Monthly dose of Christie

60. WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (includes one Poirot story)
A collection of short stories with surprising endings. Apparently, this is a US collection so most of the stories appeared in other (UK) collections that I have already read. Oh, well.

Memorable quotes:
-"We go through life like a train rushing through the darkness to an unknown destination."

Favourite Guest Character: Mortimer Cleveland from S.O.S.
Favourite Stories: Witness for the Prosecution
Mystery: **
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
9/15


59. POSTERN OF FATE (Tommy & Tuppence)
T&T are getting old and they decide to buy an old house in the countryside. In that house they find a mystery message that leads to lots of gossiping, long discussions and a new murder. With the help of a bengal tiger a murder case is finally solved.

Memorable quotes:
-"People did have foreign nurses - what were called Mamoselles as well as Frowlines, whatever a Frowline is."
-"Well, I suppose when you buy an old house there's always something wrong with it."
-"When you talk about old friends, either they are dead, which surprises you enormously because you didn't think they would be, or else they're not dead and that surprises you even more."
-"I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise."

Favourite Guest Character: Hmmm. Hannibal?
Mystery: **
Final Solution: *
Entertainment: **
5/15


58. THE CLOCKS (A little bit of Poirot)
A typist is called to a house only to find a dead body and several clocks all showing 4:13. Did any of the neighbours notice anything? Police loses one clock and Poirot solves the case without visiting the murder scene.

Memorable quotes:
-"... the unlikely happened more often than one would be disposed to believe."
-"Only six happy days in the year for a woman. The first and the last days of the holidays."
-"He's not dead. But I have a feeling he's bored. That's worse."

Favourite Guest Character: Colin Lamb
Mystery: ****
Final Solution: **
Entertainment: ***
9/15

Angler fish!

Best friend of MiniMojcek Nr.1 was celebrating his 7th birthday and he needed a present. I posted the first clue last week. Combining this with the next clue: a LED, a tiny switch, two batteries and an aluminium wire to hold the construction.


Still no idea? The third clue. His favourite colours are blue and orange.


And the final result: the anler fish!


See the angler fish in action.




MiniMojcek Nr.1 loves it and so does his best friend. I'm happy.

Raspberry cake

About two months after my birthday we actually got around to celebrating it. And every birthday party needs a cake!


I made a yogurt-raspberry cake:


With a bit of grated white chocolate...


No need to say the cake is gone by now :-)

Still here

I'm still here, no worries.

I've also been doing plenty of stuff, just didn't have the time to finish any projects I started. But I've been reading, sewing, improvising, soldering, drawing, writing, you name it...


A preview of one of the projects :-)

And while all the kids around us had fifth disease, MiniMojcekNr2 had sixth disease. Oh well.

Art Nouveau

You may remember my previous posts of the stuff I've inherited: postcards, photographs and more photographs.

Now I found some drawings and paintings that my grandfather, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-aunts did when they were at school. Brilliant stuff!

And Again, Agatha

57. THE MOVING FINGER (A little bit of Miss Marple)
A brother and a sister move to a quiet and almost boring English village. But suddenly the villagers start receiving anonymous hate-mail. When one recipient commits suicide, the letters have to be taken seriously. A tiny bit of Miss Marple, who, of course, helps to solve the case.

Memorable quotes:
-"There are questions that you don't ask because you're afraid of the answers to them."
-"The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself ..."
-"God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're very busy punishing ourselves."
-"If suicide is your idea of escape from trouble then it doesn't very much matter what the trouble is."
-"How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut ..."

Favourite Guest Character: Mrs Dane Calthrop
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
10/15

56. DESTINATION UNKNOWN
Ian Fleming would be proud of Agatha as this is a true James Bond adventure. A proper hero(ine), a proper villain, underground laboratories, pocket gadgets, swapped identities, secret codes, radioactivity, you name it! But what are the odds - I randomly choose Agatha's books to read and end up with two so similar in a row. Anyway, Hilary travels to Morocco to say goodbye to the world. Her similarity to another English girl leads her to an unknown destination. With a known ending :-)

Memorable quotes:
-"When she no longer looked for peace, she had found it."
-"Science is for all, and must not be held jealously by one power or the other."
-"I suppose even in the desert there's nothing you can't do, given water and money - plenty of both of them."
-"Women were adaptable by nature. It was their strength and their weakness."
-"The trouble in this life is that you never really know where you're going."

Favourite Guest Character: Hilary, of course.
Mystery:***
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: ****
10/15

In the middle of High Atlas, Morocco.

55. PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT
A diplomatic, political and even science-fictionesque novel by Agatha! It has almost no murders - just long mono- and dialogues about serious political issues. And Wagner. But I love the idea of travelling with a bandit's cloak from Corsica :-)

Memorable quotes:
-"One mustn't refuse the unusual if it is offered to one."
-"... politicians have a feeling that they have a kind of divine right to tell lies in a good cause."
-"I ask only to be amused, to live comfortably, to eat, to drink in moderation, to have friends who amuse me."
-"One gets very tired of universities. They repeat themselves so much."
-"Scientists can only think of things for destroying you."
-"We take the risks and the risks are not in what we've discovered, it's the risks of what the people we'll have to tell about it will do with what we've discovered."

Favourite Guest Character: Sir Stafford Nye
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: **
Entertainment: **
7/15

Festspielhaus in Bayreuth

Four Arms costume

It's this time of year again - when all the sewing moms in this part of the world are extremely busy. It caught me a bit by surprise that MiniMojcek Nr. 1 had to wear the costume on Friday (and not on Tuesday as I expected it) so it was a bit rushed... but nevertheless, a success!

He already has the casual Ben 10 T-shirt and Ben 10 jacket, but now it was time to transform into Four Arms:


I started with two red and one white long-sleeved T-shirts, a pillow, a pair of gloves and a large grayish button.


I was hoping to use the original Ben 10 T-shirt but I realised that Four Arms wears a slightly different one. Oh, well..

I cut several tapes of black fabric (yes, I always have a bit of black Jersey at home) and sewed them onto the T-shirt. A large button was used as Omnitrix and painted accordingly (and yes, I always have a bit of black paint for ceramics, glass, plastic ... at home).


The additional arms were made from sleeves and the gloves, stuffed with the pillow filling, and attached to the white T-shirt.


But the arms just hung there, so I connected them to the primary arms :-)


In order to be able to wear a parka over the four arms, the connection had to be removable, so I used a pair of tiny plastic carabiners. Here I was just adjusting the length.


The hood was made in a rush, just two pieces sewn together approximately in the shape of the head with a black ribbon and four yellow eyes.


And a pair of black joggers and MiniMojcek Nr.1 was happy. So was I.


If I had more time, I'd also make the proper shoes and gloves.
But I didn't.
Oh, well.