Two Articles for Weekend Reading

Mum's The Word: Why Oxford students are putting motherhood before career.
An interesting article on the increasing trend of young women putting family before career.
HT: BaylyBlog

Girls Gone Mild?
An ABC News piece about the latest fashion trend for girls: Modesty. After years of women's clothing showing too much of their bodies, it seems logical that fashion would eventually swing full circle back to a more classic, modest style. Let's hope it gets better from here on and stays awhile, too.

Literary Quiz

"Leading literary firms failed to recognise the work of Jane Austen when it was sent in by a prankster. The opening chapters of three novels were submitted under an invented name, with titles and character names changed. Think you can do better? Try our opening line quiz."

This quiz is fast and fun. I scored "well read". But I have to tell you, in all fairness, that I really just made some good, logical guesses. ;-)

Speaking of Knitting...

This is my latest completed project. It was a very easy, quick knit - which was a good thing since I was knitting it for a store's booth display at a fiber show last month.

Sorry for the blurry pictures. They were taken with my cell phone.

Me modeling the shawl at the show. I was in fear lest someone pick it up and my badly woven yarn ends came out of the loose stitches... Yes, those are yarn tails dragging on the floor... :-)Thankfully, it stayed together and I think even sold a shawl kit or two. I got yarn in exchange for knitting this and I plan on getting some soft wool yarn for - shhh! - a little gift for a special relative growing inside my sister-in-law's tummy.

Knitting Gets Press, Too

The New York Times reports on the latest trend among the 20-30 year old demographic group: crafting. Read it here.

For my young readers:
Please read with caution.

The best place to watch fireworks on a holiday:

A boat...

On a swollen lake...

Watching the sunset...

And waiting for the celebration to begin.

All photos (C)2007 by LTS.

I had to laugh over this report regarding France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

In the cafés of the Left Bank, they have fastened on what they regard as the single most objectionable and Right-wing aspect of the Sarkozy agenda - and what do you think it is? Do they object to his views on immigration? Are they worried about his plans to make French universities more competitive?

Quite possibly; but their feelings on these questions are anaemic next to their central charge against the new regime. The most appalling thing about the Sarkozy presidency, says Professor Alain Finkelkraut, a leading French philosopher and veteran of the 1968 manifestations, is an event that takes place every morning. The President of France goes jogging! Choc horreur! He exposes the presidential knees to the entire world, says Finkelkraut, and it is extremely undignified.
From Bravo Sarkozy - from one jogger to another , by Boris Johnson for the Telegraph.

Running is undignified? Hmm, this explains why I saw very few French people exercising during my own early morning visits to the local park in Merignac last summer. The park was always busy, and it wasn't as though jogging, walking, and even some running wasn't represented, it was just that most of the people there were using the park to get from one side of town to the other. I remember that I felt very conspicuous on my first early morning run in France to encounter so many well-dressed people on the trail. I had thought that I would only be in the company of other sweaty, tired, panting runners. But that is because I, naive Texan that I am, did not realize that there are some parts of the world in which a park is not used primarily for exercising, like mine is here at home. :-)