I had no idea Ian Fleming said that whole thing - I do love it, I have to say, having first read it in a book by one of my favourite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold. The whole saying goes "First time is happenstance, second time is co-incidence, third time is enemy action". Lying here in bed with my second bout of the nasty for this year makes me wonder if this little maxim applies to me... and then I started wondering what a maxim actually was...
You see, Gentle Readers, where my brain takes me when I'm ill? Into the weird and arcane world of words. I was reading "My Grammar and I" the other night, loving the way it changed my view about "people who" and "things that", but supported my view about nouns of mass - "no amount of things here" - and wondering if that made me truly odd. And then I thought "probably". I've been firming up my vocabulary quite nicely by playing Wordfeud a bit, with a bunch of people, and I've used great words like 'thine' and 'sucre' and 'drib' and 'fart' and 'turd', so you can see it's not great works of academe... but it is improving.
Digressing (see?) somewhat, I've just been to see my lovely Dottoressa*, who's given me the rest of the week off - again. Man. The only way this could be any better is if I wasn't sick, so I could knit, write, sew, cook, clean. Hey, let's not get carried away here...
My lovely Ma & Hank are off to Bali tomorrow morning at 6.00am (shudder) for 10 days of warmth and sun, MGF Kaz & Az are in Europe enjoying the last days of summer in England, then moving across to France, for Vintage, in Burgundy, no kidding. Bastards, all of them.
In other news of huge importance, I took up the fantastic suggestion from The Peppermint Penguin and flicked over to Ravelry, where I probably haven't been for more than a year, to look for patterns for hats for little boys. I found a couple of goodies:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/gooseberry-hat (free download)
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/aston (free download)
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/easy-peasy-newborn-sock-hat (free download)
I love Ravelry. Such a nice feeling about a site where people are kind enough to share their patterns, no crap about "you can do this or that with them". Even the patterns for sale are very reasonably priced -
Even the one I bought today (for me, not the Bub) was only C$6.50. That's almost unheard of here, where patterns, like yarn, are relatively expensive. My favourite Filatura Di Crosa yarn is retailing at US$11.00 on the net, but we're being charged A$14.50/ball. And the Aussie dollar is above the US Dollar. Makes me mad... and our shops wonder why we don't buy from them anymore?
Off to the needles. Ciao!
*Doctor
Fame at last, Gentle Readers, fame at last. Autographs here, form an orderly queue, no pushing, there is plenty of me to go around (but considerably less than this time last year, I might add)... an item of mine has been included in somebody else's treasury - the very lovely Natalie, from Humblebea on Etsy included my Joel Dewberry Christmas pouch in her Christmas Gift treasury.
I'm under no illusions about the inclusion (so early, and yet so poetic), I think she might have felt obligated because I put her very beautiful linen napkin rings in my Smoke on the Water Treasury, but that was never my intention, you know that, Gentle Readers, I was just finding new and wonderful ways to fill my lonely empty days. *snort*.
However, if there is some kind of Etsy etiquette about telling people you're putting their stuff in a treasury, nobody told me. As each treasury contains 16 items, that's a lot of convo's. In the time it takes to write, copy the links & send all 16 convos to the makers, you could have made another treasury. Let them eat cake, I say. Off with their heads. (see, no breakfast yet, my efforts to push Mr Golightly out of bed & into the toast & tea-making machine have been entirely unsuccessful & I'm getting light-headed).
Oh, you want to see the pouch? Didn't I post a picture the other day? Oh well, here it is:
And now I can see that I didn't do a great job of pressing it after construction... oh well. I suspect it was the volume of Dickens and the reciprocation obligation that really did it for her.... oh stop it.
And today lovely AJ from "A Peppermint Penguin" is having a sale of items at her friend's Quilt Studio, which sadly I don't have the address for, but if you're in Glasgow, and you see an interesting looking place selling beautifully hand-knitted mittens and shawls, pop in & say "Hi"!
And that, for me, is it. I need to get up & do stuff. About which, more. Later.
Ciao!
