"...Twice is co-incidence..."

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

Curmudgeon!

That's me... I do think grammar and spelling are vitally important, especially in the day-job, and I refuse  to settle for the mis-spelt word, the misplaced comma, the badly worded phrase... However, I get the feeling I probably shouldn't try & drive change off the back of a piddly little some-time sewing blog... although I was sorely tempted for a week or so!


Anyway, now that my dudgeon is not so high, I'm back to normal, whatever that is.  I'm still doing the stupid hours, average 44 hours for the last month, and have started counting down the days until we go on holidays... only 6 weeks to go tomorrow!


Is it too early, do you think, to start planning itineraries?  I bought this great set of Rome Walking Tours, and I'm thinking that I'll take them with us, they're small enough to go in a day-pack... along with the digital camera, an umbrella and a bottle of water, although the water in Italian fountains is perfectly safe to drink... although from skimming through some travel sites, you'd think "that foreign muck" out of fountains and taps was the devil reincarnated....


As for Venice, maps and plans mean nothing, the best thing to do is to wander round taking in the sights - and I am aiming to see this:

Courtesy Wikipedia.


Betcha we just get to see the scaffolding - apparently it's being restored... just like the first time we went, when we saw this:

Compared to the second time, when we saw the real thing:

Bit of a difference, and well worth the 3 year wait.  Oops.  That's "three year wait".  And now, having fixed Blogger where it's has started doing that stupid thing again with the photo alignment again, my curmudgeonly gene is reasserting itself, and I am going to bed.  Up, up with the lark at 5.30am, and off to the office.    Yee haw!


Sewing Saturday, I have orders - dogs galore, and "Let's go Shopping" for Anne-Marie - fun all round.  And of course there's some nice fabric pics to show you, so don't go 'way now, y'hear?


Ciao!

Blogger ate my post.... again

Man.  I am so annoyed.  I just wrote a brilliant post criticising (hey!  Four eyes!  Sorry, bad Optical pun for those in the know) the growth in grammar illiteracy that seems to be on the rise - why is it that so many people who write for the public (and by that I mean anybody who can get to the internet) have no idea what they're doing? - and blogger ate it.  I am so annoyed.  Oh yes, I just said that.


Probably just as well, it was getting a little righteous, but when I see "Bored of Sewing" used as a title for a blog which is probably read by gazillions of people, it just makes my blood boil.  Just because you sew or quilt or whatever for a living doesn't mean that you should appear to be ignorant to the rest of the world.


Don't even get me started on those people who can't get "number" versus "amount" right.  For those of you who care, it's simple:  Amount is for money and things that can't be counted, such as "rain", "snow", "air", "time".  Number is for things that can be counted, such as "50 mls of rain fell in less than an hour on Newport last night & my laundry roof is leaking", "52 inches of snow fell on Washington DC last night", "the average human consumes 1 cubic foot of air per minute", and "look at the time, I have to stop writing this shit".  Just kidding.


And did you notice that I used "who", for people, rather than "that"?  That's one of the other ones I hate.  It's right up there with people who can't get "it's" and "its" right.  It's soooo simple.  


Also, I know that there are a few people out there who are going to say "you started a sentence with "and"... well, at least the rest of it is grammatically correct, and so is the spelling*.  


Anyway, rant over.  I got this in the mail this week, from here, one of my favourite Etsy shops:

and I'm going to give it a try - I've never done Sashiko embroidery before, but I'm sure it'll fun - and I'll post a picture of the finished article...

and these: 

which are going in the 'do not cut' box, except that I want to make lovely Clare over at Lulu Carter a birthday present, and these are ideal...


And, (there she goes again...) if you're like me and you love 1930's fashion and music, hop over to Gerald Gee, who does the most amazing things with music & photo montages...


Now.  Back to the damp ceiling!






*All you people in the Americas - we don't use the 'z', just like you apparently don't use the toilet.

Another one bites the dust...

Does anybody except me see a theme here? Oh well, never mind. I sold what I privately considered to be the nicest of the jewellery pouches today, to a lovely woman in Grose Wold. That's in NSW, Australia, rather than some 'other worlde- sci-fi' place. Sounds great, doesn't it? I'm going to look it up in a minute so I can pay homage to it (and my very generous buyer) just like I did for Conyers.

Anyway, picture attached, then off to bed. My goal here is to get to bed tonight before 11.00pm, the day starts at 6.30am & it's way way too long to be still trying to write coherently at 10:42pm.

However, a small rant, before I go: If I said to you "we are going to be doing away with a surplus of something, and here is the document which deals with the disposition", would you know I didn't mean "as in 'sunny'"??? Sometimes I despair of my colleagues. I'm going to buy a thesaurus for the office (oh, sorry, that's a big book full of hard words, for the benefit of the overpaid professionals with the vocabularies of 7 year olds, with whom I work...) & see if having a "hard word of the week" helps out. Rant over. Although, she says, not being able to contain herself even that much, did you notice how I couldn't help myself & had to work hard not to end that sentence with a preposition, did ya, did ya, huh, huh? Man. Go to BED!

Bed, sleep, dream, snore, bed, bed...