Anyway, photos coming soon, as there was some very good stitching done by all. Bek has done masses of her new rag rug (which, by the way, is yet another excellent exercise in recycling and reusing), and I did a bit of knitting before somehow messing it up and then having to beg for the knitting pro Kate to rescue me and undo a couple of rows (which she seemed to do in a couple of minutes! She is, surely, a genius.)
BTW, we were all missing Princess Alana terribly – she has been absent for weeks and weeks and weeks! Because of this, I have found her an amigurumi pattern site, which has some excellent crochet animal patterns—check them out here: http://amigurumipatterns.blogspot.com/
In other learning, for some reason we ended up talking about the Australian creature which has a tail that looks pretty much exactly like a head. I looked it up and (re-)discovered the name; a) a stumpy-tailed lizard, or b) a shingleback lizard. For picture see here:
Anyway, they’re very cool as the tail-that-looks-like-a-head fools evil predators, so the predators get confused about which “head” to go for and slam into the ground with their sharp pointy beaks, and then stagger around feeling dazed.
I wasn’t sure whether the tail came off (as lizard tails tend to), though, as it is quite, well, stumpy, and then if the stump came off, they would clearly be a no-tail lizard.
So then Bek suggested that it might actually be called a stump-tailed skink, and might not be a lizard at all.
Which confused me, as—due to my British background—I had assumed that “skink” was simply the Australian word for “lizard”.
But no—how wrong I was!
In fact, lizards and skinks are completely different, and apparently there are no true lizards in Australia at all. Skinks are the Scincidae family, while lizards are the Lacertidae (or wall lizards) family. Both are part of the order “squamata”, or “scaled reptiles”.
Skinks look roughly like lizards, but most species have no pronounced neck and relatively small legs. Several genera (e.g., Typhiosaurus) have no limbs at all, others, such as Neoseps, have only reduced limbs. Often, their way of moving resembles that of snakes more that that of other lizards. Skinks usually have long, tapering tails that can be regenerated, while lizards can not only regenerate tails, but can regenerate limbs! Oh, also, skinks have live young, while lizards lay eggses.
How cool is that?!
Now, you be the judge – pick the skink.
I wasn’t sure whether the tail came off (as lizard tails tend to), though, as it is quite, well, stumpy, and then if the stump came off, they would clearly be a no-tail lizard.
So then Bek suggested that it might actually be called a stump-tailed skink, and might not be a lizard at all.
Which confused me, as—due to my British background—I had assumed that “skink” was simply the Australian word for “lizard”.
But no—how wrong I was!
In fact, lizards and skinks are completely different, and apparently there are no true lizards in Australia at all. Skinks are the Scincidae family, while lizards are the Lacertidae (or wall lizards) family. Both are part of the order “squamata”, or “scaled reptiles”.
Skinks look roughly like lizards, but most species have no pronounced neck and relatively small legs. Several genera (e.g., Typhiosaurus) have no limbs at all, others, such as Neoseps, have only reduced limbs. Often, their way of moving resembles that of snakes more that that of other lizards. Skinks usually have long, tapering tails that can be regenerated, while lizards can not only regenerate tails, but can regenerate limbs! Oh, also, skinks have live young, while lizards lay eggses.
How cool is that?!
Now, you be the judge – pick the skink.
Oh, and, on food, I copied Princess Emily’s dessert of raspberry jelly with fresh raspberries as it was utterly delicious (although I did have to do an emergency freezing to get it to solidify before we all ate it and everyone went home), and I actually can’t think of what we had for mains at all…*As her recent calamitous loss of her cable for connecting camera to computer was brought to a joyous conclusion when she found said cable in Hugo's wardrobe. Impeccable logic, m’lud.
2 comments:
What an informative posting! I never thought that our stitch n bitch blogsite would prove to be so varied in it intellectual content. I obviously missed a rather interesting discussion at this particular SnB session. Thanks for the Amigurumi link. It's my new best passion (don't tell Ed!).
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