Mine is BBNLACE, BA's is DOLACE, Kay's is MKNLACE (mine before I learned that it was her email address and people assumed my car was hers!) Any time you go to the NCRL meeting, there are always a lot of tags in the parking lot, but I don't remember most of them.
C -----Original Message----- From: Tamara P Duvall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Nov 27, 2005 10:46 PM To: chat Arachne <lace-chat@arachne.com> Subject: Lacy car licence plates On Nov 27, 2005, at 16:31, Janice Blair wrote: > I know that Tamara has T N LACE on her car plate but I was wondering > if anyone can think of a good lacemaking personalized plate. I used > to have ALIEN when I first came to the U.S. because I had to carry an > Alien card around with me. I am now a citizen so that does not apply > but the only thing I can think of is LACE MKR and that has been taken > in Illinois. Do you have a personalized lacemaking plate in your > state or can you bright spiders think of anything related to Bobbin > Lace or Tatting that would make a good plate? Send them to the chat > list as it has been quiet in recent weeks, maybe we can come up with a > list of them for future reference. I believe if it includes a number > the plate is cheaper. First off... Congratulaions on your citizenship - it's a heady feeling, when you exchange that Visa card/drivers licence look-alike for a real passport, no? <g> I actually wanted T&LACE for my car (once I learnt to drive, that is <g>) but, can you believe it? It was already "taken" in VA (I think by Tamara Webb, near DC)... You probably should come to Ithaca one year - the parking lot of the hotel is *full* of cars with personalized licence plates related to lacemaking and all are imaginative - you could maybe find one from another state that you could borrow for yours. I'm Bcc-ing this to two Virginians - both of whom have lace-related plates and both of whom have loads of imagination, so might create more plate suggestions. Also to some other US-Arachneans who are not on lace-chat and of whose car plates I have no knowledge, but who tend to have bright ideas. And, to my DS, who's a long-suffering lace-orphan, with an unseemly liking for puns and other word-games... :) As far as I know, in VA, it makes no difference whether it's all letters/symbols or all numbers - the price for a personalized set of plates is the same. But, if a number is likely to lower the price in Illinois... How about: LACE4ME TAT4FUN No numbers: B-L-ACE (alternatively: BL ACE, but I like the first better) BLDZINE JANSBL LACEBUG (best on the smallest Volksvagen, to keep 'em guessin' <g>) I'd also talk to teenagers; what with their "cell texting", they're real whizzes at scrunching words down to the absolute minimum :) I don't know what the limit is in Illinois, but in VA it's (I think) 8 characters (letters, symbols, numbers, spaces) for most plates, but 7 for some others, so I stuck with 7 as the limit, to be on the safe side. For non-US Arachneans who, doubtless, are reading this and are *appalled* at our frivolity... :) Unlike in many other countries, personalized licence plates here are dirt cheap. The prices vary, from state to state, but no state charges "enough to feed an African village for a year" as one of my UK correspondents wrote once, fulminating... In VA, they're probably cheaper than anywhere else - $50 on top of the usual plate fee, but only the first time around. Afterwards, you pay - once a year (a small discount if you pay for 2 yrs at a time <g>) - only for the stickers, like everyone else. So, we play around with the plates' messages a lot... My first set was: NU2THIS - a fair warning, though only people who'd seen me try to parallel park fully understood it :) My second set was MBVLENT - I learnt to drive late and against my better judgement. The third set I wanted I never got; my DS still shared the car with me at the time, and he objected to driving one which said FMK9 (a femme canine = bitch). So I came up with TNLACE, and was asked: "why Tennessee lace, if you're in Virginia?" (TN is short for Tennessee, like VA is short for Virginia). The next - and last - set was T N LACE. My DH is only on his second set of personalized plates; he resisted the craze for quite a while :) The current one, which he acquired at retirement, says: 2DLDDUV. Nobody can interpret it correctly, which ticks him off, but he's too lazy to think up another one :) He *says* that, when he was young, "toodleedee" meant "goodbye". So the whole says "goodbye, Duv (all)". I'm too young and too foreign to either confirm or disprove his claim :) My favourite licence plates... QT. Seen in Norfolk, VA, and the girl driving the car was really good looking :) PB4UGO. Spotted in Lexington. The man said they had 4 kids, all under 12, and that that was what his wife said every time they were planning to go somewhere as a family. TH8ER. Another local plate, on a car belonging to the Washington and Lee U prof who teaches "dramatic arts". There's one - also belonging to a W&L prof (but in the physics dept) - which compresseses "quantum physics" down to the prescribed limit. I can read it, but can't remember how it goes. GO4AU. Reported as seen in Colorado. A friend of mine who loves "message plates" as much as I do, followed the guy and asked. He was training for the Olympics and, obviously, had been taught enough chemistry to know the symbol for gold... :) There's a series of mysteries - can't remember who wrote it - where each chapter ends with a licence plate "message", and the author welcomes contributions from all over US. Most, naturally, are truly "vanity" (that's what the personalized plates are called in VA); you get your "SARAH D" and "MOM2KATE", with a matching DAD2KATE Suv in the same driveway... :) But there are some that are truly clever. Today's Washington Post "Outlook" section had an article on texting, giving us 8 "puzzles" to decode (nsrs on a separate page <g>). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/25/ AR2005112501541.html I had little trouble understanding any of them though wasn't able to identify *both* the source and the author of the quote in more than half (yeah, well, at the U I took my shortcuts too, and read most of the Brit Lit in Polish. Or skipped reading it altogether, and stuck to summaries <g>) And I can't imagine myself *ever* sending a cell-text; far too much trouble to try and bastardise English on purpose, when typos pop in uninvited... BUT... I am - eagerly - looking forward to the next generation of personalized car licence plates in US, produced by kids who text :) -- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
