Thursday, 24 February 2011

Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches


When first purchased Mrs. Big Dicks [phwoar], for I managed to snare an innocent before revealing my darker side, was somewhat cynical about this dictionary but it has proved itself to be an invaluable addition to the household. Our lodger, Sir Alexander Fairfax-Cholmeley was so overcome by delight upon seeing it on our shelf he was compelled to immediately call his mother (who also owns a copy) and then once that trip down maternal memory lane was complete latheringly regaled us with stories about how he once used the lesser seen Albanian heterodox latinate reverse stitch to re-attach a button to his favourite great coat whilst simultaneously winning the under-14 Duns Tew Croquet championship. 

And given our increasingly straitened times owning a repository of every stitch known to man and how to deploy it on some unsuspecting piece of fabric will prove invaluable. So when the Rapture comes and all those holier than thou muppets that you've spent valuable time sniggering at ascend to heaven and water turns to blood and most things fall apart I will immediately one up on the rest of the doomed population of the  Earth and will soon be able to have London Fashion Week back up and running. 

The Time Literary Supplement, no less, states that "Nothing is too complicated or too simple for Miss Thomas... This book will do much to improve the already rising standard of work in England; it is delightful in every respect" while the Scotsman, somewhat oddly, focuses on "the cover of the book, [which] by the way, is not the least of the charms." While the cover, shown above, can't compare to the cover of a piece of contemporary chick-lit emblazoned with a with a giant spurting phallus and a pair of Jimmy Choos I think the Scotsman might be being little contrary. That said a nice stout font embossed on the linen cover is slightly hornifying, is it not?


Just for good measure, I include a copy of the first page of the Dictionary of Stitches and the Algerian Filling Stitch, which is embellished with a nice jaunty illustration of suitably stereotypical image of something Arabic like a camel being fed a large piece of water melon by a small negro child. Stitching and casual old school racism. I mean this is bound to be a big seller in the care homes of Dorset. The rice stitch is illustrated by an equally tasteful mushroom cloud over a cross-legged Japanese man. I might have made that bit up. But I might not. 

If you weren't a fan of this blog five minutes ago, how can you not be now? Insight, rapture, filth, silly aristos. Press control-D now and make your life a slightly better place.

The next dictionary will be little bit more filthy so I can include lots of expletives, as much like the internet is a conduit for porn the first thing most people do with a big dick [not me anyway] is to look to see if it contains the word "fucknut" and how it is best deployed in modern conversational English.  

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