The Milking Stool Weekly Link Round-Up

There's not much to report this week. Denis and I spent a very relaxing Thanksgiving Day eating the rather traditional meal that I'd cooked and watching some favorite movies. I hope you all had a day just as pleasant as ours.

Having worked retail for three decades, I make it a habit to stay away from anything that smacks of shopping on Thanksgiving weekend. To me, racing out to buy more stuff isn't the best way to show how thankful I am for what I already have. However, I misjudged our milk consumption and had to buy more on Sunday. Before I pulled into the parking lot of the nearest store (Super Target), I saw that it was an absolute zoo, so I continued on to the next place I knew that sold milk: Walgreen's. Hardly a vehicle in the lot, scarcely a soul in the store. The entire trip took no more than ten minutes, and I arrived home with both milk and my sanity (or what passes for my sanity anyway). I have let Denis know that if we should happen to run out of milk on Christmas Eve, he's going to have to go find a cow and milk it!

Before I track down those links, I thought I'd show you the latest thing off my knitting needles. The pattern is called Peacock, and the yarn is Red Heart Shimmer in their peacock color. I absolutely love this yarn and have several more skeins in my stash. I posted this photo on my Facebook page and wound up agreeing to make a scarf for an out-of-state friend (not in this color). I'm nearly halfway through one of my bed covers, and I need something smaller to work on once in a while to give my wrists and arms a rest!

Time for those links!

►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• A surprise Laura Ingalls Wilder bestseller is transforming a small press.
• Waterstones is back in the black four years after being at the brink of bankruptcy. (Too bad they won't buy their apostrophe back....)
• Kenneth Branagh is all set to play Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express. 
• Forget binge-watching, and try encouraging binge-reading. Okay, I'm all for that, but what if I've been known to binge-knit while I binge-watch?
• Renewing the Library of Congress. 
• The dark side of Toy Story. 
• According to The Scotsman, Diana Gabaldon believes Outlander may be "too intense" for British television. 
• There's a lot of truth in this: If you enjoyed a good book and you're a woman, the critics think you're wrong. 
• A lost William Faulkner play has been published for the first time.
• It's rather sad to me to see things like "emoji" make their way into dictionaries when all sorts of wonderful words are vanishing.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• I found a collection of Romany Gypsy wagons that were auctioned off a few years ago. They're gorgeous! 
• Why museums hide masterpieces away.
• The secret libraries of Rome. 
•  Art history's greatest kisses.
• Roman coins and medieval rings found in the Vale of Glamorgan have been declared treasure. 
• This museum has asked visitors to ditch cell phone cameras and sketch the artwork instead. Ummm... the whole point is that I can't draw and want to soak up the glory of those who can, not sweat over the mess I'm making.... 
• The Starving Time of 1609-1610 was so desperate in Jamestown that the colonists of the first permanent English settlement in the New World were forced to resort to cannibalism. 
• A Roman fortlet has been found on Anglesey using a geological survey. 
• Hunting for DNA in Doggerland, an ancient land beneath the North Sea. 
• Thirty years after its theft, no one knows where this painting is. 
• Shakespeare's kitchen has been discovered in a Stratford-upon-Avon dig.
• The perfectly preserved World War I trench. 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• What this impala did left some tourists dumbstruck (or as they say in the UK "gobsmacked").  
• One of the most beautiful sights in the entire world: Monarch butterflies have arrived in Mexico. 
• Pumpkin the raccoon is just your average dog. 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• Michigan's Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
• Poland's Crooked Forest-- a fantasy woodland with 400 oddly twisted trees. 
• A phone booth was just put on the National Register of Historic Places.
• Some of the brilliant bridges of Scotland.
• The Grand Canyon's North Rim is bedding down for the winter. 
• Resurrecting the original road trip on America's ghost highway. 
• Incredible photos of Warsaw, Poland taken 3,000 feet up in the sky. 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• The Washington Post has unveiled the Top Ten Books of 2015. 
• The best blogs for book lovers.
• BBC Culture polled film critics from around the world, and here is their list of the 100 greatest American films.
• 17 facts about the Little House on the Prairie television series.
• 15 toys from the '60s that will never get old.
• The 11 most quotable movies ever.
• A quote from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander tops the list of Scotland's ten most popular literary lines.

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!