The Cottage and Visitors

Visitors are in the habit of arriving here at all sorts of strange hours, which is why the well-trained volunteers are invited to be here at all sorts of strange hours, too.

How do you usually tell whether an hour is strange or not?

How are the volunteers meant to be creative when there are unmanageable crowds of visitors here?

The Cottage and Creativity - Part One

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Two

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Three

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Four
  

A little music is played whenever the digital door is opened though the tune is only usually heard by relatively enlightened visitors.

How have you been reflecting on the cottage and beliefs during your visits here?

If this is your first visit to Frugality Cottage, and you have stumbled upon this virtual location quite by accident, welcome.

Visitors often arrive in relatively beautiful places seeking relief from the ugly surroundings in which they spend much of their time.

The Cottage and Character - Part One

The Cottage and Character - Part Two

The Cottage and Character - Part Three

The Cottage and Character - Part Four

 

The digital displays in the attic have been viewed by many virtual visitors.  Those have managed to find their way to the ethereal stairway without too much difficulty.

Have you been enjoying your virtual visits to Frugality Cottage?

• Key
• Door
• Entrance 
• Guide

Are you interested in volunteering here in the year ahead?

Refreshing Possibilities - Part Four

Have you arrived here this morning in search of a festive spirit and/or enlightened being to cheer you up? 

If so, there is an ethereal volunteer on duty to assist you.

Have you subscribed to enlightened being yet?

If not, and you are not a registered patron here yet, you may have a disappointing New Year.

Many refreshing possibilities will be offered to appropriately registered patrons in the New Year.

Meanwhile, here in Frugality Cottage, there is more good cheer to experience, at least briefly.

Refreshing Possibilities - Part Three

What are you hoping to discover in the library here this afternoon?

Refreshing Possibilities - Part Two

How much time do you usually spend each day, reflecting upon refreshing possibilities?

Refreshing Possibilities - Part One

Early every Monday morning, local time, for several months now, you have been invited to explore refreshing possibilities here in the entrance of Frugality Cottage.

In the middle of every Monday afternoon, local time, for several months now, you have been invited to invest in refreshing possibilities in the library here.

Where do you usually search for refreshing possibilities?

More about the Cottage - Part Four

If you are not yet a patron of Frugality Cottage, you will soon be unable to enter the sitting room here.

More about the Cottage - Part Three

You may, by now, be quite familiar with Frugality Cottage.

You will have become accustomed to this entrance.

You will have found your way to the sitting room.

You will be aware of the workshops and projects associated with the cottage.

You will know how to find the library and what to find there.

You may even have considered the patronage options most suitable for you here.

More about the Cottage - Part Two

Although much effort is made by the volunteers to ensure Frugality Cottage remains suitably peaceful, visitors occasionally have the chance to experience a brief musical interlude here.

Please note that the next part in this series will begin at 7am, local time, next Monday morning.

More about the Cottage - Part One

If you have now acquainted yourself sufficiently with the introductory information about Frugality Cottage, you may be ready to learn more about this virtual location.

You may also be keen to learn about the non-virtual community locations, facilities and activities soon likely to be associated with the cottage.

Only appropriately registered and adequately certified patrons within the virtual community are permitted to learn about the non-virtual projects.

Please assess your patronage today.

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part Four

Most people do not really know much about appropriateness at all.

They know a little bit about habits.

They may know a little bit about expectations.

They do not really know much about freedom.

They live their lives as though they are constantly in a state of liminality.

They do not practice intelligent frugality, or even appreciate it.

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part Three

If you live in a small space, you may be well aware of the problems related to inadequate room for storage.

While intelligent frugality will always be associated with continuity, liminality will always be associated with change.

Projects are associated with liminality.

You may or may not have participated in any of the discussions in the sitting room here.

You may or may not have noticed the notes for you on the shelf in the little library.

You may or may not have sought a temporary or permanent virtual residence in this digital vicinity.

What are the current transitions you are experiencing?

How do you know you do not mistake liminality for limerence?

You may or may not have offered to help in the kitchens here, or the garden, the attic or the administrative work shed.

