Frankenstein or "when you find yourself in a shirt with one sleeve"

Well. The first sleeve of my shirt has been attached to the body. I think the technical term is "put in." The result is so pathetic that only a picture can really convey it. How can words paint such a travesty as a badly fitting sleeve? The cap seam falling down my arm, the extra fabric from the back pooling sadly behind my shoulder.

Look at all those wrinkles!

The question is, how do I fix it? I'm consistently lazy and able to ignore most cries for more work, but I'm not delusional enough to believe I will actually ever wear this sleeve. On the other hand, if I turn my back on this project how will I ever grow? Sewing is not intuitive for me. I'm not able to visualize how to fix this:

Okay, so I rip out the sleeve seam. Do I then have to redraft the back? Set the sleeve in further from the armhole? The front fits fine (well, the neck is a little too loose, bit that's because the pattern allows for some drape. I'll be taking it in later), so I don't want to change the sleeve placement on that side. Really, the problem seems to be that my shoulders aren't as wide as the pattern assumes. This makes sense. I'm petite, and store bought clothes often don't fit around the shoulders. Would back darts work? I'm already going to take in the waist at the back, should I go ahead and make the whole back smaller? Maybe I should experiment by "fixing" one of my ill-fitting store bought shirts first?


Agh! So many questions! Why can't sewing be as easy as cooking?

Blue cheese burrito. Delicious, quick, and completely intuitive.

What's That?

A Hat?* 

Finally a Finished Object! (an FO, in craft speak). This hat only took two days to knit up, and  I probably could have done it in one if I were super crazy (I'm not, I've always been just plain batty). I finished it Wednesday and have been wearing it everyday since then. This basically means "around the house" – I don't get out much. But I did get to stroll down to the park in it, and I wore it over to a friend's house. All her siblings (from the five year old up, Surprisingly enough, to the fourteen-year old boy) thought it was a "cool hat" and were duly allowed to try it on (okay, well, not the fourteen year old).

Stat Time:

Pattern: 1930s Beret

Yarn: Wool of Andes Bulky in Pewter - I used One-and-a-bit-of-a-second skein 

Mods: Added an owl from Kate Davis' awesome sweater, since that's what the yarn was originally meant for. I also cast on 63 stitches and worked from the brim up, increasing to 108 about nine rows before starting the decreases. In the picture the hat is pinned with a brooch, but I have since added bobby pins to dramatize the fold. If When I knit this again I will go up another size in needles for the hat so it will be more "floppy," as right now the yarn tends to perk up on its own. I also haven't blocked it yet though. 

Finishing something was such a great feeling that I started working on my knee socks. The ones I started  waaaaay back. Yes, I'm still on the first one. Yes, I knit slow. But I've started the calf increases so I can't be that far from the finish. One of the other projects I vowed to undertake this summer was sewing. I started on a skirt before going on The Road Trip, but lack of interfacing for the waist band lead to it being set aside. I now have interfacing, not to mention more fabric, so hopefully it will be finished before the week is out. It's Butterick 6550, view E if your interested. It has pockets, which all my currents skirts are in desperate need of, and incorporates a fun front pleat. The pattern is from my mom's collection, but I may end up stealing it permanently.
          I'm also half way through Simplicity 2364 in a gorgeous blue cotton knit. Halfway for a second time, since, in a tragic example of beginner's bliss, I began the shirt in the same un-stretchy cotton I'm using for my skirt. This time around I can actually put the shirt on without dislocating a shoulder. All it needs is the sleeves and some fitting (which I'll probably mess up, but hopefully in an educational way).

That's all for finishing, or almost all. My siblings and I, in another vain attempt to up our waning geekiness, are trying to play D&D and I'm in charge of making the dungeons, so this afternoon I'll be calculating the worth of various gems and magical items.

Emeralds of Owlish Wisdom: + 3 to all craft related experience rolls.

* "What's that? A hat? A crazy, funk, junky hat. Overslept, hair unsightly, tryin' to look like Kiera Knightly. We've been there, we've done that, we see right through your funky hat." And if your sniggering because you know where this quote comes from, HA! You are no more innocent than I.

