Artsy craftsy

[ailbhe]

Just before lunchtime a friend of Linnea's showed up to do gooey gluey things. They brought acrylic paint and brand-new plastic tubs to paint, and Christmas baubles. So the three children did that for a bit, got very messy and then ate beans and toast. Then the two older ones made felt turtles and the little one played running around. And then there was more cleaning up and running around and Lego and things.

Incidentally, the word Legos, to mean more than one piece of Lego. Valid or invalid?

Now we have damp artwork all over the house, hanging on lines and propped on trays. I've invited them back for tea on Thursday evening so they can retrieve things then. I'm hoping to invite a few other people too.

We have an adult guest coming to dinner shortly, so Rob has made Pat Kight's Curry again. And a clafouti. Rob is always happy to make food, so we've redivided chores so that he does cooking and I do cleaning, basically. This is good; I like being fed, and I find cooking for people who don't mention whether the food is good or bad or indifferent very dispiriting. He will remark on the food he prepares himself, so this works better for everyone.

It has been a good weekend. Linnea and I started the day by reading in bed; we read the Christmas bit from Little House in the Biog Woods, which is nice and non-carnivorous. I really need to work out where I'm inflicting my squeamishness on the children and where I'm protecting them from the unpleasantness of the world. They do know about death and have watched me clean up cat-killings before. But. I am a coward.

Oh - I've been wondering - tablecloths: Do people still use them? I like them. I've been using throws and baby-slings and things, even cotsheets on occasion. But I might buy some if I knew where to look for nice ones. I wonder what's available? There's a nice picnic cloth at Bishopston Trading. Perhaps that would do.

Luckily I already have a large one for when the table is all pulled out to max. As it will be on Thursday if I have my way. We should have at least seven children children here.

Comments

[rpdom.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the word Legos, to mean more than one piece of Lego. Valid or invalid?

I would say Invalid. You have Lego, a piece of Lego, a Lego set, lots of Lego bricks. But definitely not Legos.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

The way I look at it, as an editor, is that if you're trying to preserve the Lego trademark, i.e. writing for publication, the plural is "Lego bricks." Otherwise (and speaking as one who has taken apart hundreds of stuck-together Legos for three-year-olds), "Legos" works fine for me.

I don't like our table much, so I put on a tablecloth for company, but unless I wanted to protect the heck out of it, I'd use placemats if I liked the table and wanted to show it. For company, I like a little something between the table and plates. My mother-in-law has one white tablecloth for her huge, long, family-dinner table, and has sewn a couple of lovely runners for down the middle to make it more festive.

[ailbhe]

I met the word Legos as an adult, and Rob and my children don't seem to use it (Emer might but we can't tell yet!), so I'm not sure. It sounds odd to me and I don't know whether it's in general use.

We have an oilcloth for general protection purposes, because I am too careless to take it out every time we want to paint or whatever. And I like the table enough that I want to protect it from heat, so I leave that there when we're eating. But it's not nice enough for company.

Later, when we're less likely to have curry upended over the whole thing and eating through the varnish and then painted into place with glue, I'll be showing it off nicely.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I met it as an adult too, and it still seems odd to me. "Do you have a lot of Lego?" "Can you please pick up the Lego bricks before I step on another one?"

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

I think 'a tablecloth, we have a table that is about thios long by this wide' is a good answer for you to give two or three people when they ask whether they can bring you anything.

It's a good present, is what I am saying, and I know you prefer not to be given useless clutter.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

oops. meant to reply directly to ailbhe. sorry.

[clarahippy.livejournal.com]

I use a tablecloth on occasion, I would probably use them more often if a) my table didn't double as my desk and it's inconvenient working with a tablecloth and b) I had more than one, preferably one which fitted the table!

I've never read the Little House books despite my mum making me watch it every week. I'm beginning to think I should go back and catch up with them.

[ailbhe]

We were disgusted when we first saw the TV series. We always loved the books.

[clarahippy.livejournal.com]

That's promising! I was never really a big fan although I did prefer it immensely to 'The Walton's'; they seemed to share the same slot and alternate IIRC. My mother has notoriously bad taste in television!

[buzzy-bee.livejournal.com]

I would talk about a piece of Lego, many pieces of Lego. Never a lego or many legos.

Same in Danish, incidentally.

Americans seem to say legos though.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I use a table-cloth for posh dinners. John Lewis do tablecloths, though the ratio (in my opinion) between revolting and OK is not really that high. They do have a lot of everyday tablecloths, but the selection for posh is a bit more erratic (i.e. it depends a lot on your taste).

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

The husband -- who is somehow all about aesthetics, so I have no clue why he married me -- puts tableclothes and placemats out all the time. We've received a bunch of tableclothes from my dad, the bargain maven, who shops clearance sales like a HAWK. Frequently, after-holiday sales can produce cheap stuff, but also, if you just watch for changes in stock -- and I don't know when this happens annually -- but you can find good deals from retail outlets if you just wait.

OTOH, I'd probably just watch for rummage sales and second hand store areas.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

I like table cloths too. We have 2 plastic backed ones for the kitchen table & some proper ones for the dining table. I am lazy & it is easier to throw a tablecloth in the washing machine than scrub a table (for cloth ones obviously)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who used to carry (perhaps still does?) a little clipping in his wallet - I believe it was from the Lego Corp. themselves, insisting that Legos was improper terminology. As someone noted above, it's Lego blocks.

That said, virtually everyone I know refers to them in the plural. :)

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I have a tablecloth and sometimes I have placemats. Never both. But I'm messy and I like my varnished tables. I bought one cheap tablecloth at IKEA, never ironed it, and threw it out when it got too icky - very efficient. My current favourite tablecloth is from Dansk and matches my dishes.

