[mangoindigo]

International Sherlock Holmes Day

today, May 22

Armchair Detectives Worldwide Celebrate Sherlock Holmes Day

Fans mark Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday with reenactments at Reichenbach Falls and visits to 221B Baker Street, celebrating the enduring

Take a moment to celebrate how you wish. I'm reading a story by @totallysilvergirl & @7-percent right now, because fanfiction. However I will likely watch one of the older movies later.

[7-percent]

I am honoured by your choice of reading material on this special day. Thank you!

[calaisreno]

Word References for Historical Fiction

It's difficult to capture the milieu of an era you don't inhabit. Even capturing everything about the year 2025 - the memes, the slang, the influencers - is difficult because there isn't any single correct way to live in the current year or to feel about what's happening.

Fortunately, the internet is full of information that might never make it into the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or even Wikipedia.

When I write a story set in the past, I want to make my characters think and speak like a person of that era. I look up pictures of what people wore and how they styled their hair, and read what daily routines were like, what they might have talked about. I try to get the technology right by looking up the history of light switches and curling irons and indoor sanitation. I check to see what names were most popular for a man born in 1856 or a woman born in 1920. How many times a day was mail delivered in London in 1881? (Six.) How would people of different classes address one another in 1912? (complicated.) At what age did boys start wearing long trousers in the 1880s? (Thirteen.)

I'm not calling this research work. It's what I enjoy most about writing another period. And I love being able to drop historical trivia into conversations. (You might want to avoid being seated at the same table with me at dinner. I will talk about Victorian mourning customs.)

And it's difficult to even know what to ask yourself. There are so many things we take for granted, like the 5-day work week, compulsory education, standardized time. The best advice I can give is to read books written about a period, or (even better) read books written during that period.

One of the hardest things to get right in an historical story is how people talked. What would you call a secretary in 1920? Did that word even exist? Did it mean something different?

What about idioms? Did people say double down in 1895? Did English people say it, or only Americans? There are significant differences, even today, between the way an American uses the language and how other English speakers use the same words, even common ones. (E.g. "gotten" is American, not British.)

A dictionary/thesaurus has some information that can answer questions like these, but I'd like to share a couple resources you might not have used.

Note: there are many, many resources, and I do not claim to know about them all. These are just what I use often and find reliable.

Google Ngram Viewer scans thousands of books by publication date to give you a word's popularity across time. You can request information for a range of years, and what corpus you'd like to use (e.g. British or American English). From this you'll learn when a word came into use, when it was most popular, and when the usage fell off. If you're trying to compare synonyms, separate the words by comments in the search box.

For idioms, which are not always dated in a dictionary reference, I often just google it: double down idiom origin. From this search, I learn that it's primarily an American idiom, first noted in 1949, and its original context was the game blackjack. (It's also good to check what the sources are. AI makes too many mistakes; do your own checking.)

My favorite online word reference is Online Etymology Dictionary. It didn't give me any help on double down, but I learned that double trouble dates from 1520, double dip is first attested in 1936, and double-jointed was in use by 1828.

Wiktionary also gives usage information, and contains quite a lot of non-English words.

As for names, my favourite source is Behind the Name. It has sites for first names and surnames that will tell you a name's origin, other people who have that name, variations of it across regions. You can look up names by gender and nationality. There's even a Name Generator, and the beginnings of a Place Names reference.

In addition, it's useful to know what names were popular in what year, so you don't give a character a name that's inappropriate in a given time period. In Behind the Name, click on any name to get popularity graphs by country. Then you won't give an 1895 character a name that wasn't popular until 1985, e.g. Tiffany. Other sites list popular names by era.

I do not deny being a word nerd (1951, U.S. student slang, probably an alteration of 1940s slang nert "stupid or crazy person," itself an alteration of nut).

You may not care of characters in an historical romance are using words that weren't yet in use. I do care. It bugs me when I read a story set in a past era where the characters all talk like American adolescents in 2026.

Unless the characters are all time travellers, of course. Even so, learning the idioms of the era you're travelling to ought to be part of a time traveller's education. That's what authors are, you know. We travel through time.

If you find this helpful, please reblog! 💕 And if you have other resources, please share!

