Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 89

Gingerbread Man Humor

I've been spring cleaning a little--not enough! it's never enough!--and found this card which seemed appropriate for a Monday morning. I got it several years ago but it is still available from the producer, Uncooked Land.

It's says:

a lot of people probably wouldn't eat gingerbread men if the gingerbread men yelped when you ate them.

It's actually a holiday card and says "Happy Holidays!" inside, but we don't care about that here where the Gingerbread Man allusion is welcome any time of year. And we don't really expect me to remember this in December, do we?

Fairy Tales in Stitches Week: Bent Creek

These fairy tale cross stitch designs are by Bent Creek. Well, one is a fairy tale, the other is a nursery rhyme with Little Boy Blue. They are obviously meant to be companion pieces. They are fittingly titled Red and Blue which makes them a little bit harder to find in a search.



All of these images came from 123Stitch.com. I am not affiliated with them but for convenience I recommend 123stitch for acquiring these patterns. I have a favorite local shop in Nashville, but they don't do online orders. I have used 123stitch personally in the past and liked their service, so I feel okay offering them as a resource link.

Fairy Tales in Stitches Week: Prairie Schooler

All of today's fairy tale cross stitch designs are by Prairie Schooler. I have shared the 3 Billy Goats Gruff previously, but the rest are all new to me. Hands down the Billy Goats are my favorite here. I just love that tale. The designs are slightly reminiscent of Arthur Rackham's silhouette illustration work, see here for example.

Little Red Riding Hood

Three Little Pigs

Fables & Tales

Tortoise and the Hare (fable, of course)
All of these images came from 123Stitch.com. I am not affiliated with them but for convenience I recommend 123stitch for acquiring these patterns. I have a favorite local shop in Nashville, but they don't do online orders. I have used 123stitch personally in the past and liked their service, so I feel okay offering them as a resource link.

New Book: Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture by Laurence Talairach-Vielmas

Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture) by Laurence Talairach-Vielmas was officially released last week but it's not shipping quite yet and is still listed for preorder on the publisher's site.

About the book:

Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture deals with the way in which natural history was connected to the world of fairies and highlights how shifts in the understanding of natural history, especially after 1859, had a significant impact on fairy stories and Victorian experiments with the literary fairy tale. By exploring the interaction between scientific and literary fields, this book shows the ways in which natural knowledge was shaped and disseminated in Victorian culture and illuminates cultural practices through which new representations of nature and the natural world were popularised. This original approach to Victorian culture, blending studies of fictional and non-fictional narratives, examines therefore a part of the history of the mediation of knowledge about nature in the Victorian period and points out how the mediation of this new knowledge contributed to the Victorians' awareness of environmental issues.

About the Author:

Laurence Talairach-Vielmas is Professor of English at the University of Toulouse, France, and Associate Researcher at the Centre Alexandre Koyré in Paris. Her research specializes on the relations between literature and science. She is the author of Wilkie Collins, Medicine and the Gothic (2009) and Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels (2007).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. From The Wonders of Nature to the Wonders of Evolution: Charles Kingsley's Nursery Fairies
2. 'How Are You To Enter The Fairy-Land of Science?': The Wonders of The Natural World in Arabella Buckley's Popular Science Works For Children
3. The Mechanization of Feelings: Mary de Morgan's Toy Princess
4. Nature Under Glass: Victorian Cinderellas, Magic and Metamorphosis
5. Nature Exposed: Charting the Wild Body in Little Red Riding Hood
6. Nature and the Natural World in Mary Louisa Molesworth's Christmas-Tree Land
7. Edith Nesbit's Fairies and Freaks of Nature: Environmental Consciousness in Five Children and It
Epilogue
Index

Fairy Tales in Stitches Week: Cinderella is Proof

Bobbie G Designs
We've all seen this quote before--I think I first saw it about 15 years ago myself. These designs are very different so I thought I'd share in a single post. Neither designer--Bobbie G Designs above or Lizzie Kate below--have any other fairy tale designs.

Lizze Kate Designs
All of these images came from 123Stitch.com. I am not affiliated with them but for convenience I recommend 123stitch for acquiring these patterns. I have a favorite local shop in Nashville, but they don't do online orders. I have used 123stitch personally in the past and liked their service, so I feel okay offering them as a resource link.

Bargain Ebook, Today Only: The Real Boy by Anne Ursu for $1.99

The Real Boy by Anne Ursu is on sale TODAY ONLY for $1.99 in ebook format. It is usually in the $6 price range and was released last September, so this is it's first major price drop.