Do you consider the development of good cultures to be projects?

Do you consider the maintenance of good cultures to be ongoing activities?

By definition, human communities are inhabited by people familiar with each other quite well, especially in comparison to strangers.

Many community problems, and societal problems more widely, are associated with impulsiveness, including in relation to community organisations, charities and social groups.

Do you consider conflict to be liminal?

Do you usually associate the media with virtual liminality?

Why have you been invited to experience Frugality Cottage? 

Who invited you here?

Who has placed the notices on this noticeboard for you to interpret?

Have you already experienced part one in this series of introductions?

If not, please catch up as quickly as possible.

There is a sense of urgency here at present.

Do you usually associate liminality with interviews?

Do you usually associate greetings and goodbyes with liminality?

Do you consider openings and closings to be liminal?

Have you already experienced part two in this series of introductions?

If not, please catch up as quickly as possible.

Do you consider all conscious learning to be liminal?

Do you often feel ambiguous about your own feelings or otherwise confused about them?

Do you usually associate the ambiguous with the liminal?

Do you usually associate confusion with the liminal?

Do you usually associate the marginal with the liminal? 

Do you usually associate attics with high culture?

Do you usually associate cellars with low culture?

Do you usually associate virtual cottages with liminality and other transformational experiences?

Have you already experienced at least a few of the other introductions here?

If not, please catch up as quickly as possible.

 

• The Cottage and Time
• The Cottage and Peace
• The Cottage and Freedom
• The Cottage and Simplicity
• The Cottage and the Key

 

What do you already know about Frugality Cottage and its garden?

• The Cottage Garden - Part One
• The Cottage Garden - Part Two

• The Cottage Itself - Part One
• The Cottage Itself - Part Two

 

What do you know about the workshops conducted here? 

• The Cottage and Industries - Part One
• The Cottage and Industries - Part Two
• The Cottage and Industries - Part Three
• The Cottage and Industries - Part Four

• The Cottage and Creativity - Part One
• The Cottage and Creativity - Part Two
• The Cottage and Creativity - Part Three
• The Cottage and Creativity - Part Four

• The Cottage and Kindness - Part One
• The Cottage and Kindness - Part Two
• The Cottage and Kindness - Part Three
• The Cottage and Kindness - Part Four

 

Have you attended any of the creative workshops here?

The Cottage and Competence 

Do you usually associate births, marriages and deaths with liminality?

Do you usually associate liminality and the liminal with the sacred?

The liminal may or may not be experienced as the sublime at any particular moment.

 

Yet the liminal is always transitional.

 

It may involve a change from the traditional to the modern.

 

It may involve a change from the modern to the timeless.

 

It may involve a wide variety of changes.

 

Yet the liminal always involves the process of change itself.

 

It exists in and as a boundary, an edge, in a time and place of uncertainty.

 

It is where the known and unknown mingle.

 

It is where patterns meet chaos, night meets day, and sleep meet awakening.

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part Two

Where do you imagine this noticeboard to be situated, in your mind's eye, if not actually physically?

What have been your experiences of entranceways and passageways and hallways and alleyways and pathways and edgeways and boundaries and borders and reception areas and gateways and gatehouses and bridges?
 
How do you imagine the neighbourhood in which Frugality Cottage is situated?

What have been your previous experiences of liminality, possibly including rites of passage?

How do you imagine the entranceway to this virtual cottage?

How do you imagine the cottage gardens?

What have been your previous experiences of cottages, including this one?

How do you think about persuasiveness in relation to liminality?

Do you know the folk song Early One Morning?

Do you know the folk song Fare Thee Well?

Both are about parting.

Do you usually associate folk music with cottages and country air?

Do you know the folk song Country Gardens?

Have you ever attempted to turn a harshly bland suburban area into a gentle reminder of rural living?

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part One

This cottage entranceway is virtually situated, fleetingly, at the forefront of your consciousness, as is this noticeboard, but how long will you remain here?

When you entered Frugality Cottage today, you may have noticed that there are no noticeable internal doors.

There is this noticeboard and little else to be perceived in this very small digital space.

