Practice vs Practise

It's been pointed out by someone near and dear to me that I spelt a word wrong in yesterday's blog. (I'm looking at "spelt" and wondering about that but I don't have a dictionary handy...) And when I refused to fix the error, it was suggested that I might appear to some readers to be "academically challenged." (The actual word of choice was stu___d, but I discourage the use of that word in our house....) But here's the thing- I DID spell the verb "practice" with an S for about 25 years, blissfully ignorant of the fact that in America there is no spelling differentiation between the verb and the noun. Now I do it on purpose.

One of my mother's (many, many) virtues is that she was born in England. I was too, but I'd moved to America by the time I'd hit my vocally-formative years. But Mum grew up there and to this day retains her lovely British accent. So I grew up in a transplanted English household and spelt all kinds of words as they do across the lake. For example, it wasn't until an Art History paper was returned to me my freshman year at College of the Holy Cross with angry red marks through all my "colours" that I learned there is no "U" in that word... Those erudite Jesuits atop Mount St James apparently had no issue with practise, because it wasn't until much later I learned of that spelling foible.

So I decided that I'd continue to spell the verb with an "S" (the British use a "C" for the noun form of the word...) as a sweet reminder of my heritage. It's part of who I am.

And now that I've cleared that up, I'm going to go practise the German Twisted cast-on.

Yours in yarn, from both sides of the lake,

Claire