This is Ursu's book that followed her successful Breadcrumbs, a Snow Queen inspired novel. Ursu's recent novels are very influenced by fairy tale tropes.

The Real Boy, Anne Ursu’s follow-up to her widely acclaimed and beloved middle-grade fantasy Breadcrumbs, is an unforgettable story of magic, faith, and friendship.

On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy named Oscar. Oscar is a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the village, and spends his days in a small room in the dark cellar of his master’s shop grinding herbs and dreaming of the wizards who once lived on the island generations ago. Oscar’s world is small, but he likes it that way. The real world is vast, strange, and unpredictable. And Oscar does not quite fit in it.

But now that world is changing. Children in the city are falling ill, and something sinister lurks in the forest. Oscar has long been content to stay in his small room in the cellar, comforted in the knowledge that the magic that flows from the forest will keep his island safe. Now, even magic may not be enough to save it.

Fairy Tales in Stitches Week: Fairy Tale Sampler by Dragon Dreams

I really couldn't remember if I had shared this one before and a cursory search didn't produce. Either way, I want to share it again because the words in it are some of my favorites. This sampler by Dragon Dreams captures some of what we love about fairy tales.

Once upon a time is how most fairy tales start, then add a questing maiden or a knight so pure of heart. Sometimes there is a treasure, princely frog or magic blade, dangers to be conquered or long journeys to be made. Yet strength and courage triumph, to the enemy's chagrin, the questing soul discovers that the hero lies within.

Now I just wish I remembered if I actually own this pattern because I may have to stitch it. I'd put it on a different colored cloth, something happy. And I'd probably space it a little longer--it would fit nicely on one of those narrow walls, usually by a door, that never have something the right size to fit on them. I have a few of those kinds of walls.

This image came from 123Stitch.com. I am not affiliated with them but for convenience I recommend 123Stitch for acquiring these patterns. I have a favorite local shop in Nashville, but they don't do online orders. I have used 123Stitch personally in the past and liked their service, so I feel okay offering them as a resource link.

Fairy Tales in Stitches Week: Tiny Modernist Designs

Hansel and Gretel
Tiny Modernist doesn't have many fairy tale themed designs in their cross stitch patterns line, but I wish they did since I really like the Hansel and Gretel design above. The one below is titled "Cute Princess" and is just that without a definite fairy tale in mind although there is that ubiquitous frog in the design.

Cute Princess
All of these images came from 123Stitch.com. I am not affiliated with them but for convenience I recommend 123stitch for acquiring these patterns. I have a favorite local shop in Nashville, but they don't do online orders. I have used 123stitch personally in the past and liked their service, so I feel okay offering them as a resource link.

Bargain Ebook: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (and More Books)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier has just dropped in price from $9.99 to $2.99, a definite bargain price for an ebook.

This book, a classic, has definite Bluebeard themes and is often studied in conjunction with Jane Eyre, another Bluebeardesque novel. I adored the book as a teen and have had amazingly different personal reactions to it as I have reread it over the 42 years of my life. Few novels have varied so vastly in my reactions over multiple rereadings as this one has. Nowadays, I am mostly disturbed by it on many levels, arguably what du Maurier intended in the first place.

Either way, it should not be missed. And it also bears rereading. And if you've seen the classic Hitchcock movie, also Rebecca, you haven't read the book. The crux of the novel was changed for the film and removes so much of the novel's power although it is a fine movie all the same, but the bite is lessened considerably.


See more discounted books below the description.

Book description:

"Rebecca is a work of immense intelligence and wit, elegantly written, thematically solid, suspenseful.." --Washington Post

"Daphne du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings." --Stephen King

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.

While we're here, two other du Maurier titles, My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn, are also discounted right now from $9.99 to $2.99. So three novels for less than the price of one. These are two other strong novels and I remember hunting and hunting for them years ago and paying much more than this to read them. This is why I love ebooks now. Nothing has to be out of print and unattainable.

New Book: The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes by Soman Chainani

The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes by Soman Chainani was released in April and I thought I had posted about it, but I hadn't! I had included in a post about the bargain price for the first book in the series. I haven't read it yet, either, but the reviews are strong.

About the book:

Magic and romance battle each other in this much anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The School for Good and Evil. Best friends Sophie and Agatha return to the spectacular world where the only way out of a fairy tale is to live through one. Together, they have the strength to face unseen enemies and new threats. But what will happen when they are torn apart?

And a book trailer: