounded especially fun and I wish you had a photo to share!

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Young Cultivator Merit Badge: Get Buggy, Intermediate Level

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life   

For this week’s Garden Gate/Get Buggy Intermediate Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Piper and I wandered out to the front yard with our trusty notebook journals, magnifying glass, and a couple of glass jars with holes poked in the lids.

I think you can tell where we were going with this, righto? You got it, we were looking for some bug lovin’!

Furry, spindly, fat, eight-legged, four-legged, winged, cute, ugly (or bugly, as the pun-loving Pipes liked to say), we were all about dem bugs.

What we were not about was the anthill we accidently disrupted. Talk about ants in our pants. Okay, okay, I exaggerate, not so much in our pants as milling about our toes, but you get the drift. We apologized to the ant family (They didn’t even pause to listen though. Busy little buggers, aren’t they?) and moved to a different area of the yard.

For the Intermediate Level badge, you won’t really need the jars with lids, but we like to be prepared in case of bug adoptions. You never know when you might find a rare, exotic type lurking under your hydrangeas or scampering past your garden gnome! Why, just one of these finds of the Top Five Rarest Bugs in Nature would cement our notoriety in the world of entomologists:

  • Euspinolia militaris (the panda ant): Oh, it may look all cute and fuzzy, with black and white patches that appear positively snuggable, but this ‘ant’ is actually a member of the wasp family. And we never recommend snuggling a wasp. Lest you think you can take this little guy on, we’re here to tell you his nickname is “cow killer” (and yes, they can!). Yikes. Luckily, these stinging devils are mostly found in Chile.

photo by silamtao

  • Atrax sutherlandi (red-fanged funnel spider): Also called the Vampire Spider, this somewhat terrifying arachnid has red fangs. Gulp. Surprisingly though, for its fierce appearance, the atrax sutherlandi mostly just eats other insects, and won’t suck your blood.
  • Lycaedes melissa samuelis (Karner butterfly): Finally, one that won’t keep you up at night with bad dreams, this vibrant blue butterfly can only be found near New York, where it sadly has nearly become extinct due to deforestation. It’s a particular and persnickety butterfly and wants its habitat exactly just-so (kind of like me, now that I think about it).
)

photo by Hollingsworth, J & K via Wikimedia Commons

  • Titanus giganteus (the titan beetle): Back to the frightening kind, this beetle, native to the Amazon rainforest, can be 9 inches long! Let that sink in. Bigger than my whole hand. Or my favorite sub sandwich! Well, at least at that size, it won’t be sneaking up on me anytime soon.
  • Dryococelus australis (the tree lobster): This ginormous walking stick insect (about 6 inches long!) only lives on Lord Howe Island, between New Zealand and Australia. Entomologists thought this amazing creature was extinct back in the ‘20s but luckily for bug lovers everywhere in the early 2000s, they began popping up again. Now, experts are breeding them so as to populate the island once more. How do the residents feel about this? Unsure. How do I feel about that? Glad I don’t live on Lord Howe Island!

photo by Granitethighs via Wikimedia Commons

Well, Piper and I didn’t find any of these remarkable bugs, but we did find some beauties to mark down in our journals. And a roly-poly named Earnest lived in a Mason-jar habitat for an afternoon before we let him go back to his family.

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  1. Winnie Nielsen says:

    One of the first projects I did like this as a child was in our 6th grade science class one Spring. We made butterfly/moth catching nets and holding kits. Then we had to chlorophorm them after catching them and display them in cigar boxes with their scientific names. We each had about 12 specimens for the task. While I hated killing them, it was a true learning experience that required a new level of research and task of scientific presentation. We all enjoyed this project and when we shared them in the classroom, it was a wonderful learning experience looking and learning about all of the many species in our area of the state. The boxes of specimens remained on a big table for a few weeks so that we had multiple opportunities to look at what the class had found and identitfied.

  2. Karlyne says:

    “Cow killer”? Much as I like a nice Chilean wine on occasion, I don’t think I’m going to go visit…

  3. Krista says:

    The panda ant is really fascinating looking. I definitely don’t want anymore wasps around me, but he would make for a cute ant! I’m also grateful I don’t live in the Amazon with the titan beetle either. 9 inches is by far way to long for me! I’ll stick with the insects we have here.

  4. Lisa Von Saunder says:

    I have seldom been afraid of insects but when we were at the TANZANIA border to show our passports there were what I thought were bats flying around the lone lightbulb but noooooo they were giant beetles, lots of them- hundreds actually – crawling on the ground and flying all over, i had to step on them to go into the office for my passport stamp , it is a recurring nightmare for me!!! just terrifying !!1

  5. Lisa Von Saunder says:

    oh yeah and i was in my bare feet too!

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Hear Ye!

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is Jennifer Chappell!

Jennifer Chappell (AdeleHale, #6346) has received a certificate of achievement in Cleaning Up for earning a Beginner Level My Fair Farmgirl Merit Badge!

“I researched the difference between conventional products and cruelty-free organic beauty products and shared it on my personal Facebook page. I replaced my toothpaste and all of my skincare products with organic alternatives. I made scented bath salts with Epsom salts and essential oils.

I like using the organic beauty products—they have improved my skin health immensely.

For the bath salts, I combined three pounds of Epsom salts with 3 drops eucalyptus essential oil, 3 drops tea tree essential oil, and 2 drops peppermint essential oil. The scent and the salts lasted about an hour and my fibromyalgia is better today than it was yesterday.”

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  1. Winnie Nielsen says:

    Jennifer, what a great idea to make for your new badge! I bet your bath salts will make welcomed gifts to family and friends in the future as well.

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Hear Ye!

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is Kimberly Calvert!

Kimberly Calvert (KimmyC, #7479) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level Sew Wonderful Merit Badge!

“I put together a travel sewing kit with straight pins, safety pins, needles, scissors, buttons, and five spools of thread, including one heavyweight. I also put a small retractable tape measure in there for the project that I plan to work on once we hit the road. I also put wide Velcro, reflective tape, and wonder clips. I made a bright, cheerful owl pincushion that was small enough to fit inside. I stuffed her belly with crushed walnut shells, as I read that it would help keep the pins sharp. Walnut shells are super dusty! I will do the stuffing outside next time.

As much as I love Mason jars, I needed a non-breakable container to take in our RV. I reused a bulk foods container, which is perfect! It’s transparent so that I can see what’s inside (and so that my little owl can see outside. hah!). It feels pretty sturdy and the lid will stay put, keeping my contents secure when we hit the bumpy roads.

I will be modifying dog coats for our three dogs while we’re en-route, so this sewing kit was just the thing that I needed. What a great idea! Thank you for the inspiration.”

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  1. Winnie Nielsen says:

    Kimberly, this was a great idea for your RV sewing kit! Using plastic makes it easy to see what is inside as well as protect the contents should a spill occur. I know you are going to enjoy this handy dandy kit while you travel.

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photo-of-the-day

farm-romance_9377

Be like the bee, always seeking the nectar of knowledge. Life is sweeter that way.

  1. Winnie Nielsen says:

    Hence the term, Busy Bees! Love that pink and green color combination.

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