Feline Phrases – cat quotes and cat-based idioms

All cats are gray in the dark – people are pretty much the same regardless of appearances.
Alley cat – person with loose morals
Another breed of cat – something very different
Cat around- lead an aimless, immoral life
Cat burglar – silent thief
Catcalls – booing or heckling
Cat got your tongue? – Why aren’t you talking? May date to [...]

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Historical Fiction: The Queen’s Fool, by Philippa Gregory

♦♦♦♦ out of ♦♦♦♦♦

The Queen’s Fool leads the reader deep into the heart of the Tudor Royal Courts. While most books featuring adolescent protagonists generally fail to capture my interest, this one is different. Hannah is a child forced to become a woman too quickly, which probably happened almost always in times as crushingly brutal [...]

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Fiber Folklore – Mother Holle

From the Brothers Grimm Household Tales

A widow has two daughters, one, a beautiful stepdaughter, and the other, her natural daughter who is lazy and ugly. They make the stepchild work like Cinderella, carrying out the ashes and doing all the spinning, until her fingers bleed. One day as she [...]

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Fiber Folklore – Baa, baa, Black Sheep

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes marry, have I,
Three bags full;
One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
Who cries in the lane.
This nursery rhyme probably dates to the Middle Ages, when England was the major player in the international wool trade. A tax had been placed upon wool, with 1/3 [...]

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Knitting Images by Van Gogh

Click on thumbnail for larger image.
Woman Mending Stocking

Girl Knitting

 
 
Scheveningen Woman Knitting

Woman at the Window, Knitting

 
Girl Knitting

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19th Century Images of Crocheting

Girl Crocheting
Edmund Charles Tarbell

 
au Jeune Fille au Crochet
Adolph William Bouguereau

 
Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly

Lydia  Crocheting

Both of the Lydia paintings are by American artist Mary Cassatt, whose work is luminous. Mary was very close to her sister Lydia, who died at a young age. To learn more about both women [...]

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Stonehenge – exciting new find!

ARCHEOLOGISTS recently discovered what appears to be the other half of Stonehenge, illuminating what they believe is a much larger Neolithic complex than has long been envisioned.
The new discovery, two miles from Stonehenge itself, is an elaborate residential compound now being excavated. It is a site where the builders of Stonehenge may have lived and [...]

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What are you reading? Historical Novels – Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

***** out of *****
It’s always daunting to try to review a piece of great literature. I’ve read others of Hemingway’s works, and never managed to appreciate them – all those bulls and cigarettes and male camaraderie and machismo. A Farewell to Arms could not be more different, and in my estimation, [...]

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18th Century Art – Images of Knitters

 
Young Woman Knitting, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (French, 1699-1779).

Young Knitter Asleep, Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725-1805). The Wool Winder, Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725-1805)

Woman Knitting, Francoise Duparc (French, 1726-1728)
 
 
 

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Historical Novels: Thief of Souls by Ann Benson

An admirer of Ann Benson’s meticulously researched work, I became hooked on Thief of Souls from the very first page, which is unusual for me.  The plot shnifts rapidly between two parallel stories, each of which traverses rocky ethical, legal, and moral terrain. The heroines are two intensely humanistic women whose lives vary greatly, but [...]

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