Robin McKinley's Blog, page 176

They're heeeeeere . . .

 

So, look what came in the post.

These are the galleys, mind you, not the final book.  The final book is November.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  No, no, really!*  They're really HERE!  Never mind the date!**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  ***

                                                                                                                 

 And, because I am a malevolent cow, here is a double page roughly at random from relatively near the beginning where I don't think anything too astonishing/jarring is being given away.   L...

Guest post by Mrs Redboots

Drain Cleaner and Cooking Fat, revisited

I am occasionally a signal failure as a mother, and one way in which I proved this to be so was last Christmas, when I totally forgot to provide my daughter with any of my soap for her to give her in-laws. So as we were all going to my daughter's choir concert* last weekend, I thought I had better rectify this. However, as the sort of soap I normally make, cold process, does need a good three or four weeks to cure, I thought I would make hot process...

Chocolate and ranunculus

 

It's still raining. 

So I bought some ranunculus.*   

This is clearly the right thing to do, even if nothing else is clear through the rain on the glasses.  I bought my new little friends** on my way to the optician, who proved to be a young Sri Lankan with the most amazing name, it's enormously long and sounds like a song when she says it.*** 

            I need new glasses.  I already knew that.  What I was not expecting however was that oval rimless with narrow plain gold earpieces are...

My car, my computer and my brain are all broken

 

GEEZUM FRELLING CROW WHAT A REEKING DESPICABLE RATBAG OF A DAY.*

            It began, as the mornings after the great spring chronometric wallop begin every year, with me waking up with a confused sense of doom.  It's already an hour later than it should be and it doesn't feel an hour later.**  I found some clothes and put them on, released hellhounds to cavort and gamble, and herded us toward Wolfgang for our first squish of the day.***  To get Wolfgang out I was going to have to move all t...

The Day After the Night Before

 

I'm doing extremely well for a woman who got about three hours' sleep last night* which is not the same thing as being sharp, clear, coherent and/or having something to say.  Blurg.  I made it to and through bell ringing mainly by habit—it's Sunday morning, where's the bell rope, ow ow ow ow**—and other than that, and one hell of a lorry load of caffeine, I've spent most of the day in the garden, planting and potting on like a madwoman.  Since I have broadband, a working credit card, and...

Guest post by Ajlr

On being cack-handed 

When I was sitting on the edge of the bed the other morning, trimming my fingernails, I was once again mildly exasperated about the way the nail-scissors only work really well when I'm holding them in my right hand to do the nails on my left hand. When I hold them in my left hand, the way that the blades are aligned means the cut for my right hand is much less accurate. I know that everyone will have a similar problem, no matter whether they're right- or left-handed but t...

ENCHANTED GLASS

 

OH GODS I ADORE DIANA WYNNE JONES.

            Misleading blog entries notwithstanding* it's been kind of a ratbag of a week** and today has been a real sod.  The ME has mostly been winning anyway and today I have a stomach-ache too.  I made it through my piano lesson this afternoon chiefly by virtue of taking my computer with me, calling up Finale and Poor Wolfgang and thrusting it/them under Oisin's nose as proof that I've been doing something.***  I did not go to bell practise tonight. † S...

Hellhounds and handbells

  

I have a new measurement of coordination.*  You know the old rub your tummy and pat your head model?  Piffle.  Stroke a hellhound with one hand . . . how much can you do with the other one without cold wet nose and heavy leeeeaning suggesting that you're not CONCENTRATING?  I can get my shoes off one handed, which is a better trick than you think since I double-knot the laces, but getting my coat off without interrupting the flow, or briefly imprisoning contiguous hellhound in fallen...

Guest post by B-Twin

Peonies, Roses & Hedges.

"You haven't heard of Sunnymeade?" My friend expressed shock.

Sadly, I hadn't.

She explained that it was a private garden that was opened to the public only two or three weekends a year. Then she described clematis beyond compare, a huge array of plants and amazing garden 'rooms'.

I have a soft spot for English and European style gardens – partly because they seem so lush to my water-deprived Australian gardening eyes.  Also, they have age on their side. They're old...

Blondel, con't

 

It's been streaming rain again and the mud on the fields has got deeper quicker than I was expecting.*  I tweeted about this earlier:  I put a clean pair of jeans on this morning—so that I could visit Blondel in his beige-carpeted** house without shedding any countryside and making whoever does the hoovering hate me***—and the hellhounds promptly discovered the best stick in the universe!!!, half-buried in sticky Hampshire clay, and insisted on my enjoying it with them.  Sigh.  I don't...