what a wonderful bird the frog are!

What a wonderful bird the frog are!

When he stands he sit almost;

When he hop he fly almost.

He ain't got no sense hardly;

He ain't got no tail hardly either.

When he sit, he sits on what he ain't got almost.

-- Anonymous

It has not been much fun in the land of Bloom for fully the past month.  While things have been perking along merrily here on the blog, Mr. Bloom has been dealing with a case of shingles (we like to say, euphemistically, that he needs to be re-roofed), and on top of that, for the past two weeks Mr. Bloom and I have both had a mysterious complaint leaving us feverish and queasy (a tenacious GI bug, says the MD).  It was enough to put the kabosh on not one but two birthday celebrations (mine and Mr. Bloom's). The cake I baked was carefully wrapped & stashed in the freezer before nary a candle could be lit, and I'm so tired of eating boiled potatoes in broth, rice in broth, noodles in broth and toast (with a side of broth) that I could scream. Yep. We've been a barrel of laughs. One thing to be thankful for -- our children have remained healthy (so I'm not complaining... really!)

Yesterday, in the midst of a feverish haze, I decided we needed some levity & amusement, so I dragged my sewing machine up from the garage, plopped it on the kitchen table and sewed up some silly frogs from this pattern at Purl.  The project was just my speed. And what I love best is that these guys remind me of beanbag frogs from my childhood. I would see them flopping around the houses of friends sewn from the most outrageous paisley fabrics, slightly bizarre and perversely appealing. I coveted them dearly.

I used some Forest Hills from Anna Maria Horner's Folksy Flannel collection, plus plain green flannel and a scrap of calico all from from my stash... but honestly, these frogs would look good sewn from just about anything (even ghastly purple and brown paisleys, I do believe).

The Frog

Be kind and tender to the Frog,

And do not call him names,

As “Slimy skin,” or “Polly-wog,”

Or likewise “Ugly James,”

Or “Gap-a-grin,” or “Toad-gone-wrong,”

Or “Bill Bandy-knees”:

The Frog is justly sensitive

To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay

A treatment kind and fair,

At least so lonely people say

Who keep a frog (and by the way,

they are extremely rare).

--Hillaire Belloc