The name Awl Porpoise Flower comes from a merger of two in-house jokes:
1. When my youngest child was a preschooler, she would quite indignantly accuse people of doing something deliberately by saying, “You did that on porpoise,” rather than “purpose,” and it became something of a family saying.
2. My hobby is bread baking, and I often have more than one type of flour in the cupboard. While labeling the various storage containers one day, I decided to write “all-purpose flour” as “awl porpoise flower,” wondering who would notice and when. My husband noticed, and laughed hysterically, so we kept the label on the container to this day.
When trying to decide on a name for this website — looking for something that indicated the degree of word nerdery in my life — the phrase seemed like a natural fit. Someday, I’ll have an illustration to match …