If you have already explored the virtual neighbourhood around Frugality Cottage, you may have noticed the tall, unpainted corrugated iron fences signify three boundaries of the cottage garden.

Along the front of the garden, however, adjoining the Social Media Quadrangle, is a low, unpainted wooden picket fence with a solid wooden gate in the middle.  The gate is unpainted too.  It has been deliberately rusticated.

When you passed through the gateway, you may have wondered whether the rustication was, instead, a sign of neglect, abandonment and poor maintenance.

The gate is easy to open.  Its hinges do not squeak.  It closing mechanism is gentle and quiet.

The gateway is wide enough for a wheelchair or pushchair or pram or shopping trolley or walking frame.  The seemingly smooth flagstone pathway is never slippery.

The garden here is known here as the garden of sustainability. 

In city and suburban settings, and even in country towns and villages, the rusticated is often mistaken for the dilapidated and the untidy.

Yet the rustic displays the passage of time, as does life itself.

If you are not particularly familiar with the English language, even if you are a native English speaker, you may have looked up the meaning of frugality in a dictionary.

If you are not familiar with cottages, you may have sought the meaning of that word, too.

 

You may consider hyperlinks to be like doors or gates or windows or envelopes.

You may or may not have noticed that the text above contains no hyperlinks.

If you have already sought a dictionary definition of liminality, what did it say?

Did you open a physical dictionary or a web page to find the meaning of the word?

Perhaps you also looked up a definition of kitsch.

You may even have looked up the subliminal and/or the sublime.

If you do not have much experience of digital worlds, you may even have looked up the meaning of hyperlink.

 

In the back fence of the garden of sustainability is a hidden gate.  It leads to a district mainly consisting of rows of cottages.

The entire little village of cottages is surrounded by corrugated iron fencing and hidden gateways.  The residents wish to keep out would-be tourists and other intruders.

 

Although cottages are usually associated with people, they may also be the homes of pets, livestock and/or vermin.

There are no pets or livestock associated with this cottage, or the nearby village.

Safe management practices are in place to keep away vermin and other transmitters of diseases.

There are also good management practices in place to prevent other problems.

It is not possible to experience the nearby village, and become a member of its community, without first gaining adequate experience here.

The village beyond the garden of sustainability is not a village for retirees.  Nor is it a village for families, or children.  It is not a village for university students.  Nor is it a village for commuters.

It is certainly not a village for non-residents or second-home owners.

Keeping out strangers and uncommitted members is very important to the residents. 

How do you assess locations?

 

Once upon a time, in a cottage, far, far away, there lived - and died - many unknown people.

There were newborn babies and unwell infants and adolescents with tuberculosis and young women in childbirth and young men with injuries from war.

Many died before they reached middle age.

That cottage may possibly still exist near to where you are right now, but far, far away from your awareness.

 

You may even have inhabited such a place.

 

You may still do.

 

Liminality is associated with the temporary rather than the permanent though it may be a metaphorical doorway or gateway into experiences of permanence, or maturity. 

 

You may or may not be familiar with the liminal.  You may mistake it for the subliminal.

You may associate tourism and travel and transport with liminality.

 

You may be involved in assisting liminal experiences whilst providing care, whether towards persons with disabilities, persons in childhood, persons at the other end of the lifespan or non-human animals.

 

You may associate liminality with the end of perceived normality. 

 

You may associate liminality with the end of continuity.

 

You may associate liminality with spirituality. 

 

 

Here are two Wiktionary links you may find helpful:

Liminal

Liminality



Here are a few Wikipedia links you may find helpful:


Limen

Liminal

Liminality

Sublimation

Subliminal stimuli

Sublime

Sublime language

Transition

Social influence

Persuasion

Ascribed characteristics

Ascribed status

Achieved status

Grade

Gradient

Transitional care

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Four

What have you been learning here about intelligently frugal pleasures?

 

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part One

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Two

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Three

 

Do you know much about intelligently frugal pleasures in relation to persons with fewer opportunities in life than yourself?

Do you know much about intelligently frugal pleasures in relation to persons with more opportunities in life than yourself? 