Memories at the Mall

Clouds in my while stopping for coffee

This Thursday I was blessed to be able to spend time with one of my dear friends from college. My dad, who loves to spoil his family's enjoyment of restaurant food, made fried catfish, and fried shrimp (battered in flour and old bay) the first night, and grilled Lamb and potatoes the second  (with a lovely tomato and mozzarella salad as a side). The excuse for this trip was the Smithsonian Museum.  After visiting it again on Thursday I can't help wondering how I ever walked through three museums with four children last year. To give you an idea of how exhausting this trip was, my friend and I arrived at L'Enfant station (a fairly close metro) at around nine-thirty, and boarded the smithsonian metro at around six or seven. That's ten hours of walking. We spent around three hours in both the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum. Each. This is not to mention the time we first spent wandering around the Castle and the Air and Space Museum (is their synonym for museum?). Despite this, we didn't see everything in any of the buildings, even though they were ever so much emptier than last year – a testament, I suppose, to the difference that a looming school year can make on people's calenders.

But there are many things which make a little effort worth while, and most of them were experinced on Thursday. Not only did my friend and I get a chance to catch up, laugh, and buy hotdogs from a street vendor, but the exhibts were delightful too. We saw the "Read My Pins" exhibt, about Former Secratary of State Madeleine Albright's use of jewerly in diplomacy; walked through the in depth display of mineral formations and precious gems; ooh-ed and aah-ed over the gorgeous (and sometimes outrageous) gowns of America's First Ladies; and generally reveled in the trivia that abounded.

Which makes me feel rather better about being unemployed

The trip was especially nice considering it was threatening to flood up until nine (hence the first picture), when it miraculously cleared to become the sunniest, muggiest day any Marylander could (mistakenly) hope for. Of course, the pretty outfits we had planned out had been abandoned by this point, so we tramped around the Mall a little more disheveled than we would have liked to have been: I in my heavy corduroy skirt, for blocking the damp, and she in her practical tennis shoes. Then, at the end of the day, just as we were purchasing tickets, the rain started up again.

Ah, Providence.

See? No need for that umbrella at all

Time for Tea

When I was in Japan I usually ended up drinking tea four or five times a week. This was a snack like tea, with little sweets (usually with a French appearance) and savory items featuring either rice or nori (seaweed). As the weather got chillier, the drink changed from the brown barley tea (mugicha) to coffee, but the snacks stayed the same. At one of the houses I consistently had tea at, the hostess had a whole collection of tea cups, a few for each season or type of tea I think. Now, I love the slightly fussy feeling having tea gives. There is something decidedly grown up and polished about setting aside time to boil some leaves in serenity. So, when I started feeling a little bored as an Unemployed Person, it was only natural for my thoughts to go quickly from cooking something (anything!), to hosting a tea party for my sister.




Of course, this tea was nothing like the nice luncheon teas I had in Japan. Even the slightly more attainable British standard was not quite achieved. The lunch consisted of Fruit Kabobs, which were the star of the whole meal, but rather more festive than elegant; Rosemary Skewers, which were really too elegant; Chicken Salad, which was simply beautiful; and Cucumber Cream Cheese spread, which was delightfully spring like, yes, and gave us some wonderfully vivid juice as a by product, which mom later used to make bread.




The three real adventures, though, were the baked items. Because a significant portion of the guest list required everything to be gluten free, I tried to test my skills in that direction. They certainly need help. I made rosemary crackers with a GF cupcake mix, because I couldn't find almond flour (and waited too long to buy it on-line because the house's oven was broken and I wasn't sure anything was going to be baked after all). I had to add three extra tablespoons of oil to get the cupcake mix to stick together. The crackers turned out so peculiar that I almost threw them out, but the eighteen year old liked them, and once properly topped by either the chicken salad or the cucumber spread they were edible. I also tried cupcakes made with (homemade) coconut flour, which resulted in the bizarrest, eggy green, muffin things I've ever seen (I used maple syrup instead of agave, and canola oil instead of grape seed,  but I'm pretty sure all the fault lies with my attempt to make my own coconut flour. It was moist and clumpy before I added it to the batter). The cupcakes were received with varying expressions, but enough people tried filching them before the party that I served them anyway, especially since the girls were responsible for decorating their own. Not many flavors can live up to two tablespoons of swiss meringue buttercream (via Martha Stewart, I officially prefer the regular meringue frosting. The buttercream leaves one's mouths unpleasantly coated).

