The local classical station has been playing Andras Schiff’s recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas. Apparently this set has been out for a while but I didn’t know about it until just this month. The only way I could be more excited would be if I found out that Klara Wurtz had recorded a complete set [...]

“Fractal” cats – Wow. Very cool digital art. (via AMCGLTD) A few strange and amusing photos – I like the second one. And the other one with a cat in it. What?!! Creative recycling Lovely picture and a word I didn’t know before 1950′s Shakespeare – This is great! (via Nag on the Lake; Lots [...]

They are quite a model community, for they respect their Queen and kill their unemployed. – – Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting For Boys (speaking of honeybees). Found here Rather creepy when you think of it like that.

This is the day we’re supposed to look back on the year and wax philosophical or something like that. I don’t have much to say about it at the moment. It was an interesting year and interesting isn’t always good but for me it has been a pretty good year and I have every reason [...]

Her name was Irma Lois. (first name pronounced “Ima”) She was born on December 10, 1929 in southeast Texas, the second child of my maternal grandparents. I never saw a photograph of her; no stories were told about her; she was merely mentioned in passing, often by name, always using both given names, but sometimes [...]

Shine Gallery Vintage Memorabilia – stuff found in old warehouses, factories and closed stores. Lots of toys and trinkets. (via Bifurcated Rivets) Small collection of images and links, some quite weird Fantastic illustration – a couple of links and several images Dark Roasted Blend’s “Christmas card” – lots of great images! Atomica – more vintage [...]

Fillyjonk calls the week after Christmas “the quiet week at the bottom of the year.” I like that. It’s so much better than thinking of it as “the big letdown after Christmas” or the week of “thank goodness it’s over” which seem to be the two most common ways of thinking about it. I think [...]

I haven’t been reading blogs enough this week to come up with a list of quotes for the famous and highly regarded Friday feature, Quotes From Here and There, so this excellent line will stand alone, as it deserves to. President-elect Obama has not appointed to his cabinet nearly enough long-haired guys who spend their [...]

The feet know not what the hand is doing. Or the hand knows not what the feet are doing. Or something like that. Tuesday I was treadling merrily along when my favorite finger, (right index) completely of its own volition, decided to put itself in the way of the sewing machine needle. The needle went [...]

Ask me what is my favorite Christmas anything and the answer will probably start with the word “traditional” – traditional music, traditional decorations, traditional wrappings, traditional foods. The overall look of Christmas should be Victorian. Why? Because it just should be that way. Because I say so. Christmas food – all of them, but a [...]

Received via email: Two Wolves One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two “Wolves” inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and [...]

Generally, I prefer traditional Christmas music, i.e. pre-20th century, but the song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas seems to me the perfect Christmas philosophy as for the secular side of Christmas. No need to make a huge angst filled production of it, just have a pleasant, merry little Christmas. “Let your heart be light.” [...]

I can’t remember how I found John Pitre‘s website (Flash) but wow… this is beautiful art. It’s rather New Agey I suppose but I don’t care. I like the colors, the depiction of light and the fantasy scenes.

Everyone’s been doing this Typealyzer thing. I can’t remember where I first saw it. I had this idea that if I tried it several times over a couple of weeks it might give me different results so I did and it turns out I was wrong. It keeps giving me the same result: ESTJ – [...]

I had another house dream this morning. In one room of the house I dreamed about there was a chandelier that was a huge crystal orrery. It was sort of odd because it was just an ordinary house, not the kind in which you would expect to find something like that. And isn’t it funny [...]

Yesterday I found Treadle Quilts, a great blog that’s mostly about quilting, while searching for information about my treadle sewing machine. And here’s a great page about people powered sewing machines, with some very nice photos. I’m starting to wonder if my machine was put together from parts of two different Singers. The treadle looks [...]

I’m really not in the mood for blogs right now. It occurs to me that I might be missing wonderful, fascinating things at Dark Roasted Blend, Bifurcated Rivets and all those other great linky blogs, not to mention all the great chatty and writerly blogs but my mind keeps going back to quilting. And there’s [...]

I need to add Mind Muffins to my links page. There are several I need to add and some I need to drop but that’s the hard part, as you can probably guess if you look at the page. I don’t really have any criteria for dropping sites from my list. There are blogs that [...]

There’s a good post on Steven Barnes’ blog, Dar Kush, about Immigrating to the Stars. He goes off on a lot of tangents (or maybe the tangents are the real point; I’m not sure) but it’s all interesting. I’m just going to respond to one or two things. But in no way, shape, or form, [...]

Can’t understand why your water bill is so high? Better see what the cat has been up to. My husband sent me a link to this video on another site but when I copied the link it didn’t work so I looked for it on YouTube and also found that that cat is not unique.

Frozen because everything is frozen this morning so I assume the links are too. Sparkling insects – unusual and very beautiful photographs of insects Fairy Tales collections Seven Deadly Sins of Geekdom + When Geeks Go Crazy – lots of cool and funny photos and a scary cartoon 101 Classic Christmas Videos – (via Found [...]

This is awfully serious for a Friday but it is excellent so…

Last night I watched the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still for the first time. Having seen a few early science fiction movies I wasn’t expecting much but this is really a great movie. I can’t say much more than that. I’m probably the the last person on Earth to see it but if [...]