How have you been investing in intelligent frugality, and where?  

What is your preferred approach to investing in pleasure?

The workshops and projects here are obviously important activities for anyone truly interested in intelligently frugal pleasures.

How have you been making the world a much better place than it would be without you if not through intelligently frugal pleasures?

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Three

Are you a practitioner of cottagecore?

If so, what does it actually mean?

Does it have anything to do with virtual communities, or even non-virtual ones?

Does it have anything to do with sustainability?

Does it have anything to do with intelligently frugal pleasures?

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Two

Perhaps you mostly enjoy wandering around the virtual cottage gardens here instead of exploring your educational options inside the entrance to the cottage itself.

Do you usually associate frugal pleasures with outdoor pursuits rather than indoor ones?

Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part One

In this project, you are invited to present your findings on the sustainability of intelligently frugal pleasures.

What have you already been learning on the subject here at Frugality Cottage, and elsewhere?

An Australian Idyll - Part Four

The Australian idyll does not really begin within a room but in the cottage garden.

What do you really know about nature, and productive gardens?

What do you already know about the cottage itself?

How much have you already explored here?

The sitting room here may have been where you have mostly been responding to the questions posed in the workshops.

You may have been learning about cottage industries here, or in the sitting room or in the attic.

Do you consider an Australian idyll to be a public experience or a private one, or a communal one, or something else entirely?

What have you been learning about the idyllic, and from whose point of view?

How do you compare cottage industries with other experiences of working from home?

What have you been learning in the library here?

Do you usually associate cottages with the information industry?

There is much to learn from history.

You may or may not associate the cottage with creativity.

Do you consider idyllic cottages to be locations of sweetness and light?

There are many cultural considerations to make.

If your ideas of bliss are sentimentally romantic, or even kitsch or camp or cuteness, you may associate cottages with the modern tourism industry rather than the folklore of earlier times.

You may or may not associate a cottage with a creative culture, or with barbarians or philistines.

An Australian Idyll - Part Three

How relevant is money to a good way of life?

How relevant are governments to a good way of life?

You may not think these questions have much to do with an Australian idyll, at least in relation to Australians with considerable personal and business debts to repay and inadequate incomes with which to do so.

An Australian Idyll - Part Two

You may not necessarily consider an idyll to involve project management.  Yet your life itself can be managed as a project.  After all, it has had a beginning, a middle and an end.

You may have some knowledge of where and when your life began but probably very little awareness of that beginning in terms of memories to recall.

You are now at the stage of taking over the management of that project from whoever has been managing it up to this time.  It is up to you to make an assessment of how the project needs to be adjusted.  It is also up to you to reassess what the project now aims to achieve.

What do you already know about project management?

Do you already consider your life to be a project?

Do you consider happiness to be a long-term goal or part of your daily practice, or both?

What have been your prior experiences of project teams, in any context?

What have been your experiences of individual and collective projects?

What would be your ideal idyll and where would it take place, both physically and digitally?

What would be the social and cultural features of your ideal idyll?

What would be the technological and design features?

What would be the financial features?

What would be the environmental features?

What would be the permanent features?

What would be the temporary features?

Who and what would be permanently excluded?

Who and what would be permanently included?

Who and what will be temporarily included, and for how long?

How would you prefer to explain your reasoning in relation your answers?

You may associate an idyll with a journey more than a destination.

What would be truly idyllic for you at this stage of your life, and why?

Do you usually consider the idyllic in terms of the temporary or the permanent?

Are you more interested in seeking an idyllic holiday than an idyllic life?

Perhaps you associate the idyllic with the hedonistic.  Perhaps you think of an idyll as an escape from duties and responsibilities rather than a justified response to problems.

What do you know about the poetic origins of idylls?

What is your acquaintance with the etymology of idyll?

An Australian Idyll - Part One

You may associate idylls with the rustic, the rural, the pastoral, the peaceful, the innocent and the gently unsophisticated.

You may mainly associate idylls with everyday life in non-urban areas in pre-industrial times, or not as the case may be.

Perhaps the idea of an idyll is mainly a figment of the imagination with no actual basis in reality, whether in the past or present.

