Response to Book Meme

When Needleroozer tagged me, my reaction was, "Huh?  What on earth?"  Being new to blogland, I was unaware of these kinds of activities ; ).  But I went to her blog and figured out what's going on. 

The bad news is that the nearest book is really a tome:  Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student by Edward Corbett and Robert Connors.  I am reading it to prepare to teach a high-school grammar and composition class in the fall.  Here's my selection:

"In summary then, let us say that when we are engaged in any kind of deliberative discourse, we are seeking to convince someone to adopt a certain course of action because it is conducive to happiness or to reject a certain course of action because it will lead to unhappiness.  The two main special topics under the general head of happiness are the worthy and the advantageous.  In developing these special topics, we will sometimes have occasion to use some of the common topics, such as the possible and the impossible (when urging the advantage for instance, of a certain course of action, we may have to show that the course we are advocating is practicable or easy) and the topic of more and less (when seeking to direct a choice from among a number of goods, for instance, we have need of criteria to help us discriminate degrees of good)."

Long sentences, no?  Here's who I'm going to tag (don't know how to do live links yet):  DuraMater and Little Red House.  I read some other blogs, but I don't know them well enough to feel like I can tag them *blush.*  But hey, I tried to participate, which is a big step for me!

An Ode to . . . the Unabridged Dictionary!

I bought this dictionary almost 10 years ago on a whim. Now it resides in a prominent place on our homeschooling bookshelves, or it did until I started doing L&L. I keep pulling it off the shelf to weigh down projects. It helps hold down pesky lace motifs, it straightens out hem-lace backgrounds, and now, hopefully, it will save my bacon with this new lace strip project.

Maybe I should add it to the ingredients list!

What a tangled web we weave . . .

. . . when we try to do a project like this without MistyFuse. I've been trying to hold off on a Joggles order for a little while (short of $$$), but I might not last too much longer. After applying a LOT of paint, the best I could do was this:Not exactly flat, is it? Let's see it from the tabletop view:Looks more like a pathetic landscape than a L&L piece . . . sigh. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I put a piece of wax paper on it (paint still wet) and then added these tomes:WTMBoard users will note what I did NOT bring even into the VICINITY of wet paint:It's my copy--I bought it fair and square! Right after it was announced to be going out of print and there was an uproar on the boards, I walked into my local B&N and saw it on a display shelf. Well, I plucked that baby right up and marched to the cash register--it was the last one they had. Then, when the new one came out, I bought one of those also. I'm like that. Now I have both, so one child can use one and the other child can use the other. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! I don't think the red ones are going for $200 now, but it was kind of amusing while it lasted--to think I had such a valuable book in my possession ; ).

Anyway, I digress. I'm going to follow up this post with a short meditation on the importance of the dictionary to a L&L project. This has to be about the fifth time I've used it.

And stay tuned to see if the books can save the day with this project.

P.S. Do you think I can convince DH that I need more oversized, heavy books for . . . ahhh, lemme see . . . homeschooling . . . what subject, say you? . . . ahhh, Art, yeah, Art! Hmph. I didn't think so, but it was worth a try.