crooked house

Why Sylvie Isn't Trick-or-Treating

She HATES her lion hat. And refuses to don any other even vaguely costume-y item of clothing. We tried the lion stuff; we tried pirate stuff; we even tried angel wings and Anne of Green Gables stuff. All to no avail. She is pointing and laughing at these pictures as I type but heaven forbid I try again.

Wooden Keyboard

I want a wooden keyboard. I want a computer made entirely out of wood but this will have to do for now.

Dot. The World's Smallest Stop Motion Animation Character.

I have cross-posted this over at spots and stripes. I've been posting there regularly -- go take a look.

Cat Jack O'Lanterns from the Mahone Bay Scarecrow Festival

Theses cat jack o-lanterns would be a little easier to reproduce than the Picasso ones. The third and fourth ones in the top row give me an idea -- you could carve the body on one and the head on the other and place them side by side. Photos, again, by Holly, who has figured out how to capture that pretty glow. All my photos of this event tend to turn out blurry.

Typewriter Keyboard

It works. You can buy one  -- or a kit to make your own -- at Etsy's USB Typewriter.

Picasso Jack O'Lanterns from the Mahone Bay Scarecrow Festival

I've posted photos of these Picasso-inspired jack o'lanterns before but Holly got a much better shot at this year's Scarecrow Festival.

I Turn Away for a Second And...

The dining room table is where I used to put things I didn't want Sylvie to get into.

Tuna casserole.

Babies in Literature: Audrey Thomas's Tattycoram

I have no idea if the actual Charles Dickens ever had an exchange like the following one that his fictional version has with his maid in Audrey Thomas's novel Tattycoram:

One afternoon [Mr. Dickens] said to me... "Hattie, how do you feel about children?"

"How do I feel about them, sir?"

"Yes. Do you like them?"

"I like them well enough. I'm particularly fond of the babies."

"I, too. I'm particularly fond of the babies. What a pity they can't be shot and stuffed before the age of five."

 I'm not familiar enough with Dickens's work to know if he ever really said anything like that or, perhaps, put those words into the mouth of one of his nastier characters. All a quick google would reveal about his thoughts on infants is that he said, "Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last." That seems more in keeping with his reputation for sentiment. (Interestingly, from that same quick google I learned that Queen Victoria was supposed to have said, "An ugly baby is a very nasty object - and the prettiest is frightful." She had nine of her own. It's hard to tell from pictures whether they were ugly or pretty. They were certainly snugly buttoned into a lot of clothing. And surely she could have handed them off to a myriad of nursemaids before they'd started to seem too unattractive.)

Tattycoram is a beautifully written, deceptively light novel, almost a piece of Victoriana, centered on one of Dickens's characters, a maid in Little Dorrit. Thomas's version of the maid, Harriet Coram, was abandoned at the Foundling Hospital as a baby and later hired by the fictional Dickens to look after his growing family and then to teach in the home for fallen women he helped set up. After Harriet's marriage, she is dismayed to learn that Dickens has made her a character in his novel -- and an unpleasant one at that. This twist gives Thomas's novel a nice postmodern edge and leaves me wondering how much of her fictional Dickens is based on historical fact. Thanks to Sara O'Leary for suggesting the book in the comments to my post about the foundling tokens.

Spots and Stripes

When I recently developed a slight obsession with stripes -- that's a brand-new rag rug in the photo -- I thought it was because of those gorgeous striped blankets I saw hanging from a neighbour's clothesline back in July. Then I realized that I personally already owned at least four striped shirts and sweaters and that I've always been drawn to striped stuff for the  house and for the kids.  You know how once you notice something, you start seeing it everywhere? It's been like that. I've got a folder full of stripey bookmarks and nothing to do with them. So I've started a new blog, devoted to both spots (or dots) and stripes, because once I started noticing stripes everywhere, I also started noticing their purest complement everywhere, too. Please come see them over at spots and stripes. And if you have any photos featuring spots and/or stripes of  your own that are too good not to share, please do email me at stephka at eastlink dot ca.

Foundlings and Their Identifying Tokens

The Guardian has an absolutely heartrending and fascinating article about the scraps of material left with abandoned babies at London's Foundling Hospital:

In the mid-18th century thousands of poor women, similarly at the end of their tethers, deposited their newborn babies at the hospital. A sign instructed them to leave some kind of identifying token pinned to the child in the event they were one day in a position to take it home. Neither the name of the mother nor the baby would be recorded, so this token needed to be memorable and distinctive.

The hospital's thinking was not as punitive as it sounds. To give the child the best shot at a new life, the governors thought it best to erase its old identity. In that single liminal moment, one history would be wiped out and another begun – a new name, some basic schooling and, in time, apprenticeship to a useful trade. Just in case the mother's circumstances changed, though, she was advised to leave some piece of material evidence to prove the child was hers. The hospital promised that "great care will be taken for the preservation" of the item. In years to come the mother's description of that token would be her only way of proving she was the mother of the baby she had given up all those years ago.

Via Light Reading. These scraps of material are currently on display at the Foundling Museum in London, which I'd never heard of until now. I'd like to visit.