What, then, is an Australian idyll?

How is it possible to experience the idyllic in Australia, or anywhere else, with environmental disasters, experiences of violence and other unpleasantness?

You may associate the idyllic with a village-like Utopia and with Arcadia and with the natural aspects of vernacular architecture.

You may associate the idyllic with humble lives, and with humble origins.

You may associate the idyllic with dwellings merging into nature, including reasonably comfortable rural shacks, simple huts, chalets and log cabins as well as, or instead of, picturesque cottages.

You may associate the idyllic with rustic furniture, possibly made from logs and recycled materials, including pallets and second-hand items. 

The idyllic may be associated with the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and with the 19th century Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and elsewhere.

It may be associated with the practical use of plaster, and even a few decorative uses of it.

It may be associated with practical uses of terracotta, and even a few decorative uses of it.

It is often associated with wood, and stone, and cobblestones. 

An Australian idyll does, however, require effective, long-lasting damp proofing and fire proofing.

You may be aware that death is everywhere, even amidst youth and vitality and budding blossoms.

An idyll is a diversion from thoughts of death, destruction and competitiveness.  It is the opposite of the stark newness and mass production of modernism.  It is also the opposite of the contrived, ironic kitsch of postmodernism.

You may not usually associate an idyll with progress.

You may associate it with crafts.

The Cottage and Character - Part Four

What do you already know about the cottage garden here?

The Cottage Garden - Part One

The Cottage Garden - Part Two

Do you usually associate outdoor spaces with character even more than indoor spaces?

The Cottage and Character - Part Three

Do you ever associate cottages with slums?

Have you ever lived in a slum?

Do you think slums have character?

Have you ever visited a slum merely out of curiosity?

Do you ever visit slums to make or raise money from images of poverty?

Do you ever think of character cottages as renovated former hovels?

Do you ever think of character in relation to cottage hospitals?

Have you been sitting in the sitting room here, reflecting on the cultural practices and other characteristics associated with cottages?

The Cottage and Character - Part Two

You may have discovered that a character cottage was once a tied cottage.  It is now more likely to be a holiday cottage or a retirement cottage.

A row of picturesque cottages may have, for centuries, been almshouses.

You may prefer to live in a model village rather than a company town, especially after the company has gone bankrupt and there is widespread unemployment there.

In the 19th centuries, mill towns were developed in Europe and North America.  The residents may or may not have been provided with attractive accommodation.  Most did not work in particularly attractive conditions though it may have been the only option, other than rural starvation.

How do you think about dwellings and other buildings in relation to scenic areas of the world?

What do you know about scenery and the scenic?

Have you often thought of character cottages and their flower-filled gardens as though they are theatrical scenery?

Have you ever booked a holiday cottage, after only looking at a few picturesque images of it, to find that the location is less pleasant than expected upon arrival?

Even a scenic route may be busy, especially on weekends and holidays.  Your idyllic surroundings are likely to be quite unpleasant when noisy, smelly traffic zooms past, not to mention the smell from a nearby pig farm.

The Cottage and Character - Part One

Do you usually associate cottages with quaintness and possibly with holidays?

You may think a character cottage is mainly associated with quaintness though many purported cottages are not particularly quaint at all. 

Have you usually considered a character cottage to be a place of rest and refuge as a weekend retreat or bolthole?

Have you ever considered a character cottage to be a cultural property?

You may associate character cottages with character environments and nearby nature reserves.

Your character is likely to be tested considerably over the next few months, here and elsewhere.

There is much to learn about the cottage and quaintness in relation to its character and your character.

The Cottage and the Mat of Purported Matter

Where do you place matter in relation to your imagination?

Do you ever use place mats or doormats or a mouse mat or a yoga mat or a sticky mat or a sleeping mat or a prayer mat or a tatami mat or a gymnastics mat or a Marston mat or vehicle mat or a baníg or 'ie tōga or sawali or cadjan mat or a passe-partout or any other type of mat?

Do you know much about algal mats and algal blooms?

Do you know many different meanings and purposes of the words mat, matt and matte in various languages?

