Crochet - 1930's Spool Cotton Hat Book

New from Purple Kitty – a book of quintessentially mid-30’s hats.  They can be downloaded as individual patterns, one by one for free, as a single pdf for $1.49, or you can opt to purchase all the 2014 and 2015 files at a whack for $12.00.

(Buy them all – they’re a treat).

Right On Time

image from Pinterest

 

It's the day after Christmas and we received five seed catalogs in the mail this morning.

Merry Christmas

I Admit It

We're insufferable.

The Online Bookshelf - A Visit From St Nicholas

A free download from Project Gutenberg.

Vintage Images - More Christmas Clipart

Copyright-free, from Dover.

Nightmare Food

I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before (From Dainty Desserts for Dainty People, courtesy of Knox Gelatine circa 1915), but it looks as though it has fangs and would turn on anyone unwise enough to attempt to eat it. 

The rest of the illustrations in the booklet are far less menacing.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

Winter Landscape in the Mountains, by Pinio Colombi

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape.  Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show. ~ Andrew Wyeth

Grrrsday

Der Tag

image from Pinterest

He got a sizable rebate check from the insurance company yesterday.

Me: Do you want me to deposit it for you?

He:  Only $200.  Keep the rest out for running-around money.

It’s taken 32 years to get him here, and now I’m not sure I like it.

Vintage Images - Christmas

Copyright-free vintage holiday images, from Dover.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

Fascism arrives as your friend.  It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you…It doesn’t walk in saying, “Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.” ~ Michael Rosen

It’s Like Watching An Elephant Trying To Walk On Tip-Toe

image from the Graphics Fairy

He (speaking in a loud and artificially sweet voice to the dog):  I really need to go to bed but I can’t until I check my email, and I can’t get on the computer.

Me (hunched over the computer keyboard):  So ask, already, and stop being so passive aggressive.

He: Can I be actively aggressive?  Get off the f*cking computer!

Grrrsday

Vintage Images - Christmas Cards

Copyright-free, from Dover.

History Repeats Itself

 “A joint review of US Ebola quarantine policies by analysts at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Yale University found that the quarantines imposed by states weren’t medically justified and were unconstitutional.

The 46-page report said the infection and death of a Liberian man in Dallas, and illnesses in two nurses that cared for him, triggered disproportionate fear and hysteria in October and Novemver of 2014 that led to overly restrictive quarantine measures in many states that misled the public.

In a forward to the report by Deane Marchbien, MD, president of Doctors without Borders in the United States, said the report put responsibility for the panic on political leaders—enabled by a “fear-mongering mass media”—through ignorance or political expediency.”

Caturday!

from Pinterest

Pondering More of Life’s Little Mysteries

Why are apples, walnuts, and celery considered diet food but Waldorf salad is not?

Along the same lines, why is pumpkin pie not touted as an essential source of fiber and vitamin C?

Why does it take me six tries and three days’ worth of newspaper to get a fire started? 

Why does HE seem to be able to set fires effortlessly? ¹

Why does some knucklehead revving a motorcycle on the other side of town cause Babyface to frantically crawl under the bedsheets with me and crouch there with all 90 lbs. of her vibrating like a furry hootchy-cootchy dancer? Reminding her that she is a police dog, for God’s sake, has no effect whatsoever.

Why do I never seem to have an equal number of clean bras and step-ins?  The count varies, too.  Some weeks I have more bras, some weeks more step-ins.  This should not be.

Why, if by some miracle I find two socks of the same color in the clean laundry, don’t they match?  At present there are four bachelor black socks lying on the shelf waiting for four different black sock mates.   Someone could make a fortune with a Tinder app for socks.

While we’re on the topic of lingerie, why would the cat rather sleep in my underwear drawer than anywhere else? ²

Why do people wait until it’s the middle of the night and pissing down sleet to set their houses on fire? ³

And again – while we’re on the topic – why is it when the Red Cross dispatcher wakes me at 0400, the DAT ⁴ captain doesn’t call to tell me I’m not needed until I have started the coffee pot, gotten dressed, and located my keys?  I can either go back to bed and try to asleep for two more hours, or throw in the towel, pour myself a cup of coffee and crack open a book. ⁵

Why can I never find something until after I’ve purchased its replacement?  Not little cheap things, either.  Foxtail brushes, several of them, and how do you lose an iced-tea maker in a 1500 square-foot, two-bedroom house?  The kitchen remodel provided lots more cupboard space, but still.

This also applies to magazines.  I have Cook’s All Time Best Chocolate Recipes for 2015 lurking in the shadows somewhere waiting for me to break down and buy another copy for $9.95, no less.  I won’t, damn it.  Even if there is a triple-chocolate mousse pie on the cover.

¹ Perhaps I don’t want to examine that one too closely.

² Perhaps I don’t want to examine that one too closely, either.  He may have a paw in the bra/step-in discrepancy.

³ I’ve been told by the training officer at one of the local FDs that it’s related to household income and creative heating solutions so I should be more understanding. 

⁴ Disaster Assistance Team.  It could be worse; I could be the DAT captain.  After all he’s the poor sod standing out in the sleet with the firefighters.

⁵ I don’t get up at 0600, someone else does.  I lie there and listen to him crash into things in the dark and wonder how, when he was the guard officer at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, he racked up 68 confirmed “kills,” a kill being defined as getting close enough to the guard to tap him on the back before being seen. 

The realization that you were patrolling five thousand acres of ammunition bunkers full of God knows what, by yourself, in the dark, and armed with an assault rifle made chiefly of plastic and two clips that by standing orders had to be kept in the magazine pouch until you had a visual on a bad guy (this was fifteen years before 9/11), should be enough to keep you on the qui vive, but to the best of my knowledge there were few sentries he didn’t “kill” at least once.

One night he managed to leap undetected into the back of the guard truck as it drove past his hiding place, slide the rear window open, and put his hand on the guard’s shoulder, causing a sudden cardiac reaction in an otherwise-healthy 19 year old Marine who, thankfully, managed to bring the vehicle to a stop without crashing it into one of the aforementioned ammunition bunkers.

It’s a wonder I never got to collect his SGLI.