Friday, January 30, 2009

Flutterings of the heartstrings here in Drummond Place.

On Wednesday evening I wrote to the seller of “Hand-Knits for Service Women” to report its safe arrival and to thank her.

I then added a girlish paragraph – the sort of thing my husband absolutely hates my doing – to say that I had got a bit carried away in the auction, that what I really collected was the original British series of Vogue Knitting Books, and that all I now lacked was No. 16. If she ever found that, I said, she could have my first-born son.

Alexander would not be happy to leave all that he so much loves, but for VKB #16 it might have to be done.

Well, you can see where this is tending. She wrote last night to say that she’s got it. She has a VKB collection of her own, not as good as mine, and she doesn’t know whether she can bear to part with it. Her husband was not too keen on the idea of Alexander, anyway.

I wrote back telling her that he is a brilliant cook and grows his own vegetables, and suggesting, if that didn’t suit, that she name her price. There is no reply yet. I wrote again this morning offering to swap some Starmores (that is, offering to swap one of them – I listed three). That might be a better idea.

This was inspired by Franklin’s latest post. I had a vague idea that Starmores fetched silly prices. I looked on Abebooks this morning and found that they do indeed. For Franklin’s sake (and for my own) I didn’t include “The Art of Fair Isle Knitting” in my suggested swap list.

Watch this space.

Comment

Stash Haus, where do you go to look at deals on international air travel?

9 comments:

  1. what are you going to collect next if this has a successful outcome? Good luck btw

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  2. (Sister, that is) I use Travelocity and/or Expedia to look for fares; you should be able to set up alerts to be notified when fares drop below a certain level. I'd also talk to your travel agency--there are some tickets that don't appear on the general sites, especially when travel agents book blocks of tickets and then have to sell them again so you may get the best price that way. Also they can tell you when prices are likely to be at their best.
    Flexibility about which airport should help as well.

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  3. Alice Starmore's Book Of Fair Isle Knitting, in paperback, is being reprinted by Dover. Date, from Amazon, 20th August 2009 ISBN 0486472183
    should find it. It is not clear if it has any new additions but I would imagine as it is a Dover reprint it is a copy of the original.

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  4. There is also a site called Hotwire where you can subscribe to email notices.

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  5. skyscanner.net is quite good for cheap flights too - they give you a little bar chart showing the cheapest days and include lots of airlines.

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  6. Anonymous2:07 PM

    We have friends flying from Fargo to London next month for around $700 each, so current prices are pretty low. I imagine they will be a bit higher in the Summer but if you wait you should see better deals than we're seeing at present for the Summer.

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  7. Anonymous4:49 PM

    I have my fingers crossed for you. I do hope you can complete your collection. How satisfying would that be!!!
    Ron in Mexico

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  8. Hi Jean,

    First, I joined Bestfares.com. The price was $50 US for the year - but I can tell you that you will recoup that cost in one international ticket. So, if not you, at least one of your family should join - the whole family would benefit.

    I have also signed up the the airlines emails - specifically BA, Virgin, and Northwest/KLM. They usually don't clutter up your "in box" and you can always choose the option that they not share your email address with their "partners".

    Also, when searching for airfares for a specific trip, aside from Bestfares, I check out kayak.com. Kayak checks all major airlines and also all the other site (like Expedia or Travelocity, etc.). When I was planning last summer's trip, another helpful website was www.low-cost-airline-guild.com - I was able to find cheap flights between Paris and Prague. They're a great guide to the low costs airlines in the UK and Europe.

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  9. Anonymous1:21 PM

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