Have you ever treated anyone as a doormat?

Have you ever used the word mat inappropriately in Russian?

Have you ever had matted hair or braided hair?

Are you aware of the history of matted hair, including in Poland?

Have you ever had dreadlocks?

Does the name Maat mean anything do you?

Does the name Egbere mean anything to you?

Have you ever had a mat of wealth, a flying carpet or a flight of fancy?

How do you prevent yourself from sweeping important matters under a carpet?

Do you usually associate the word "mat" with carpets and/or rugs?

Do you know much about oriental rugs and/or kilim rugs?

Does Matt 6:24 mean anything to you?

How do you usually think about mats in relation to mass, volume, cost and usefulness?

If you are a patron of the production of any sort of mat, why are you such a patron?

The Cottage and the Key

Have you found the key to the Frugality Cottage?

Are you wondering what sort of key it might be and the opportunities it may unlock to you?

Have you found the associated mat?

The Cottage and Simplicity

What is a simple life?

What is a simple dwelling?

Do buildings of a simple character help you to find inner peace?

Do you associate simplicity with contemplation?

The Cottage and Freedom

Do you ever associate freedom with gardening?

Do you ever associate freedom with cookery?

The Cottage and Peace

If you work from home, does that intrude upon your peace and privacy at all or does it add to your peace and privacy?

Perhaps you can only find peace by leaving home and/or seeking a new home.

The Cottage and Time

When you think of cottages, how do you reflect upon time?

Do you usually associate cottages with time passing quickly or time passing slowly?

Do you usually associate the availability of time with an old-fashioned way of life?

Have you been participating in the slow movement at all over the past few years or have you been experiencing a fast-paced, ambitious but possibly unthinking way of life?

You have been offered the chance to learn about the cottage and creativity:


The Cottage and Creativity - Part One

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Two

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Three

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Four

 

You may associate the appreciation of time especially with the slow food movement.

You have been offered the chance to learn about the cottage and cookery:


The Cottage and Cookery - Part One

The Cottage and Cookery - Part Two

The Cottage and Cookery - Part Three

The Cottage and Cookery - Part Four


You have also been introduced to the cottage garden and to the cottage itself:


The Cottage Garden - Part One

The Cottage Garden - Part Two


The Cottage Itself - Part One

The Cottage Itself - Part Two
 

Will you take the time to acquaint yourself properly?

You may have been spending some time in the virtual kitchens here, learning about economic deliciousness.

Do you enjoy slow gardening, in a carefully observant way?

Do you allow nature to do its work properly?

Do you prefer to live slowly and simply?

What, to you, is the good life, and do you have the time to enjoy it?

If you do not have the time to enjoy the life you would prefer to enjoy, why not?

Making time to reflect upon such questions in important at any time but even more so when rapid changes are happening.

What do you know about the industries traditionally associated with cottages, and with homes more generally?

 

The Cottage and Industries - Part One

The Cottage and Industries - Part Two

The Cottage and Industries - Part Three

The Cottage and Industries - Part Four

The Cottage and Investments - Part Four

What have you been learning in the library here over recent months?

Now that the main question of the day has been presented, how would you prefer to answer it?

The Cottage and Investments - Part Three

Welcome back to Frugality Cottage if you are here mainly to follow this series about the cottage and investments.

Have you ever been the owner or part owner of a private investment fund over which you have had, and possibly still have, a controlling interest?

Do you have much experience as an angel investor?

The Cottage and Investments - Part Two

Do you usually associate cottages with villages?

Do you usually associate villages with farm workers?

Do you usually associate cottages and/or villages with urban development and/or urban decay?

Cottages and villages are only ever abandoned by their former occupants as a consequence of catastrophes.

Have you recently divested from any fossil fuel associated industries?

Have you ever invested in cruise lines, hotels, airlines, restaurants, holiday cottages, gift shops, tour companies and/or hire car providers?

Travel agents have long been known to persuade people to book travel experiences for which they are unsuited, primarily due to the fact that such agents gained commissions for doing so.

Financial institutions have also long been known to use unscrupulous tactics to encourage people to part with money, too.

