marking a tranniversary:

it's just about exactly a decade since I started binding. As of about six months ago -- counting the post-surgical binder -- I stopped, again, for good. It's lovely.

Treasures of the day

Item the first: a letter from my great-great-grandmother Spain, to Papa as a young man, informing him of various familial goings-on relating to his younger siblings (at that point in her care, because reasons) and to various aunts and cousins going fishing. This is the first actual written artefact of Grandma Spain, rather than simply references to and stories about her, that my mother has ever encountered; it was lurking (of course) in a sturdy leather bag we'd assumed to be Yet More Photographic Equipment on top of Lord Whoever's Mahogany Wardrobe, where we unearthed also the commissions yesterday.

Item the second: it transpires that one of the Spinster Aunts Who Lost Their Fortune In The Australian Gold Rush and Lived Out Their Days In The Convent As Paupers... pseudonymously wrote a book of literary criticism. Of Dante. That's still in print.