22 meters...

22 meters of gorgeous fabric.

Some simple sewing and the curtains for our new home are ready.

Well, almost ready, four down, eight to go ...

My absence...

... is excused.
We've moved.
I've become an auntie.
I'm currently away.

A simple skirt

Although summer seems to be over, it's still time to write about a skirt I recently made and happily wore in the second half of the summer. A very simple simple Jersey skirt, just the side seams and an elastic band, but it's the pattern that makes the skirt one of my favourites.

I've been wearing it with a blue T-shirt and a Maori necklace :-)

Almost there ...

82. HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS (Poirot)
Usually there's a black sheep in the family but Simeon Lee's family seems to have more black sheep than white ones! A grumpy old man who loves diamonds hopes for some 'fun' when he invites all his children to a Christmas party. With such a melange of characters, something is bound to go wrong. Will the police find the murderer or must Poirot help them identify the killer?

Memorable quotes:
-"If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it."
-"All men are wicked. The nuns say so ."
-"I do notice things. It's a habit of mine." 
-"Les femmes, they are never slow to form an opinion, Dieu merci." 

Favourite Guest Character: Pilar
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: *****
Entertainment: **
10/15


81. EVIL UNDER THE SUN (Poirot)
A great story to read in the middle of the summer: the sun, the sea, the holidays, beaches and boats... and a murder. A great classic from Agatha.

Memorable quotes:
-"There is no such thing as a really calm sea. Always, always, there is motion."
-"He was accustomed to think of The Husband in three lights only - as 'the Obstacle', 'the Inconvenience' or 'the Safeguard'."
-"Les Femmes. [...] They are capable of complicating life unbearably."  
-"Women always keep letters and then swear they've burnt them."

Favourite Guest Character: Hm. Emily Brewster
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ****
11/15


80. THE HOLLOW (Poirot)
What happens if you invite someone, his wife and his mistress to your home? Another mistress bursts through the doors! Not a simple situation and sometimes a little help from your friends is just not enough to fool Poirot.

Memorable quotes:
-"It was nice, she thought, to be a human being again ... and not that other thing."
-"The past  is sometimes a very good place to live."
-"How cynical it is that a wife or a husband is always the first suspect." 
-"To the scientific mind, truth comes first."

Favourite Guest Character: Lucy Angkatell
Mystery: ****
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: ****
11/15


79. A POCKET FULL OF RYE (Marple)
 A pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds, a peg, yew, cyanide, Percival and Lancelot. And another blackbird.

Memorable quotes:
-"I find one must know how to do everything oneself. Then - one need never do it."
-"You can't change people."
-"People aren't always what they think themselves to be." 

Favourite Guest Character: Hm.
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: *
7/15

The after-party

Returning home from a journey isn't quite the end yet. One still has to sort all the photos, the tickets and postcards, maybe even make a Google Earth visualisation of the tour ... send the photos to other participants!

It's about time I start finishing my Lycian journey that I did in May.

But it's not an easy task!

Sloooowly moving

Don't you just love moving someplace new? Well, we're technically not yet moving as the floors aren't ready yet but I'm already packing all our stuff and transporting it to the house. And boy, I love doing this!

Not only because something is finally happening but also because you go through all your possessions... books, clothes, stashes of fabric, slides, CDs, letters ...

You discover so many things you totally forgot about, dig up old diaries (and of course read them before putting them into a box), find old letters (read them as well), go through all the unfinished projects (and immediately decide to sew a few things, starting today), spend the day playing excellent music from the nineties, go through all the coffee table books (an remember for each and every one where you got it) and read all the dedications ... and spend hours and hours going through all the dresses and remembering on which occasion you wore them ...

And I can't remember when I last saw an empty shelf in this apartment!

Approaching the end ...

78. THE MIRROR CRACK'D FROM SIDE TO SIDE (Marple)
A famous yet miserable actress, a friendly but annoying neighbour, a successful albeit deadly party and ... peace at last.

Memorable quotes:
-"After you've fallen in love with a man and married him and got used to his ways and settled down comfortably - to go and throw it all up and start again! It seems to me madness."
-"... bossy women seldom get themselves murdered. I can't think why not. When you come to think of it, it's rather a pity."
-"Children feel things, you know ... They feel things more than the people around them ever imagine. The sense of hurt, of being rejected, of not belonging." 

Favourite Guest Character: Jason Rudd, probably
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: *****
Entertainment: ***
11/15


77. THE THIRTEEN PROBLEMS (Marple)
Two groups of people challenge each other by telling mysteries - but of course only Miss Marple is able to give the correct answer. Mostly because the people everywhere are very much alike and by knowing the psychology of everyone in St. Mary Mead, she can solve just about any problem. Even the ones that haven't happened yet!

Memorable quotes:
-"... so many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly."
-"Everybody is very much alike, really. but fortunately, perhaps, they don't realize it."
-"I love stories about sinuous Spanish dancers. It makes me forget how old and fat I am." 
-"This is real life; and real life stops just where it chooses."
-"But there are quite a number of people who aren't stupid, and one shudders to think of what they might accomplish unless they had very strongly rooted principles."

Favourite Guest Character: Jane Helier, the actress
Favourite Stories: The Blue Geranium, The Affair at the Bungalow, The Bloodstained Pavement ...
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
10/15


76. ENDLESS NIGHT
Gypsy's Acre, poor Michael, rich Ellie, love at first sight, an eccentric architect, a wonderful house, murder, murder, murder, murder  ... A very enjoyable novel with a great narration by Michael.

Memorable quotes:
-"Two things run together, side by side. Weakness and strength. The weakness of fading vitality and the strength of frustrated power."
-"If a girl is going to have any sense at all, she'll have it at twenty-one."
-"Mothers are like that. Always inclined to be suspicious of daughters-in-law." 
-"Faces are tricky unless you can connect up when and where you'd seen them."
-"Where large sums of money are concerned it is advisable to trust nobody."

Favourite Guest Character: Michael Rogers
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
10/15