The average age of the participants was eight (the youngest three were five, four, and two), and though they enjoyed all the china and dress up, as far as my effort went, I think the Flower pots were received the best. Once they'd finished devouring the ice cream and chocolate shortbread (I decided not to experiment with GF pound cake, and I knew from experience that shortbread crumbled beautifully), they were allowed to decorate the pots and take them home. There are actually paint markers out there that make coloring pottery a joy to both the artist and the clean up crew. And, in a moment of rare frugality, I remembered I had adhesive foam flowers in varying shapes, sizes, and sparkly-ness.

All in all the tea was great fun (even though we drank smoothie). I was completely tuckered out by the end, and the two days leading up to it held an appalling amount of cooking and preparation, but I would totally do it again. I have to come up with a party for my brother first, though. 

The mom's received boxed versions of the meal

Fast

"Finding the book was like kissing a lightning bolt."

                                   – Innocent Mage, Karen Miller

I'm fasting from reading untill Saturday. I've simply been consumed with it these past weeks (well, my whole life really), and I think I need to set some boundaries. Everything in moderation. I thought, to cement in my mind how much time I've spent reading since I've come home, I'd try to make a list of all the books I've read since May fifteenth.

• Saltation ( a Liaden universe book, and a really cool word besides) 
• Variable Star (which I technically was finishing. Finally)
• Harlequin's Moon
• The Deeds of Paksenarrion (Which all the "adults" in the house have now read, proving we all have reading issues. ~ 1000 pages)
• Murder at the Vicarage
• Unpleasantness at the Belladonna Club (Dorothy Sayers, because I couldn't let her feel left out)
• Podkayne of Mars (Read from Kentucky to St. Louis, my dad had it on his iPad. 224 "Pages") 
• A P.G. Wodehouse omnibus (of which I mostly contained myself to the Whimsey stories)
• Evil Under the Sun
• The Murder of Roger Ackryod (This one was way evil)
• A Murder in Three Acts
• The Pinhole Egg  (Reread. I love Diana Wynne Jones)
• To say Nothing of the Dog (Full of literary allusions, especially to 1930's detective fiction. It was fun to compare its concept of history to, say, Dr. Who's)
• The Dragon Variation (omnibus of three books set in the Liaden universe, 958 pages)
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Read out-loud to number Six)
• Xenopath ( The second in a series, but Theo had me skip the first book. 403 Pages)
• Thomas Zahn's Thrawn trilogy (Also reread. A Star Wars series)
• The King Maker, King Breaker series ( two books, 1000 pages)

I've tried to put these in chronological order but, eh. My memory is a twisted skein. No continuity at all. 

Speaking of skeins, I'm working on my fist pair of knitted stockings. Their Toe-up, but not going very well I'm afraid. Problems with the appropriate number of heel stitches. Since I won't be reading today, maybe I'll get some frogging time in. 

Hey, got any ideas for what I should read next? 

Fun Fu-Food

Obviously, in case you weren't aware, we are home. Yes, we made it through Texas, down to New Mexico, and then back across to Maryland. There was almost no internet connection in New Mexico, and the three day trip back home was way draining, but never fear, I now have both a connection and energy. Naturally, since everything else is in my favor, the pictures aren't on my computer yet; although, my dad, who was with us only in spirit, has all of them on his. When we finagle a way to get one thousand pictures to transfer painlessly, I'll up date the travel blog.

Until then I thought I'd share a little culinary advice: Let loose!

One of my lifetime friends came over yesterday and we invented our own green curry (mostly thanks to my brother, who went out to the store and got us coconut milk, basil, tofu, and a curry kit). Inspired  by this no-recipe approach ( inspired again, that is, both of my parents cook this way too, now that I think about it), I used one of the extra tofu packets to make fried tofu. And then I made a dipping sauce out of honey, lime, and rice wine vinegar. Then I photographed it like I was mad. And ate it ALL.

