Samovars and Stone Cold Foxes

Last Saturday's trawl of the op-shops around Camberwell yielded some peculiarly fantastic finds. Perhaps the most awesome thing I found (in my opinion) was this little brass samovar.

I've had a yearning for one, ever since I spent about 4 months training it across Central Asia a couple of years ago. Each train carriage would be equiped with a gigantic, steaming samovar at each end of every carriage, to provide passengers with hot water for, well, any activity you'd require hot water for, really.

Mine's only a little one, for the home dining table, although the plug's so old that I doubt I'd be tempted to try and re-wire it, just in the whole thing blows up. As you can see, age has imbued the brass with a lovely warm patina, and it looks just beautiful glowing in the afternoon sunlight.

The other item that I got quite excited about was a copy of the book 'Beastly Knits' by Lalla Ward. That's her down there, lady on the cover with the crazy eyes, grinning rather inanely. She's married to Richard Dawkins though, so I forgive her her trepasses.

The excitement wasn't because I wanted to knit baggy jumpers with unrealistic animals on them. I'm not really that kinda girl, although I think Claudia Kishi would certainly approve. And it wasn't because Lalla Ward used to be a companion to the best time-travelling doctor in all the universes. I parted with 50 whole pence for this hardback tome because of the fantastic pictures in it.

And when I say 'fantastic', please read that as 'uncomfortable and extremely awkward.' I give you Exhibit A - Batgeek.


And Exhibit B - awkward fake father/daughter combo.

Although I must admit that I find that dude in the fox jumper to be quite the stone-cold fox himself. Check out that luscious hair (on his head and on his face). And let's not even get started on his ramrod posture - makes a girl weak at the knees, everytime! That little girl looks quite embarrassed by everything that's going on around her. I hope she grew up to be a vampire slayer.

There's lots of other beauties in the book, but I shouldn't torture you anymore. Sleep tight, don't let the Batgeek bite!