Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A turtle of wire and beads made in South Africa.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A hand-painted, silk pillow. We got this one in Madrid on our trip to New Mexico last year.


The colors don't seem this vivid in normal light. The flash sure does change its appearance.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A lithophane night light.


Jerry got this at the Oceanside Sunset Market while on our search for Magic Meryle. The mold is hand carved by the artist then he makes impressions in some sort of plastic. He said that each mold produces only about 25 impressions. That makes it a limited edition. He hand colors some. Others he leaves white.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Palsy

The one blog I read every day is Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. Rex provides valuable insights into the subtleties of every day's puzzle, their use of tired words, video illustrations of featured words, etc. It is followed with lively discussion of the puzzle and Rex's write-up. It starts out with a "Word of the Day" that showed up in the puzzle. I also am a fan of Rex's Facebook page.

In today's puzzle Rex was stumped by how one of the answers and its clue were related. The clue was "Tight" and the answer was "palsy." Rex posted a plea on his Facebook page asking for an explanation without giving away the answer (this was before he posted his evaluation of the puzzle).

I had been confused about that answer, too. I was hesitant to press the "Done" button to submit my solution because that made no sense to me, either. But all the words crossing "palsy" were clearly right so I hit Done. I got the "Thank you for playing" message that says I've successfully completed the puzzle. My jaw dropped.

I went back to the puzzle and stared at that one again to see if I could figure it out. It finally came to me that it was just half of the word "palsy-walsy."

A few minutes later I happened to look at Facebook and there was Rex's question in my newsfeed. It had no comments yet so I offered one.

"Palsy" is the Word of the Day in today's puzzle write-up. And Rex thanked me for the "comprehension assist"! I am so thrilled!

Perhaps "palsy" is a new entry in my sister's collection of heteronyms, words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and different origins.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A rice-filled, fabric froggie festooned in festive turtles.

From Peggy.