Have you ever toured any other famous cottage?

Do you think sensitively about the history of a ruined cottage?

The Cottage and Investments - Part One

What do you already know about well-informed investing?

The Cottage and Quaintness

Are you aware of the etymology of the word quaint?

Do you imagine this cottage to be in the orné style or storybook style or otherwise picturesque?

Do you associate the cottage garden with an ornamental farm?

Are you well acquainted with quaintness?

Do you know much about the quaintness industry?

Do you associate quaintness with nostalgia or even eccentric, quirky behaviour?

Are you amused by the quaint?

Do you associate quaintness with peculiar traditions?

Do you think quaintness is usually rather whimsical?

Do you associate quaintness with vernacular architecture?

Do you usually put the words "cottage" and "quaintness" together?

Perhaps you currently live in a quaintly rustic hut or a stylishly converted barn.

Perhaps you associate quaintness with kitsch or confuse the two.

Do you associate quaint cottages with Merry England and/or historicism?

Do you know anything about Merry Australia?

Do you usually associate quaintness with anachronisms?

The Cottage and Cookery - Part Four

If you are an Australian, have you been bottling peaches and drying grapes over recent months?

Food is obviously physical, as is drink.

Have you been experiencing this month as dangerous?

Are you utterly incompetent in the culinary arts?

Perhaps you have an inadequate familiarity with onions.

Or you have spent too little time learning the difference between sweating vegetables, sautéing them, stir frying and braising.

Do you have expensive tastes in food?

Do you know how to eat cheaply and well?

The Cottage and Cookery - Part Three

When a person is perfectly capable of doing a job satisfactorily without assistance, and possibly even without supervision, that is a highly efficient situation, as long as the person is satisfied with the job.

The preferences of extroverts are likely to give introverts indigestion.

The preferences of introverts are likely to give extroverts cabin fever.

Do you prefer easy to prepare meals of readily available, seasonal ingredients or do you prefer to search for gourmet extravagances or mass produced convenience foods?

Do you have a tendency to overeat?

Do you often have less than enough to eat?

Have you ever attempted to feed too many people with not enough food?

Is cookery something you intrinsically enjoy or is it something you only do for money or out of reluctant necessity.

What do you know about cooking in medieval Europe?

How were meal times around the world transformed as a consequence of the Columbia exchange?

Which foods are native to the area in which you currently live?

Do you think much about religious meanings associated with meals?

Why do people give meanings to food beyond its nutritional aspects?

How do you find out whether someone has a food allergy or food intolerance?

What do you know about food preservation?

What do you know about food preparation?

What do you know about fermentation?

Do you know much about food drying?

Do you store a wide variety of dried foods?

Do you prefer you meals to be as natural as possible?

Do you prefer whole foods as much as possible?

Do you do your own pickling?

Do you make various preserves?

Do you have an efficient approach to making and using frozen foods?

Are you familiar with various types of food storage?

Do you know enough about food safety?

There is much to learn from food history.

Have you ever made stone soup?

How can you prove you are simultaneously doing enough to meet your own needs and the needs of other people?

Do you usually associate cookery with meeting needs?

The Cottage and Cookery - Part Two

Do you usually associate the word economics with food or cooking or cleaning or gardening or money?

Do you consider all economics, in practice, to be home economics?

Have you recently made a hot pot, a pease pudding, an eintopf, a casserole, a nabemono, a cawl, a pot-au-feu, a curry, a ragout, or a perpetual stew?

Do you spend much time sprouting?

Do you parch grains, dry roast seeds and nuts, make nut roasts, and substitute local ingredients for imported ones whenever possible.

The Cottage and Cookery - Part One

What are the types of foods and drinks you usually associate with cottages?

Have you ever eaten porridge or a potage or a pottage or a baked potato in a cottage?

Do you enjoy frumenty?

Do you enjoy lentil soup?

Do you enjoy cottage pie?

Have you made a mess of pottage recently?

Are you fond of bubble and squeak?

How many types of porridge have you tried?

What is your repertoire of soups and stews?

Do you make dumplings?

Do you bake bread?