Tagging a few who write: @mydogwatson @totallysilvergirl @raina-at @lisbeth-kk @221beloved @meetinginsamarra @copperplatebeech @naefelldaurk @7-percent @thegildedbee @helloliriels @stellacartography @chriscalledmesweetie

[7-percent]

English Kitchen Homemade Bread

My version of Watson has made bread at home for years- wholemeal brown, granary, seeded, pumpkin seed and oat.

Today he tried sour dough for the first time. It's a bit more effort and he's not entirely sure it's worth it, especially the 25 minutes of kneading and two sessions of proving.

I'm the taster in this kitchen and I can tell you (as I did him), IT'S WORTH IT!

Unlike a lot of store-bought sour dough, this one is NOT full of air and too chewy. Delicious!

[7-percent]

The View from My Window

Because of the incessant rain we are experiencing in southern England, I brought a pit of iris reticulata into my kitchen to perch on the window sill and remind me that spring will get here...eventually.

[7-percent]

Chinese New Year 17 Feb 2026

To enjoy some one chapter moments from seven different fandom authors, take a look at

That's The Way The Cookie Crumbles

by @jbaillier, @anyawen, @sail-on-silver-girl, @elldotsee, @totallysilvergirl, @bluebellofbakerstreet and me.

[7-percent]

Happy Valentine's Day

To all fan fic writers everywhere, enjoy your relationships with your words.

[centre-cannot-hold]

Pompeii, c. 79 AD

[7-percent]

The Roman artist knew his birds - this is a house sparrow.

[flowertarsroom]

In honor of the Winter Olympic season, time to bring out my favorite Johnlock fanfic!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185555/chapters/2418999

[7-percent]

If you like Sherlock and John enjoying winter sports, take a look at our story Off Piste in @jbaillier's wonderful You Go To My Head series.

[7-percent]

The View INSIDE my Window

There I was, minding my own online business at the desktop PC, when a hibernating Peacock butterfly decided to wake up and seek that rare late January sunlight - which had caused me to lower the blind.

This butterfly (Aglais io) is one of the few that hibernates over winter, usually in dark spaces like inside sheds and holes in trees. They fold their wings up and sleep; their dull wings allow them to blend in and rest undisturbed. Peacock butterflies then wake from hibernation during the spring, sometimes as early as March when they will fly and mate.

I left the blind down so it wouldn't waste energy trying to get out through the glass - tonight's forecasted temperatures would have killed it. And when clouds obscured the sun, he settled back down in a dark place under my desk and filing cabinet.

Come back awake in March, peacock!

[7-percent]

English Cottage Garden January

We've had a LOT of rain, while the USA has been dealing with snow. But the first day of sunshine between the deluges and our crocus opened. They've self-seeded over the years into our lawn.

What makes these particularly important is that they provide nectar and pollen for the first bumblebees to emerge. The bees will wake up when the sun warms their nests, forage a bit, and then if it gets cold, they go back and snuggle in.

Wildlife gardening for pollinators is important. Even if all you have is a pot on a windowsill, think about early pollinators.

[totallysilvergirl]

Coming soon: Concerto Grosso, a @fandomtrumpshate Johnlock AU for Margalo_Schiff

Art by @helloliriels for FTH 2025: zip over to the original and shower it with the kudos and love it deserves.

SUMMARY: Sparks fly when John Watson, conductor of the last surviving Hollywood studio orchestra, and Sherlock Holmes, visiting violin superstar, negotiate clashing approaches, styles, and interpretations. Their first rehearsal is a train wreck and antipathy at first sight. They have 5 days to record Sherlock's part of a film score to carry a $100M film, justify the Mammoth Studio Orchestra’s existence to the bean-counters, and confirm his mid-career transformation from a Romantic to a baroque violinist.

In this fic John has always been a musician, never a surgeon or a soldier; Sherlock has always been a violinist, never a detective or an addict a controlled user or a polymath. His extraordinary mind was directed early into one narrow but deep channel; now, it wants a change of course.

Warning: There's nothing real or even realistic about how this story portrays the workings of film music. I wanted to see who John and Sherlock would be, with completely different lives. Predispositions and temperament must change in response to nurture, experience and influence; what would disappear and what would remain?

