Thread 20 - TalkLair: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness; that is life"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous Thread 19)

Britain swelters in yet another heatwave.

In the TalkLair, all the curtains are closed against the blazing sun as the denizens lurk like creatures of the night... or maybe we are creatures of the night. But rest assured, despite our scary fangs, the denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Talking of hedgehogs (so sweet) I’ve just received a Japanese knitting pattern book, and one of the patterns is for these very sweet hedgehog mittens:

https://www.ravelry.com/projects/tomsan/marikos-hedgehog-mitten-

sadly i don’t know any children young enough to wear them.

japanese patterns are written in such a way that you don’t need to know much Japanese to use them, and these are patterns for gloves hats and scarves, so straightforward anyway, but with lovely details and imagination that show in the charts not the written instructions. Plus, to my surprise and relief, they were also given in English at the back.

Lovely hedgehog! I say make it a fox proof feeding station (remembering that foxes like digging as well as opening things).

There is quite a bit of fox activity here at the moment. Judging by the noise, I think this year’s young are at the stage of being encouraged to go out late at night and practice hiding in hedges, pouncing and street fighting. I saw a bit on my doorbell camera the other night but I think it’s time to get batteries in my trail cameras.

My dad visited the Netherlands a lot for work but my mum always refused to actually move there. Dutch chocolate still takes me back to childhood.

I did a few field trips to Amsterdam with students. It’s not my favourite location for that (Venice in a Biennale year or Berlin are both better options for contemporary art with less chance of drug arrests on the way home) but if you don’t have a hundred or so 18 year olds in tow it’s a great city.

We stayed for a week in Amsterdam and felt we’d barely touched the sides of all there was to see and do - felt the same about Venice (and we were there in a Biennale year).