#knittywriter

Ever since I saw that drawing, whenever I'm doing something not-very-earth-shattering-but-I-particularly-enjoy, I started chanting "scrembly scrembly scrembly" in a very contented sort of a way. I love it. Even if you were making an omelette, "scrembly" seems to me just just a contented and happy little word for an action.

💖

😘 Knits! Love you!!! 🥰 *rolls up sleeves* okay here we go... 1) What's your favourite kitchen appliance? Without a doubt, my immersion blender and all its little attachments. It keeps me in smoothies in the summertime and all kinds of soup and purees in the winter. Mmmmm...

5) What's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it? My bed! I have been working lovingly for a decade now on crafting the perfect nest into which I may crash at the end of a long day or snuggle into when I have lazy sleepy days when all I want is to become one with my ✨cozy✨. A good friend made the frame out of six different hardwoods and we call it my Hastings bed because the price we settled on was 1066.... and I love it. It is my happy place.

9) Are you on good terms with your parents? Yes, actually I live with my folks. It works well, mostly, though my father and I have always had a contentious relationship, we both seem to be mellowing as we age. But when I retired from theatre and moved back to my hometown, we had a lot of discussions and in the end I decided I would rather pay them money than a landlord and I am also working towards buying the house. In the meantime I can help with all of the housework that is becoming taxing for aging parents, and in return I get full run of the garden and coffee time with my Mum who has always been one of my best friends.

21) Do you have any living grandparents? No. My Mum's folks died when she was a child and although my paternal grandparents both lived into their 90s, they passed away more than two decades ago.

23) What's the coolest place you've visited? Already answered here!

25) Would you rather own a dishwasher or a laundry machine if you could only have one or the other? This is the easiest question on the list. I only own a washing machine and that's all I need! I don't have a clothes dryer (haven't had one in 40 years) and I have never owned nor ever wanted a dishwasher. I may be in the minority but I find washing dishes in the sink quite meditative and therapeutic.

Yeah, look, fuck koalas.

The syphilis I am empathetic towards: we all make high, horny mistakes, but the general sound of them (google it) and their distraction from all the other cool shit irks me.

Quokkas are fucking adorable and we would be exporting their image more except they're endangered because they are dumb as fuck and haven't learned about humans or cars or shit. Cute as fuck though. And there's an island with no cars where you can do and meet them and their dumbfuckery means they lean into gratuitous selfies.

We have really hairy caterpillars. I rescued one today, it had crawled several meters into the building at work and I got it on a big leaf and took it outside. Some of them fucking burn though, so I never touch them. Cuties though.

I get these bastards in my yard occasionally... Like almost a foot long. Big dumb blue tongues (that's their name, actually). They're pretty placid but I only say that because I've never been bit. If you fuck with them, they do bite and their jaw strength is apparently pretty bad. My dad got bit once, and I know dogs that have lost chunks of tongues. Cute little fuckers though.

And then this fucker, the Australian magpie. I would let any other aussie animal live in my yard - snakes, spiders, dingoes - they are all safer, less fucking aggressive. I have a family of magpies roosting in my backyard and they have youngsters which is lovely for them, and I'll admit their song is nice, but these bitches swoop to kill. Like they will literally see a human in their space, especially now with babies at the start of spring, and they will gouge your fucking face off. Do not google it, there are lots of videos and actual news stories about death and maiming.

Oh and... this guy I love:

Aussie huntsman. Size of your palm. The ultimate independent house-protecting pet. I will happily welcome these fuckers into my house. I will talk to them, explain the rules: Stay out of the bedroom and the toilet, and don't position yourself above doorways or exactly where I want to sit. Otherwise: welcome. They aren't very poisonous at all, they're not aggressive, and they like living in plain view. I've had regular house guests since my teens. Plus they eat all the other spiders and bugs. Genuinely love these guys.

@knittywriter 💜

Anon or not, send me an ask with a user and what you like about them. I'll post and tag them in it.

While on military training during World War Two, Gilbert Bradley was in love. He exchanged hundreds of letters with his sweetheart - who merely signed with the initial "G". But more than 70 years later, it was discovered that G stood for Gordon, and Gilbert had been in love with a man.

"Such letters are extremely rare because they were incriminating - gay men faced years in prison with or without hard labour," he says. "There was even the possibility that gay soldiers could have been shot."

Work on a book is already under way at the museum, where the letters will also go on display.

Perhaps most poignantly, one of the letters contains the lines:

maple - is there a hobby / skill that you’ve always wanted to try but never did?

Music of any sort. It was just never an option in my family growing up, we were all sports and science and like I briefly owned a keyboard but never took lessons or anything and to this day no one has heard me sing since I was about ten years old.

frost - if you could give some advice to your younger self, what would you say?

Get out of academia? Run? Pick anything else that what you're choosing and if you absolutely have to, don't then spend a decade blaming other people for this choice?

harvest - what fictional character do you most identify with? Why?

I mean, no brainer at the moment that it's Crowley. 'What's the point?' and basically just taking what scraps he can pick up and enjoy but not really trying to instill any meaning, just routinely depressed and getting by. Gosh this got dark, didn't it? But that folding in on yourself, becoming a secondary character even if there's no main character, something like that.

spice - have you ever encountered a house that you believed to be haunted?

Nope. Scientist.

cinnamon - if you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where?

Probably spoken as a true millennial, like 30-40 years earlier? Enough modern comforts without knowing the world was ending. Eek.

cocoa - if you could have any type of hair, what colour and cut would you have?