You know the saying ‘You wait ages for a bus and then three come at once’? Well, a similar thing has happened here. I haven’t been able to post weekly reports recently and so here are three all at once.

VF 35 was on 13th November. We were knitting cowls, a blanket for SANDS, a lap blanket, a shawl, a pinafore dress and a toddler jumper with a gorgeous bunny on the front.

The quiz strained our brains again. One of the questions was: Which Greek playwright wrote the tragedy Andromache? Was it a) Plato b) Socrates c) Homer or d) Euripedes ?

It reminded me of an old joke: Parent tells bedraggled child off and warns: ‘If Euripedes trousers once more, you’ll be sorry!’ Ha ha!

The answer to the question is, of course, Euripedes.

Agnes was the quizzing champion, followed by Pam.

VF 36 was on 20th November.

We were pleased to see how well Liz looked after her surgery and admired her for already busying herself with some crochet.

May had decided to give knitting a rest and had started beading a star, Linda had finished her Dr Who scarf and Agnes had finished the pinafore dress for her nephew’s baby and the cardi and hat for her niece’s daughter.

Georgeous! Aren’t they?

The quiz had three champions sharing first place: Maggie, Sheila and Catherine.

The questions always bring up something interesting. This time it was: What name is given to the effect by which the pitch of a train’s whistle appears to alter as it passes? is it a) Krypton effect b) Doppler effect c) Pasteur effect or d) Newton effect ?

The answer is B – Doppler effect. Some of us who’ve come across Doppler machines in a medical context got the answer wrong. I include myself in this exclusive group 🙂

I’ve caught up with myself – VF 37 is today – 27th November.

Catherine told us that Maggie Lisney’s son and daughter in law have very kindly given the group Maggie’s yarn and knitting accessories. We’ll be able to make good use of them, I’m sure, and will think of Maggie when we use them.

We carried out a little experiment today when we quizzed. Sometimes the questions are so hard that we’ve speculated that there might be a better chance of a good score if we chose answers randomly. So today, we chose a random set of answers and then did the quiz giving actual answers (or guesses!) to the quiz questions. It seems that random guessing doesn’t get you anywhere because the best score was 5 out of 15. For each of us, our actual score was better than the random score. Today’s winner was Liz; Catherine and I were joint second.

Today’s interesting question was: What does the disease Malaria literally mean? Is it a) Insect disease b) Severe fever c) Bad air or d) Vicious attack ?

The answer is C Bad air. The term malaria originates from Mediaeval Italian – ‘mala aria’ meaning bad air. If you’re interested, read about malaria here.

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