Robin McKinley's Blog, page 167

Ringing outing, guest post by southdowner

I just can't get enough ringing. There. I admitted it. Worst of all I'm not using the "I recognised my addiction so I'm on the first step to curing it" explanation. I recognise my addiction… and I'm FEEDING it. (Such a bad person *g*)
And perhaps you can see why when I show you some pictures of a recent ringing outing.
This is a small Warwickshire village called Polesworth (close to Sheepy Magna which has to be one of my favourite village names), and Polesworth has old buildings scattered...

The Perfect Reader Letter

 

Have just had two more 'so, why are you writing a sequel to PEGASUS when you've always said you wouldn't ever write a sequel?' emails—two in a day is unkind.  Usually they space out a little better than that.  Somebody tell me why people translate 'volume two of the SAME STORY' into 'sequel' so easily* AND why these SAME people believe that I've said I'll never write a sequel?  How many times can I say I would LOVE to write a sequel to SUNSHINE, but I can only write what comes?  And even...

Trilateral angst

 

I hadn't exactly forgotten, but the implications of Niall being gone for a whole ten days had been a trifle muffled by the full on glaring shock of last Friday's practise, when nobody suitable showed up that I could pass the poisoned chalice of mastership* to and was stuck pretending I knew what I was doing.  With a lot of heavy cueing from Vicky.**  It happened again this morning.  There I am, on no sleep***, eight forty-five in the frelling morning, when no sane person should be awake...

Pink Things

I was going to do an Ask Robin tonight but I was waylaid by pink things.  Mmmmm.

Remember I told you that Sunday mornings after service ring I go to the florist's, and she's fallen into the deliciously decadent habit of giving me things she'd throw out otherwise, because they're too beat up or blown to sell?  Some of them it's perfectly true only last a day or so.  But some of them I totally luck out on.  For example.  Speaking of (pink) peonies:  I wouldn't dream of buying cut peonies;  they ...

Another Frantic Friday

 

The problem with my Friday afternoons with Oisin is the way they've evolved.  First there was the Piano Lesson.  Then there was the Piano Lesson with Composing.  Then there was (sigh) various assaults, insults and inroads of ME,* which is when the Cup of Tea with Musical Musings, Laced with Discussions of How We Would Put the World to Rights, developed.  And then Oisin brought home his Amazing Electronic Organ.  I've told you about it:  it's two rather beat-up electric keyboards, two...

Really Big Zowie

Look what arrived in the post today.

Wow.  Zowie.  Gosh.  Gee.

         A long time ago now Blogmom said that some of the forum members were contemplating making individual squares toward putting together a quilt for me and was that all right?  Sure, I said, my beady little eyes lighting up with anticipatory glee, not to say greed.  (I love the whole quilt thing.)

         And then I pretty much forgot about it.  As I say, it's been a while.  And today when a Mysteriously Large and Lightweight

Quilt, continued

I hope these are self-explanatory.   You will notice that the runner-up Overachiever Awards go to Susan from Athens and blondviolinist, both of whom made two squares.  (The name labels should be legible if you bigify the photos.)  But with Wordpress' text-placement megrims in mind, I'm just going to run the rest of the individual-square photos reading from the quilt's left to right, top to bottom.  (If Wordpress starts to spit and creak, I'll run onto a third post.)  You can check against...

Quilt, final

Okay, better safe than sorry.  Especially since Wordpress logged me out in the middle of loading one of the photos in the last post, and refused to recognise either me or my password.  Anyone who heard strange phantom screams a few minutes ago . . .

Enchantress from the Stars, guest book review by Susan Cassidy

I rarely re-read books but every time I do I wonder why I don't do it more often. Recently, in an attempt to find a great book to review for this blog that hasn't been discussed here already, I revisited a book I discovered thirty years ago, when it was already 10 years old. In Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl, three civilizations meet at the intersection of magic and technology.

Georyn is a native of the planet Andrecia, a woodcutter's youngest son. His world is in peril—a ...

Limitations

 

I apologise for 'stay home or buy a second seat' at the end of Opera and Handbells the other night.  It was unnecessarily inflammatory—and tactless.

            But that's as far as my apology goes.  The underlying protest remains the same:  It is not okay that the woman sitting next to me ruined my evening because she couldn't help being too large for her seat and therefore was also sitting on mine.

            One of my mods wrote me a heads up that 'stay home or buy a second seat' was...