Madder Than A Hatter

So my wife received this journal in the mail today as part of an Alice In Wonderland themed knitting kit packaged from Woolgirl. Since I'm always looking for notebooks to write in, she gave it to me, as she did earlier with the Cowardly Lion journal she received.

Alice In Wonderland is one of those stories filled with incidental yet highly memorable characters. I was surprised that some kind of online quiz asking "Which Alice Character Are You?"did not find it's way to me before the release of the Tim Burton movie. It seems like the kind of story made for those kinds of how-I-see-myself, how-I-think-others-see-me, how-others-actually-see-me types of personality tests.

Had one come my way, I would not have been caught off guard to see the results as follows: The Cheshire Cat has long been my favourite character, since I love the ambiguity and doubt that seems to trail after him wherever he goes. Philosophically these are the kinds of things that interest me: the limits of certainty and measurements, the boundaries of what can be known and what is necessarily unknowable.

My professional work often leaves me in the role of kind of guide, so I would hope that people would see me in the role of the White Rabbit. However, my fear is that too often my appreciation of doubt and ambiguity, along with my willingness to push conceptual boundaries, leaves people viewing me as the Mad Hatter.

In fact, no sooner had I explained this to my wife, than my daughter came bouncing into the room to discover that the Mad Hatter journal was mine. "Of course," she laughed, "because Daddy's madder than a hatter!"

Is it really that obvious?

Books fit to print.

My wife knits. A lot. Lately she's been getting some packages in the mail from a certain Woolgirl. These packages are based on a particular theme and often come with extras. Her most recent kit was based on the Cowardly Lion and it came with this lovely little notebook that my wife gave to me. It's great and I especially like that it has the word "Courage" written on the back. I'm not sure what kind of writing project I'll use it for, but that'll be half the fun.

One of the things that I like about the notebook

is that it reminds me of some of the (very expensive) notebooks that I saw at the Assouline Boutique at the new

Las Vegas City Center. It's particularly reminiscent of this one:

I've written about my love of notebooks before, and I was also highly enamoured of this stationary set design that came in notebook form as well, but thought that maybe it was a little too over the top.