girl number twenty: Celebration

Monday 28 July 2008

Celebration

Safiya will be four on Wednesday. Her birthday party was yesterday. Thank you to all family, friends, and neighbours who jammed into our little place and shared a wonderful day of food and kids running around and the tides of party-noise that is always music to my ears: talking, laughing, kids banging various musical instruments at various times, clinking cutlery, the telling of stories, books read out loud to children crowded around, the yelling for coffee...

A delightful day, with a very happy little girl in the middle of the whirl.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Congratulations! My daughter India will be three next Monday, but she insists that she is really turning four!; 28 July 2008 at 10:53
Barbara Brown said...: happy birthday!lots of orange going on today.there is some also at house on hill road. love the drawings, very cute. p.s. we are a homeschooling family also.; 29 July 2008 at 02:38
cloth.paper.string said...: happy, happy birthday safiya! and happy, happy birth-day to your mama, too!; 29 July 2008 at 20:27
Anonymous said...: yay! happy birthday, safiya!; 10 August 2008 at 08:07

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Welcome!

This is my hopefully simpler, make-do, make-more, dirt-under-the-nails life. We've relocated from our little house in the middle of big Toronto to a slightly larger house in the smaller (but equally excellent) city of Hamilton, with many adventures on the way. Feel free to poke around, start a conversation, borrow ideas, and share ideas.

Please note that tutorials are not intended as patterns for commercial use. Also, do not copy content or photographs without my permission, but feel free to contact me if you wish to do so.

Thanks,
Marnie Saskin

*and hence, the name

'Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?'

There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir!' was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes; among them Sissy Jupe.

'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.

Sissy blushed, and stood up.

'So you would carpet your room -- or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband -- with representations of flowers, would you,' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'

'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.

'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?'

'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy --'

'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never to fancy.'

'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to do anything of that kind.'

- from "Hard Times" (chapter two) by Charles Dickens