The coolest thing about this event was the contraption I stumbled upon for frying: a wire mesh strainer, placed inside the pot. The strainer had a loop on it, so when the tofu was done the strainer could be quickly drawn out of the oil, the tofu dumped out, and the strainer replaced, ready for the next batch. usually I spend half my time fishing bits of broken food matter out of the oil so it wont burn, but not today. It was the easiest bit of frying I've ever performed, and I'm looking forward to using this method on other foods.

Quick, what cool concoction can you create?

Day Six: Leaving Stroud

Back on the road. We've had a smashing time, hanging out with family and friends, but it's time to motor on to New Mexico.

Oh, Mexico.


While we all await our first glimpse of desert scenery, I thought I'd give you a few pictures. These are bonafide camera pictures, none of that cellphone stuff here. We've got the arch:



The gardens of the Creation museum:






The Mcdonalds arch:


And, because I realized yesterday that i hadn't posted a single one, pictures of Cincinnati:





(the John Roebing bridge, under renovation but still open to foot traffic)
- Posted using BlogPress from the iPad

Location:Turner Turnpike,Oklahoma City,United States

Day Three: Leaving the McDonalds Arch

The creation museum is hard to describe without pictures, but since these posts are being illustrated solely by cellphone, and the museum demand our actual cameras, you will have to be patient and resign your self to enjoying these





As implied by the title, the creation museum's main exhibit is a walk through of the biblical account of creation. It's theme is, if you'll excuse the expression, jurassic. Besides the creation exhibit and animatronic dinosaurs, the museum boasts a breath taking planetarium and a beautifully sculpted exotic garden.


After spending nearly all day at the museum (9:30-3), the whole gang went sight seeing in Cincinnati. Breath. Taking. City. There are pictures, but again, they are pending.

Let me explain. Today, if you can call it today, we woke up at four in the morning and headed west. By nine EST we had crossed the Illinois timeline.



We stopped for an hour to see the Arch in St. Louis,


and again in Oklahoma to eat at the "gateway to the west" McDonalds.





Two hours to Stroud, where we get to rest for two days before continuing to New Mexico.Yee-haw!
- Posted using BlogPress from the iPad

Location:Adair,United States

Day Two: Breakfast at Best Western

Yesterday we arrived at our first stop, Kentucky. We got to drive through the city of bridges, Cincinnati, the closest I have ever come to being in a futuristic sky city. Driving on the bridges makes you feel as if you are above everything, looking down at all the strange buildings and counting the number of other bridges you pass. I saw at least five, counting the purple people bridge. One of the buildings we passed was strangely shaped, almost twisted, and resembled a blueberry and cream hard candy. I hope we get to spend some down time in the city, if only so we can get better pictures of the bridges:




Next stop: the Creation Musem

- Posted using BlogPress from the iPad

Location:Commerce Pl,Florence,United States

Day One: Lunch in PA

We've been driving since seven this morning, stopping only to buy snacks and switch drivers. Lunch is the extremely special "McDonalds." Though we haven't gotten out anywhere with local flavor, we've still been able to spot some very interesting things. Cheat Lake, in West Virginia, was cool, with it's humped and rusty bridge. And, across from the McDonalds, there was the Shrine of Osiris, with it statue of Scrooge holding Tinny Tim. Even the boring stretches of highway offer visual, sometimes even comedic, interest:




