Monthly Archives: December 2011

Advent calendar: 25. Roundup of posts

When I started this silly advent calendar project, I was feeling a bit blissed out and chilled. I expected most of my posts to be about poetry and knitting. This is how it actually turned out: Poetry got a huge … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 24. Playmobile and gender segregation of toys

Hamleys had come under fire for their gender separation of toys in their store, and recently rearranged their floor labelling by theme and type instead of gender. Even this attracted some criticism – presumably in a large part from those … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 23. Lego Minifigures – gender roundup

I’ve been promising this post for a while: a gender audit of the recent collectible Lego minifigures sets, following my gender audit of Polly’s Duplo and Lego. As I’ve been talking a lot recently about Lego, minifigures and gender, I’ve … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 22. Is Lego really evil?

One of my favourite Lego related blogs recently has been “I’m starting to think Lego is evil” by Daniel Sinker. It touches on a few things that I don’t really want to admit about Lego because… well, because I love … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 21. Sausage rolls

OK it will soon be Christmas day and I’m only on post 21 of my advent calendar. Shamefully, five of them were posted today. I don’t care. It’s still lots of posts that I may not have made otherwise, and … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 17. Casting on

In knitting, the first thing you do is cast on. This is the process of getting your first set of stitches onto the needle ready to knit with. In all honesty, this is sometimes as far as I get on … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 19. Polly’s leg warmers

This is what happens when we go out with Polly:  Even trousers that are perfectly long enough ride up and flash flesh. It wouldn’t matter so much, but when it’s icy cold and we’ve wrapped the rest of her … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 18. Magic loop knitting

Knitting in the round (such as for socks) is usually done on double pointed needles. This involves four or five short needles with points on both ends, with your stitches split into three or four sections. I suck at this … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 20. Lego for girls: some history

There have been lots of words written about Lego and their marketing products to girls recently. I wrote some of them myself, here’s an article on The F-Word by Helen Lewis-Hasteley about the wider issue of toys for girls, and … Continue reading

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Advent calendar: 16. The changing face of the Lego minifigure

1975 – the minifigure has no face. Why would it? Kids are perfectly capable of imagining any face they can. The clothes come in four colours (red, blue, black and white), and there is pigtail hair, a sailor hat and … Continue reading

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