A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 22

#WordlessWednesday: Bear on the Beach

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Steve at Long Beach, Vancouver Island, May 7, 2019

#SilentSaturday: Spring Trip 2019, the Beginning

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Steve on the end of his rope

#WordlessWednesday: Candlelight Gives Way To Sun

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#FridayFragment, 5.4.2019

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“I do not believe it,” the rabbit said, twitching his nose.

“Suit yourself then,” his wife replied, smacked her back legs against the ground and vanished into the burrow with a white flash of her tail.

“Do not believe what?” the prince asked politely.

“That there is a fo – fo-fo-fo-fo-fox!” the rabbit screeched, and after turning around in a few frantic circles, he too vanished down the burrow.

“Ah well,” the prince said, philosophically stroking his long whiskers with a forepaw. “There goes...

“Sleeping Beauty” and the Spinning Room

Some interesting stuff I found out about Spinning Rooms, and a speculation about “Sleeping Beauty”. Why did the king really want to ban spinning?

quill and qwerty

So, we all know the story: at the little princess’ christening, she is cursed to prick herself on a spindle and die. The good fairy mitigates the curse to a 100-year sleep. However, “The king, hoping to rescue his dear child, issued an order that all spindles in the entire kingdom should be destroyed.” (Grimms’ version)

I was lookin...

#WordlessWednesday: Backlit (Waiting for the Balcony)

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Life Is Better When You Like More Things

I read that quote somewhere fairly recently. And I can’t find the original article any more, so I can’t attribute it; and to boot, I’m probably mis-quoting it (if you remember where it came from, let me know). However, when I read it, I realised that that’s been one of my base principles for a long time. So let me repeat it:

Life is better when you like more things.

I have a master’s degree in liberal arts; to be specific, in literary studies. That means that by definition, I’m trained in c...

“Beast”: A Fairy Tale Flash Fiction

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BEAST

The snow kept falling thicker and thicker. Whirling, blowing, biting, cutting. Clinging to his whiskers, to his eyelashes, to the hair on the side of his face. His nose and cheeks had grown numb, his fingers so cold he could no longer bend them. When he tried to raise them to his face to brush the snow out of his beard, they felt like hard claws on the end of big, clumsy, fur-covered paws; claws that had no feeling in them and could not move to his will.

He tried to climb up the side of...

#amtravelling: Chainstocking Feet

I’m on a few weeks’ family visit in The Old Country (hence the long radio silence). Here, for your delectation, is a random and interesting little thing I noticed while stopping in at the Stiftskirche (Collegiate Church) in Stuttgart for a break during a shopping trip the other day: Chainstocking Feet.

This guy is one of a profusion of Eberhards and Ulrichs, Dukes of Württemberg, pictured along the side of the choir. The sculptures are from the late 16th century, but I assume the depiction...

Bear Sweater

Steve got cold. So I made him a sweater. Actually, truth be told, I wanted to practise a few new knitting stitches I just learned off the all-knowing Internet (see below in italics), so I started this knitting swatch** – and then I thought, I don’t want to just make a random useless piece of knitting, so I turned it into a bear sweater. Steve seems to appreciate it.

So, in case you’re wondering, here’s a very rough pattern:

knitting worsted yarn, 3.5mm needles (I purposely use smaller-than-i...