- Posted using BlogPress from the ipad

Location:Kruger St,Wheeling,United States

Hi! Just testing my journal blog posts


Tada!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Sequel

ひさしぶりです！ - that's the Japanese way of saying long-time-no-see. Last time I posted it was winter, and now spring is here, though its going by fast. The whole caucus of humanity is involved in planing for the summer. This includes all the new 'adults' that are being pushed out of the academic setting that they have lived in for most of their life. It's a strange time of transistion - don't worry, I'm not going to start talking about butterflies. In fact, I'm not going to talk about transitions either. This is more like turning a page, starting a new chapter, diving into the sequel because you loved the first book so much. Same universe, different plot. In the midst of discovering that plot, An act which I have to remind myself is all part of what makes stories so much fun, I have no desire to completely abandon the last few years of my life. The best sequels build upon what has already been established. So I'm starting on a book list for the summer. I guess I'll start out three parts fiction, one part philosophical, one part history - I've missed reading for readings sake. Eventually I hope to cull the fiction down to two parts. Since good fiction can also be philosophical or historical I don't think this is going to hurt my intellctual development any. Any suggestions would be appreciated. To keep up the art of essay writing I hope to do quasi reveiws of these books - not real ones, because I can't write a good review  and at this point have no desire to learn.  Knitting should progress soon to, in a few days actually, with sewing close behind it. And then there will be the obligatory travel documentary, which I'm really looking forward to. I think my mom is bringing her laptop on our summer vacation, so I'll have no excuse not to post ( not to mention I'll be trapped happily spending the majority of my vacation time inside a moving vehicle). I'm hoping to make Fridays (and maybe Tuesdays) blogging days - this should be enough of an incentive for me to actually do something with this free time I've been blessed with. Anyway, that's the plan. The future, I've decided, is like a really good molten chocolate cake - beautiful to look at, and best enjoyed in small quanties. Bon Appetite! 

Matcha Memories

I went to the bookstore today and become one of those people. The ones who sit in coffee shops and drink lattes and giggle with their friends over socially accepted classics. Because I hadn't finished the book we were discussing, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, I arrived early to catch up. The end result was that my latte was consumed in a solitude that encouraged random musings.

                               Since I was already in a coffee shop attached to a bookstore, reading a classic, and since I wasn't eating sushi, I figured that the only thing to order was a Matcha, or green tea, Latte. And since I was alone, and had finished the book (it's only about sixty-nine pages), I sat there soaking in the atmosphere of cultivated class and thinking about my memories of matcha. I've had the extreme honor of witnessing a Japanese tea ceremony, and I even got a chance to try my hand at it. It is one of the most elegant things in the world. I remember kneeling on the tatami mat floor of the tea master's house. She had assured us that if our legs got tired it would be okay to fold them next to us instead of sitting on them, but the group I was with bravely ventured forth, ignoring the protest of our limbs. The apprentice came out and I remember that she was dressed like any business woman in a knee length pencil black skirt ensemble. She prepared the tea before us, and we drank it. But first she had to kneel, and I'll never forget watching her lower herself to her knees, making sure to keep her skirt smooth, balancing on her toes until her knees touched the woven floor, and then letting her feet fold into each other under her. When she got up later she replayed it all in reverse: rising to the balls of her feet, standing, and sitting the heels back down. One fluid motion. Elegance. 

                                       Watching her make the tea was like that too. The word ceremony is not merely a nod to the history of the thing, or the art of the affair, but to the whole atmosphere of decided precision. Every move of the arm had been practiced, even down to the scooping of the green powder into the cups. And there were the formal responses we were instructed to utter on receiving the cups, and the way  we tried to copy her intentional movements as we turned the cups around to face forward - a hard task, as the glazed pottery cups, bowl like in size  and shape, had no distinctive pattern on them to tell us uninitiated where the front was. 

                                   Matcha is green, and bitter. Due to the method of whisking, done with a little bamboo whisk, there is a surprising amount of froth on top, almost as if it were a latte. The smell is the worst part of it, but its looks aren't entirely inviting either. Many people refer to it as pond scum, and I couldn't help but smile at the accuracy of that statement when I looked at the green contents of my latte this morning. I've had traditional Matcha only two or three time, but I could only find one picture of it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't taken by me either. The latte is definitely sweeter, creamier, and more subtle than the traditional. There is no call to gulp it down as fast as possible, or to hold your breath while swallowing. The dregs are not as shocking to the taste buds, and there is no cause for the cloyingly sweet little treats that are usually part of the matcha ceremony. But of course, there is also very little of the enchanting mystique that surrounds the foamy tea. Even the mysterious knowledge of the Starbucks staff cannot compete with the wisdom of the tea master as she deftly measures the water out with a little bamboo ladle, running her hand down it smoothly, returning it again to its ordained spot with a manner that suggests that failure to do so would cause the tea to curdle, the sky to darken, and all of man kind to fall of the face of the Earth.  