The Cottage and Controversy

Cottages are usually associated with tradition rather than fashion.  They also tend to be associated with crafts rather than arts.

There is much controversy whenever cottages are excessively gentrified, and especially when they become holiday homes. 

How do you usually compare digital developers with real estate developers?

The Cottage and Politics

Living in an intelligently frugal way is rarely supported adequately by the state. 

It is certainly not properly encouraged by most politicians.

The Cottage and Beliefs

How do your beliefs shape your expectations of people and places?

The Cottage and Competence

How competent are you at living an intelligent, frugal existence?

How competently do you define such an existence?

How competently have you developed such an existence?

If you are currently combining a virtual retreat with a physical retreat, how competently have you prepared for the latter?

The Cottage and Kindness - Part Four

Why is acting with well-informed kindness apparently so difficult for so many people?

Is there anything difficult about it to you?

How deeply do you consider kindness in various situations?

The Cottage and Kindness - Part Three

Reasonable helpfulness is never intrusive.

It involves offering kindness without expecting anything in return.

It is practiced without ulterior motives.

The Cottage and Kindness - Part Two

How do you ensure your kindness does not encourage laziness?

The Cottage and Kindness - Part One

What do you know about well-informed kindness, and how do you know it?

How kindly and thoughtfully have you been provided with assistance here?

What have been your experiences of providing well-informed, kind assistance?

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Four

Is your life something of a muddle at present?

Do you consider the world to be in a muddle at present or is it really becoming more in tune with once upon a time?

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Three

If you have been exploring the aesthetics of the everyday, do you usually associate aesthetics with leisure or with work, or both?

Do you usually associate commerce with aesthetics?

Do you usually associate industry with aesthetics?

The Cottage and Creativity - Part Two

How do you compare cottage living with various expressions of country living?

What do you know about creativity and urban cottages?

How do the aesthetics of everyday living express themselves through your creativity?

How do the practicalities for everyday living express themselves through your creativity?

The Cottage and Creativity - Part One

You may associate cottages with upcycling and/or craftivism in the 21st century.

Which aspects of your creativity are associated with transforming otherwise unwanted items into expressions of the applied arts and fine arts?

How do you reflect upon your everyday life?

The Cottage and Industries - Part Four

Have you ever inhabited a tied cottage?

Have you ever rented a holiday cottage?

What do you know about tourism?

What do you know about serfdom?

You may think of cottages mainly in relation to villages and/or smallholdings.

You may associate cottages with outhouses, barns, wells and country lanes.

You may associate cottages with elderly people or work-at-home parents.

How do you usually think about cottages in relation to art?

How do you usually think about cottages in relation to nature?

The Cottage and Industries - Part Three

You may associate cottages with crafts, particularly handicrafts and rural crafts.  You may even associate cottages with artisans and/or folk art.  You may also associate cottages with poverty and possibly even squalor, or the picturesque.

You may associate cottages with the putting-out system of proto-industrialisation.  You may associate cottages with farm labourers and/or home businesses.

The Cottage and Industries - Part Two

You may have been studying investment possibilities in the little library here.

The Cottage and Industries - Part One

Although night soil may not be one of the products most associated with relatively comfortable cottages in the 21st century, you may recently have been thinking about toilet paper and its associated industries.

You are likely to consider most cottages (and toilet paper) to be tangible property. 

What is your acquaintance with intangible property? 

Do you ever associate cottages with telecommuting and/or virtual volunteering?

Do you ever associate cottages with dubious work-at-home schemes?

The Cottage Itself - Part Two

You have already been introduced to the cottage itself.

What do you now know about it or at least think you know about it?

The Cottage Itself - Part One

When and where did you first become aware of this virtual cottage and its garden?

The Cottage Garden - Part Two

In part one about the virtual garden of Frugality Cottage, an important question was presented.

Here are a few more questions of importance:

Are you familiar with no-dig gardening?

Are you familiar with seed saving?

Do you know how to make good compost?

Do you know how to nurture good soil?

The Cottage Garden - Part One

Do you know much about cottage gardens and kitchen gardens, in any particular part of the world?