Ravelry is an astonishing resource for knitters, crocheters and vairous other fibre crafts. It hosts patterns, advice forums, yarn details and kinda sorta blogs, all co-created (as the cool kids would have it) by the hundreds of thousands of members. I joined earlier this year, when I took up crochet, in search of something more interesting than Granny Squares.

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Whose responsibility is it, in the wake of Typepad’s pulling out its own plug any day now, to maintain those links? It is sad, for sure, that they simply issued an ultimatum to all the writers who gave them “content”. Some may well choose to relocate. Many probably will not. And some that ought to k...

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Two for the price of one. Way too idle, and too far from home too much of the time, to get much done in a timely fashion, and this roundup will not offer any great insights into that time. It is, however, a signal of sorts; summer is over.

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There’s no way to take John Buchan seriously today, but for sheer escapist, eclectic tosh, he’s very entertaining, especially as a free download from a library. I’m not even sure how to go about reviewing the book, and while procrastinating I tried to find contemporary reviews to see how it might ha...

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“An anchovy, to get to an important point, is a larval sardine (Engraulis encrasicolus). Around Nice, anchovies are called poutines (not to be confused with fast-food from Quebec).”

This, from a writer I have long respected for their meticulous research, rang alarm bells. Nowhere, ever, have I come across the idea that an anchovy is a larval sardine. A sardine, I’ve always thought (known?) is a young pilchard. And an anchovy is ... an anchovy. These days, though, you can’t be too sure, so I turned to the magisterial Mediteranean Seafood by the master, Alan Davidson (2nd edition, Penguin, 1981).

My worst fears, confirmed: [Someone is Wrong on the Internet]((https://xkcd.com/386/).

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