snippets

I have a bad habit of tearing bits out of magazines, and then either pinning them to my corkboard or leaving them in odd places.

Today, I have discovered:

1. A meticulous description of a bathroom, complete with cut-crystal bottles of unguents.
(torn out from a magazine that uses an oddly spaced serif font, found under the desk blotter)

2. "Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing/Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing/For the dear instrument to bear."
(learned this is from "First Fight. Then Fiddle" by Gwendolyn Brooks. Pinned beneath a postcard from the Paris Natural History Museum)

3. The phrase: "skippering on a feather bed."
(no idea. Scribbled on a receipt for ice cream.)

4. A photograph of a tray of taxidermied canaries.
(tucked into a stack of letters from beloved friends.)

5. A list of different models of coffins that were available to colonial Americans.
(I've a suspicion that this is part of the material I've been collecting for a story about ghosts and funerals... Little wisps of things that prickle, but haven't gained momentum yet.)

6. A recipe for scones.
(abandoned in a tangle of ribbons and elastics that are meant for pointe shoes.)

Cleaning! It's like a treasure hunt!