[riarambles.livejournal.com]

See, to me it sounds really odd to say Lego, unless in a sentence like "hand me that yellow Lego," which is a setence I probably wouldn't say anyway--I'd say brick or piece or one instead. I grew up with Legos being the standard form (like, "let's play Legos!"). I wonder if that's a US/UK difference, or a regional difference with in the US.

[ailbhe]

"That yellow Lego" would mean "those yellow bits of Lego" to me - not "that single yellow piece of Lego."

We recently got the Lego out of the attic. The children play with the Lego or with Lego. One doesn't play Lego, one plays with it, too.

I'd love ot know what people from the UK call it; I never heard Legos growing up, and it would be interesting to know what is normal here. So far I've only had one UKian comment though. Most UKians seem to care more about tablecloths.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I use Lego exactly the same way you did: "It's my Lego, you can't have any. Oh, all right, you can use the green and the blue Lego, but you can't use the yellow or the red or the white Lego." "Muuuuum, Tom won't let me play with the Lego!"

[biascut.livejournal.com]

There may be gender-related bitterness here.

[merryhouse.livejournal.com]

Legos: definitely not.

You can't say "play Legos", because then the joke doesn't work... although, come to think of it, the joke only works if you say "play Lego" which is wrong too. Though less wrong.

I appear to be agreeing with Ailbhe all the way on this one. Makes a change ;-)

We use tablemats, but my dad and in-laws still have cloths. My sister has an oilcloth on hers. My younger sister, who was given an old beautiful table when newly-married, keeps a protective cushioning on it. She probably now has an oilcloth too, but I haven't visited them since her child was born.

Places like Homebase have them (our massive Tesco does too) but just as with the curtains there's a limited choice highly dependent on what Linda Barker thinks is the trendy colour palette. Which until recently has meant beige or cream, but has begun to branch out into chocolate and turquoise. (I have been trying to buy napkins. We have a cream, green and raspberry dining room. Very frustrating).

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

I think "legos" is standard American English, but not standard British English.

I like tablecloths, but we don't have the right kind of table for the kind of tablecloth I like (I like stiffish linen, which works best on tables without corners, and ours is square), and the table is polyurethaned bombproof anyway so there's no practical utility, so we never use one.

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

Lego, definitely. Like sheep, but more painful to stand on.
Tablecloths. Hmm
I have thick padded thingummy to prevent damage, antique one to look posh, 1950s ones for most of the time, loud flock backed plastic ones for Crimbo. If we ever have a family one here again I think I MUST update to real fabric cloth for Crimbo - youngest is now 19 years old, for goodness sake!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Lego, definitely. Like sheep, but more painful to stand on.

Not for the sheep! ;)

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

DH (who is actually British and has lived in the UK all his life) says that "legos" would be wrong. As an Aussie, I'd agree with him.

On the table cloth issue we have plastic coated cotton matching our kitchen curtains for everyday and fabric for better occasions. Somewhere in a drawer I've still got the plastic coated one that matched the blind in the last house - we tend to use that for the picnic table outside. Currently we have four cloth tablecloths that fit the table we use - one stripped from IKEA, one checked from a local department store when we lived in our last house, one plain cream polycotton from John Lewis which was a wedding present and one linen damask. I can't be bothered with the damask one very often as it really needs starching before use. We also have napkins to match all four tablecloths (six for the cream polycotton and 12 for each of the others). We've also got a couple of cloths to fit the circular table we had in the dining room when we were in London, the current house doesn't have a dining room so our only table is the kitchen one.

[nitoda]

I like to use a white linen tablecloth all the time but I'm not very good at changing it, even though I hate when it gets stained ... the advantage of white linen or cotton is that you can boil wash it and get it properly clean. We probably wash ours every couple of weeks along with all the other stuff that's best boiled like handkerchiefs, dishcloths, teatowels etc.

[moustachios.livejournal.com]

We used "legos" all the time. As in, "pick up your legos", or "Do you have a two-by-two lego?" "No, but I've got two one-by-two legos."

LEGO/LEGOS

[rrc.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, Legos is an americanism, whereas Europeans would use Lego for the plural.

Re: LEGO/LEGOS

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I think that's the key, there.

I was stunned by the question, because "legos" is so natural to my born-in-the-U.S. ears.

I think there's also a thing where "Lego" sounds a bit too much like "leggo my eggo" (from an old frozen waffle marketing campaign) to the average American.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I don't think that 'Lego' is a countable noun.

One Lego set; one Lego brick; a town made of Lego; Mummy, she keeps throwing Lego at me!

I use one of those felt/rubber thick big tablemats for protecting a table that's very easy to damage, usually with a cloth of some sort because it's ugly. When I had a table that was less easy to damage I only used a cloth for special occasions, because it was easier to clean the table than the cloth.

I don't know where has good ones, though. I'd tend to look in fabric mill shops, e.g. Dunelm.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think that Lego is a mass noun, "Lego brick" is the countable form, so you might have a "pile of lego" or a "pile of lego bricks" but not a "pile of legos". Except apparently in America it is "legos".

I like table cloths but don't own any :(

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the word Legos, to mean more than one piece of Lego. Valid or invalid?

American, I think. At least I've only ever seen it used by Americans.

When I was a sproglet we had Lego and individual bits were "pieces of Lego".

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I must have read too much stuff written by Americans, because Legos seems like the natural plural of Lego to me. Hmmm. OK.

• "Pick up your Lego" sounds right.
  
• "Pick up your Legos" sounds wrong.
  
• "I need to take apart all these Legos" sounds normal.
  
• "I need to take apart all this Lego" also sounds normal.
  
• "I need to take apart all these Lego" sounds mutated.