crooked house

For Gramma: Sliding Into Leaves

A...Fascinating Load of Laundry?

 

This kept them mesmerized for quite some time this afternoon. I just might put all their stuffed animals in the wash more often.

Yet Another Use for Googly Eyes

Yet another use for the googly eyes that came with Klutz's Googly Eyes book. Sorry for the blurry photo.

Skipping Rocks

Looking for the right rock.

Is this the right angle?

Will it skip?

If it doesn't, we'll just change the game. How about: will it hit that rope out there? Why yes, it will! Yay! In the past couple of weeks I must have taken a hundred photos of Luke attempting to skip rocks. I'm not sure he's actually done it yet but he's sure having fun trying.

Wondertime has instructions.  Here's the Official Stone Skipping Home Page. Unless you consider the North American Stone Skipping Association to be more official. The Guinness record number of skips appears to be 51. You can watch it here. In the Scottish World Championships, it's not the number of skips the stone makes, it's the distance it travels. Apparently, in Britain, skipping stones (or skimming stones or skipping rocks)  used to be known as  playing at ducks and drakes.  The expression now:

...usually means to behave irresponsibly or recklessly, to squander one’s wealth, or to heedlessly throw away something of value.

To play ducks and drakes from the sixteenth century on was to play that immemorial game of throwing a flat stone across water so that it skips and bounces several times before it sinks. Why it was given that name is uncertain, apart from the obvious association of both ducks and drakes with ponds and rivers. I’ve seen it explained as referring to the way ducks bob their heads in their courtship rituals, or the way water fowl rise from a pond, or as an allusion to the passing of these birds over water. The association of ideas is clear enough, even if the exact analogy is uncertain.

The first example recorded in English is from The nomenclator, or remembrancer of Adrianus Junius of 1585, by John Higgins: “A kind of sport or play with an oister shell or stone throwne into the water, and making circles yer it sinke, etc. It is called a ducke and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake.” (That last part may remind some readers of the old Mother Goose children’s rhyme:

    A duck and a drake,
    And a halfpenny cake,
    With a penny to pay the old baker.
    A hop and a scotch
    Is another notch,
    Slitherum, slatherum, take her.)

By about 1600, the game had become associated in people’s minds with idle play, in which some object is thrown carelessly away. Out of that came the idea of squandering things.

Will it skip? Will it? Will it?