Have you ever driven across a one-lane wooden bridge?

It's Beginning to Look a bit like......Canada?

Despite the obviously unnatural amount of snow that has landed on our doorstop since Friday, life goes on. Busy, of course, and seemingly unfruitful. Rather like a garden, I suppose, where one spends all that time sowing with no results, and then suddenly..... Spring! (And then you have to wait another bundle of months before you can harvest any fruit, but at least you can see it growing).  Anyway, Just wanted to spread some snowy cheer to everyone. They say there's going to be another storm this weekend, so go buy your hot chocolate and marshmellows now.

Unwavering

I have been up to the blue, blue sky -

 beneath the arms of the trees -

and scrambled through the underbrush

 with never a "by your leave."

I have brushed past the tickling pines,

 and the prickly vines as well,

to descend once more,

to my own front door,

with a new passion to quell.

I am here again, in this home-that-will--not-be-called-so, but my heart does not use words to name things and so is not troubled with the restrictions of the English language. Before I left, two or three days ago now, I finished Forever Hero, another Sci-fi book. Don't worry, I won't open that discussion again, not today. I will instead talk in pictures, in hopes that you, too, will somehow feel the peace that has been all around me.

I went for a hike today "up a misty mountain," only there was no mist, only grass

and sky

And paths leading no where

Yet yielding treasures all the way

Just when I was feeling that no human foot had trod the ground I walked on (never mind it being in sight of my house) I was informed otherwise

              The sky was so open, and the air smelled so good, that coming back indoors was a little hard. But I made soup, and ate it with the delicious, thick, home made bread of one of my friend's grandfather.

I ate it (oh, so good!) and finished up The Tale of Two Cities. It was a bit of a chore to get through the first parts - so much metaphor and death - but the end made up for it. Knowing Sydney Carton made up for it. More people should know him, he's not talked of half enough for my liking. In fact, I don't think a single person has ever mentioned him to me out side of a book club. It's a real pity, for his is a story worth reading. It, along with some tender pieces of beef and carrot, have added another layer of warmth to my heart – another synonym, if you will, for Here.

Grounded

"It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summit of the hills that surround it.... An unguided ramble into its recesses is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, torturous, and miry ways."                      --- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Ubervilles


It takes a contrived sort of reasoning to decide to "write up" both The Good Earth and Tess of the D'Ubervilles in the same post. In one sense I had the same recaction to both of them: they were wells of sadness that dwelled deeper than my comprehension; they were filled with strange custoums and assumptions,  many of which I still cannot grasp; they were are also both about nature (in the environmental sense), but in almost completely opposite ways. In Pearl Buck's book nature is a constant, dependable source of life. In Thomas Hardy's book nature reflects what is going on inside the different chacters. It is not good or bad, or always the same, it's as Tess or Angels sees it. Comforting or cold, harsh or heartening – it all depends on what what's going on inside the character's mind.

          The Good Earth chronicled the life and fortune of one Wang Lung, a poor chinese peasant. It starts with his procuring of a wife from the kitchens of the great house and ends with his death as the wealthy owner of the same. Wang Lung is neither amazingly smart nor touchingly compassionate - he's just a normal guy. His experiences, most of them bad, repeatedly teach him that land is the most important thing. The most amazing character is probably O-lan, Wang's first wife, who grew up as a slave until Wang paid her dowry. O-lan does not do much talking, so it's hard for a reader to feel close to her, but she does an immense amount of work and is a clever housekeeper. The book offers very little to laugh at, but one of the amusing things that does occur comes from the brain of O-lan. When Wang Lung worries that his gangster uncle will eat them out of house and home, O-lan proposes that they drug him with opium, and so that's what they do. It's kind of bizarre to imagine opium being used to rid yourself of troublesome relatives.
         Anyway, the book is pretty sad, as I hinted above. Wang Lung has a hard life when he's young, is a bad husband when he gets rich, and has a horrible relationship with his three sons. I enjoyed learning about chinese culture, and the way that Pearl Buck hints at the cyclical nature of wealth was interesting, but after Wang stopped being poor I couldn't bring myself to care for the characters enough to wonder how the book would end.

