These fabric samples again are from my mother-in-law who made carry bags in many colors and sizes. I don't know how old the fabric is, only that it's likely she sewed this in the 1970s.

It wasn't until last year that I became aware of the frequency of cartoon faces in clouds and trees. If you follow this blog, you may have noted some of the photos where amusing characters are easy to see. The human brain likes to connect the dots, to fill in the blanks to make something recognizable.

Sometimes that isn't even necessary. Nature provides us with textured images that fill us with awe. (Perhaps nature provides us with the occasional gremlin as well!) As we take photos more and more often with cell phones and little digital cameras, we are amazed when we see we captured more than the kids and the family dog.

I now see evidence of natural cartoons in paintings from centuries past, in flowers and in leaves on the sidewalk, in people's hair, and in the wrinkles in their clothing. There are many layers to human perception, and many layers to our reality. Our brains become trained to spot (and perhaps to create) the images, just as we learn to recognize fossils and arrowheads camouflaged in a creek bed.

I find them in fabric like this, and trust if you look carefully, you too might see hidden visitors in these photos.