Habetrot

"Good Neighbours"

 

This tender scene was painted in 1885 by English painter John William Waterhouse (1849 - 1917).  The work is also sometimes known as "The Gossips" or "Washing Day."

(click for beautiful bigness)

Waterhouse loved women, and this love is clear in all his works; he rarely painted anything other than women.

Although I have not been able to find any information about this painting online, it is utterly different from anything else he painted that I have found, and I believe it must be his wife and daughter in their London back garden.  While most of his other works have a distinctly dreamy, romantic, and mythical content, this one feels real to me.

Turkey Day

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.  The day is also commonly known as Turkey Day.

In honor of the day and in keeping with the theme of this blog, I present to you some offerings from the Weird Wide Web.

(Click all images to biggify.)

A turkey on a dishcloth.  Nice.

A baby drumstick hat.  Isn't it cute?

Oh, look!  A variegated knit turkey.  Ok.

A knitted knitting turkey.  Oookay.

And, uh, a fun fur turkey, still with its, uh, fur on.

Ummm, a fun fur turkey hat. Planted on a head.

And another "hat", for which we should be most thankful.

Or not.

If you are very very brave, biggify the last two pictures.  I promise nothing but your eyes will be harmed.

Happy Turkey Day, everybody!

Sheep, Eh?

I pulled this image out of my archives recently for my friend Dianna who lives in Saskatchewan, Canada, and I thought y'all would enjoy it, too.

(click for bigger)







"Ranching in the Canadian West. Flock of Sheep."

This postcard is from the early 20th century, probably around 1910.  Nice flock, eh?

Festivals

Last month around Rhinebeck time I was telling a new co-worker about my fondness for attending sheep and wool festivals.  He responded, "What?!  Did you say 'Sheep and wolf festivals?"  I'm still laughing about it.

Not as crazy as it sounds, though.  Here's one now:

(click for big)

And so they will forever be Sheep & Wolf Festivals for me.  Thanks, Gerry!

 

BOO II

Happy Halloween!

You must click for big.

This lovely, "The Spinner,"  is a woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497?-1543), best known for his portraits with lush and exquisite textile detail, as with the older Hal here, and for his woodcuts of the Dance of Death.

That giant distaff of hers, stuck full of full spindles, has gotten me to thinking about witches and their broomsticks.  While contemporary images of witches flying on their brooms shows the broom portion behind the witch, earlier images sometimes show the "broom" portion in front of the witch.  Perhaps witches don't fly on broomsticks at all, but on distaves.  What say you?

I KNIDDED YOU A SCARF

Just because you can do a thing does not mean you should do that thing.  Looks like a comfy outfit, doesn't it?

The caption reads, "SCARVED AND FEATHERED  Natural or synthetic--whatever the fabric, the more tactile, the better.  Alberta Ferretti goat hair coat, $4,800.  Marni onyx rubber skirt, $486; Marni, NYC. Giles tangerine oversize wool scarf. Wolford tights. Gina for Giles pheasant-feather stilettos. Fashion Editor: Grace Coddington."

What can one say?  Even the title implies punishment.  The model certainly looks like she's in pain.  That or gasping for air.

I'm sorry if this hurts your eyes.  Click to biggify if you can.

I am especially grateful that the caption-writer made a point of informing us that the scarf is oversized.  Whew.  If you look closely, you will see that there are even cables in the scarf-like object.  Oooh.  Fancy

This was making the rounds of the knitting net a while back, and I don't know who to credit for the LOL captions.  If you know, let me know, and I'll add it. kthnxbai.  Update:  the original came from Jezebel.com here.

OH. HAI. I NIDDED YOU A SCARF.

Interspecies Cuteness

I came across this over at Cute Overload, of all places. 

". . .when it's time to move sheep and lambs to a new grazing field, a donkeh helps out with the moving process. The lamb-o-pack ensures no lamb is left behind... LOL."  I think that about says it all.

(click for bigness)

And before you can ask, my best guess of the breed of sheep, based on those extraordinary ears, the head, and the tails on the adults would be the Bergamasca (scroll down to third entry) from Italy or one of the similar members of the Alpine Lop-Eared Group.

Here are some lambies all grown up. Still pretty darn cute, eh?

Shetland Knitter

 

This postcard of a Shetland knitter was mailed in 1904.

(click for big)

Sometimes we idealize the good old days, but I don't think I would like to have been this dear old soul, knitting away as she hauls a basket of peat half her size.

Peat would have been burned in the fireplace as a heat source, so our knitter was working in two ways at once to keep her family warm through the cold months.

Romanian Spindler

This beautiful spindler from Romania dates from c. 1900.

(Click to biggify)

Truth is WAY Stranger

Or is it?  From the internet:

A young pig in Esquina, Corrientes, Argentina, has fleece like a sheep according to a certain news outlet.*  Although the story appears in a few different places on the net, they all seem to point back to the linked story.

In the interest of preserving the story against internet flux, I quote the main part of it here:

"Meet the world’s first sheep-hog — a pig with its own fleece. Scientists are baffled by the strange swine — which they say is a pig “at heart” but with a woolly hide.
The one-year-old is being raised on a ranch near the town of Esquina, 400 miles north of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
It is a pig but has a thick fleece which needs shearing in summer with the other sheep because it suffers in the heat. Other pigs do not trust it."

I've heard of a wolf in sheep's clothing, but this is a porcine of a different color entirely.  Perhaps it envies the camelids?  Or perhaps its mother spent way too much time watching a certain video.

*And, yes, I know to consider the source.  I especially enjoy the bassackward headline on the story.  :D