Tombo

This seems to be the season of the tombo (dragonfly).  They are everywhere, swarms of them.  I saw our little neighbor standing still in the grass in front of the apartment building with his finger out.  His mom whispered that he was waiting for a tombo to stop on his finger.

Here are some close-up photos Ted took of the local tombo.

 

Ted and I both like dragonflies. I think dragonflies are the new butterflies. I’ve done several needlework versions.

This was a class with Lynn Payette at the Carolinas Needlepoint Guild fall meeting several years ago.  I’m quite pleased with this.

 

These are two dragonflies from kits.  I didn’t date either of them, which is unusual for me, so I don’t know when they were stitched.  Both have glass which made them hard to photograph.

 

This was Ted’s Christmas ornament in 2008.  I’ve done a few of these stumpwork kind of dragonflies on different things.

 

It’s amazing to see so many dragonflies in Hokkaido after such a cold and snowy winter here.  The balance of nature is so delicate.

This makes me think of an article I recently read about how radioactive fallout has caused abnormalties in butterflies in Japan after the disaster last year. (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120812a2.html ) This article was about the pale grass blue butterfly and how the butterflies had abnormalities such as small wings, in 12 percent of first generation, 18 percent of second generation, and 34 percent of third generation caught two months after the disaster.  The butterflies caught last September had even higher percentage of abnormalities. The researchers in this study recommended research be conducted on other animals.  Does anyone else think this is very scary?