Posting schedule: The fic is finished and will start posting this weekend, but updates won't be metronomic. For notifications, let me know in the comments to tag you on tumblr posts, or subscribe to me or to this story on AO3.

Please do reblog—that is such a help!

@lisbeth-kk @calaisreno @elwinglyre @chriscalledmesweetie @7-percent @ghostofnuggetspast @solarmama-plantsareneat @notjustamumj @ninasnakie @onesmallfamily @ohlooktheresabee @charlie-novakk @raina-at @ iwlyanmw @keirgreeneyes @dragonnan @sgam76 @copperplatebeech @meetinginsamarra @hesagoodone @thegildedbee @holmesianlove @mydogwatson @221beloved @saki101 @kettykika78 @Friday411 @peanitbear @stellacartography @redmondcollege @justanobsessedpan @chinike @missdeliadili @starrla89 @lhrinchelsea @discordantwords @221beloved @stellacartography @otterpuff11 @apazwtsn @amyreadsandstresses @lokijiro @thinkanddoodle-batch @bridgeoverstrawberryfields @imnova @apazwtsn @readingwithgwen @prettyamazingjohnlockaus @naefelldaurk @lololollywrites @johnlocked-swiftie

[7-percent]

Cannot wait.... @totallysilvergirl and violin... what a wonderful combination.

[7-percent]

English Cottage Garden January

The snow drops have popped and the flowering winter plants are starting to strut their stuff.

And don't forget the Lenten Rose- AKA Hellebore:

I wish tumblr had a "smell-vision" app, to let you enjoy the scent of

winter sweet:

Christmas box:

viburnum:

[7-percent]

Marmalade Time Part Three

Today it was the turn of the Seville and Apricot marmalade. That's it for now: thirty jars into the pantry to eat and give away as gifts over the coming year.

[7-percent]

Marmalade Time Part Two

Today's version is "dark" marmalade, made with dark brown sugar and a tablespoon of treacle. it comes out almost BLACK and tastes divine- caramelised sugar and orange together is a flavour combination from heaven.

Today we also prepared the dried apricot and orange marmalade - the apricots and peel need to soak overnight or preferably 36 hours before cooking.

[7-percent]

This amazing fanvid from BakerEdits done in 2012 has lyrics that capture johnlock in all its angsty and yet compelling character.

Two Men in Love, by the Irrepressibles

If I asked you now Will you be my prince? Will you lay down your armor And be with me forever?

When you open me All the power in me moves How you want to see All the depths of me real When you open me All the power in me moves

I feel real I love you Love you I love you Love you

When I look into your eyes There's a danger inside When I see the edge I can never hide

See me running, running, running, running, running Running, running, running, running, running Running, running, running, running, running To you, from you, to you

There's a strange love inside It's getting louder and louder and louder and louder and louder There's a danger I can't hide Who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am

I'm in love, I'm in love

Ooh, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love I'm in love, I'm in love Love, love, love

Gonna build you up, gonna help you believe, sonny Gonna build you up, gonna help you believe, sonny

There's a strange love inside It's getting louder and louder and louder and louder and louder There's a danger I can't hide Oh, it's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am

I'm in love, I'm in love I'm in love (two men in love)

[7-percent]

It's Marmalade Time!

Mid-January means the Seville oranges arrive in the UK and cooks get started. Our first batch (7 lbs worth) is just plain marmalade.

Tomorrow we will make "dark" marmalade, using dark brown sugar and a tad of treacle to give it a richer, caramelised flavour. And we will cut and prepare the oranges and dried apricots leaving them to soak overnight, so our third variety is ready to make on Monday.

It means we should have about twenty jars of marmalade to see us through 2026. Last year, we made more- and still have two jars each of the three varieties in our cold store. Will probably use the regular version in a marmalade drizzle cake and the dark one in a banana loaf.

Interestingly, marmalade never seems to "go off"- but then we are such monsters for it that we seldom ever test its longevity for more than a year. We will get through about a jar and a half every month. And have some left over for our marmalade cakes and marmalade sauce for roast duck.

[7-percent]

Weaving in the Ends by Calais Reno

Demonstrating yet again the most marvellous writing skill, @calaisreno writes a beautifully bitter sweet reunion. Just what I needed tonight.