While cooling down on the treadmill, I found in the ads in the back of the Simithsonian the following website: http://deadmentellnotales.com/locker.shtml
They boasted that they had the best selection of music, games, and glow-in-the-dark boxers. Smitten by this description, I came home and checked it out. I quickly discovered that they offer “Humorous Pirate Luncheon Napkins.” “Sure,” I smirked, “you have to distinguish them from your serious pirate luncheon napkins.” And indeed, just an inch or two later I found that they do have more serious pirate luncheon napkins, presumably for your more serious pirate luncheons.
Since #2 son’s birthday falls on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I obviously must have humorous pirate tableware, at the very least, and possibly skull and crossbones gummy snacks as well. What are the chances that I will remember this until September? It is possible that I ought to go ahead and place an order with these folks, and then hide it, decorated perhaps with their tasteful “Aargh! Get your hands off my booty!” magnet.
When we are not using humorous pirate tableware, we often use Great-Great-Grandmother’s Blue Willow dishes. On family history day this week I set out on the next person on the Ahnentafel, an Alsatian guy. A kind person in Alsace went to Strasbourg for me a couple of years ago in search of this person’s antecedents, with only limited success. At about the same time that my American forebears were carrying this china west to provide a semblance of civilization in their 
pioneer homes, the Alsatians were being passed back and forth between France and Germany, with the occasional invasion to spice things up. The Americans considerately strewed their paths with letters, legal documents, and wills detailing their religious and political views. The Alsatians could hardly manage birth records. And their birth records, like the one at right, offer me information such as the fact that my ancestor was a Greffin de Justice de Paix (if I am interpreting the handwriting correctly). Googling “greffin” netted me the information that a Greffin was a troll. A troll in the office of a Justice of the Peace, I guess. So I suppose I will never know very much about him.
Alsace was originally inhabited by Celts, so it seems in some way fitting that I received the Celtic Cross quilt pattern on the same day that I attempted to resolve my questions about the Alsatian ancestors. Here is a picture of this lovely quilt pattern:
I am sorry to say that I am just as lost on the subject of this quilt as on the subject of my Alsatian family. I thought, when #1 son chose the pattern, that it was ordinary applique with black bias strips around the edges of the pieces. No indeed. It is to be traced onto freezer paper, ironed onto black cloth, cut up, have colored cloth inserted into the holes, fringed, glued, and stitched all on a machine. I find this a horrifying prospect. Have any of you ever tried this?
I do like that cross pattern – glad you’re doing it ‘though and not me.
I suspect that the architecture of a crib is more cabinish than cottagish. In days of yore (sighkey’s youth and further back) they were thrown together in fairly haphazard fashion – usually by the sea or by a lake – and made out of whatever material was handy. The ones that we have had have been either pole-lite (that is how the word sounds, I have no idea how it is spelt) and corrugated iron roof, or wood and corrugated iron roof. They usually start small and then, like topsy, they grow as the family grows – sort of wonderfully organic and totally unfashionable. They are a vanishing part of NZ landscape. Once people overseas discovered NZ, all lake and sea side land shot up in price and was bought up by companies wanting to develop big motel monstrosities for tourists.
Queenstown was always sort of touristy but there were other lovely places in Central Otago (and, I assume, in places up north) where kiwis would spend their holidays – Arrowtown, Wanaka, Cromwell, Te Anau – in cribs and camping grounds. Average NZers can no longer afford to stay in such places now – especially if they have children. Many of the cribs and bachs have been pulled down (building codes, and all sorts of other regulations) – also the fact that many of them were built on land not owned by the crib builder but owned by the govt. Our camping grounds are also disappearing – they are on prime real estate today and are being snaffled by investors.
(Do I sound a little bitter? Sorry – I know and accept that times change but it’s hard to be one of the generation that has to watch their childhood way of life disappear under the waves of progress.)
A cabin in Colorado sounds wonderfully crib-like. Where do you go for holidays (assuming you have them that is? :-))
That website is terrific!
My anniversary falls on Talk Like a Pirate Day. We have never had any kind of piratical celebration, but now I think we might!
That quilt is a horrifying prospect, which is a shame since it’s so lovely. Is there any way you can do it the way you thought it was meant to be done? I don’t know a thing about quilting, although it intrigues me, and I’d love to try it if I knew how to sew.
I’d say go ahead and cut out the colored bits that go in the holes. Then edge them in black and applique the whole monster to the quilt. But I am told that I am a punk and a rebel.
Also, I think we should call this ancestor (I had written ansector… like a family bug) [Bob] the Troll of Justice [and] of Peace!!! The []s are things that I either do not know or that I made up entirely.
I’ll have to visit that web site later when I have more time. I’ve never heard of Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Don’t know what to tell you on the quilt..it sounds like an awful lot of work.
You dress like I do for the gym, which may be why I find some of the get ups people wear so funny. Even when I was young I dressed in sweats and a t shirt, hair in a ponytail, no makeup…now I’m just an older version of my young self at the gym. But I’ll tell you, that girl in those shorts with the too tight thong showing through making her backside look much larger…oh well, I’ll probably have nightmares!!
wait…a troll? like those midgety, dark skinned, wide nostrilled, stand-on-end-colorful-haired, naked things? or is it something more JRR Tolkienish? O_o keep it copasetic. peace.