                                      Tess of the D'Ubervilles took some strength of will to get through too. At first this was just because of Hardy's constant jabs at God. They were pretty subtle - or maybe I'm just dense - but nothing could hide his resentment when he made them, so that even though I didn't pick up on his object right away I could tell he was lambasting someone. And then there was his descriptions of Tess. I hope I'm not so jealous that I can't stand to read about a pretty girl, but come on. In order to defend her "innocence" Hardy felt the need to bring in proof of her overwhelming beauty every other page (as a side note, Tess' beauty is the element of fate that should warn you this is a tragedy in the greek sense). This was especially true when she was at the dairy and falling in love with Angel Clare (here high literature meets Buffy and shies away). Don't even get me started on Angel Clare, actually, don't get me started on Tess. The former was awful, but the latter was annoying. I didn't know what to make of her half the time. Sometimes I think I could hardly have made different choices than she did, but then I find myself scoffing at this notion. I'm sure someone else has already said this, but I'm glad that I have read so many sad and depressing novels so that if I'm ever in a bad situation I'll know exactly what not to do.
                 As fun as Tess is to complain about, and as painful as the plot was to read, I enjoyed reading most of it. The style was delicious, the scenery was beautiful, and the secondary characters were worth knowing. I particularly liked the dairyman "to whose mind it had apparently never occurred that milk was a good beverage." What really made the book worth it though was discussing it. I spent two weeks talking about it, and hearing other's opinions of it, and watching a movie adaptation, and so on. Some interesting things turned up, like the rocks that come to light when you plow I suppose. Like how, despite Hardy's prejudice against Christianity, Angels parents are both christians and kind, honest people. Or how about how Angel, regardless of his "progressive" and openly "pagan" outlook reacts so negatively to Tess' admission of the past. These things make you wonder what Hardy was thinking when he wrote this book. Or if he even knew what he was thinking at all. In the end I'd recommend it, but only if you have a group of people to talk it over with.



There, that's two books down. Now I'm going to enjoy the inch of snow that fell last night, and wallow in the peaceful emptiness of my last week of vacation. I hope you have peace to wallow in too,

Sincerely,
Ms. B.

Wow, I Haven't Written Since......

Would it be too lame to say it?

Anyway, here's my "literary" quote for the post:

"'Names,' she was saying. 'Where would we woodtrolls be without them? They tame the wild things of the deepwoods, and give us our own identity. Ne'er sip of a nameless soup, as the saying goes.'"                                          ------ Paul Stewart, Beyond the Deepwoods 

It seemed kind of relevant since last fall I studied the development of the novel which, interesting enough, outlined the rise of the individual. Naming was a big theme. The importance of what we associate our selves with stretches back even to Moll Flanders, where an ignorant little girl desires to be a gentlewoman. But enough of this, lets talk holidays.

Here is cheer, in the form of yarn:

Kindness, in the form of Fetching gloves, knitted by Theo:

And hospitality, in the form of food:

We had a big New Years party at our house (again) this year, and I decided to try Ms. Ree's Chesse Puffs. My mom inisits on calling them fondue bread. I thought I'd photo-log the process, but the kitchen was a bit of a mess, here are the pictures I did take:

If you're interested in making these (and you should, they're not only easy and delicious, they're also a nice change from candy canes) you might be interested to hear that when I doubled the recipe I neglected to double the butter. Bad llama. But seriously, the kitchen didn't explode, the cheese didn't curdle, and Ms. Ree did not hunt me down demanding that I strictly adhere to her fat content.

Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic.

After the Cheese puffs where in the frezzer my mom talked me into making carrot soup. Don't laugh, but my carrot soup recipe comes directly from the Samantha cookbook - except mom dosen't keep half and half on hand so I had to use heavy cream instead. I guess that was my karma for not doubling the butter.

Anyway, this was just a quick post to let everyone know I was still alive, and should be back tomorrow to review The Good Earth, which I finally finished yesterday. I'm also hoping review some of the books I was forced to read during the fall. I've realized that I'm really bad at talking about books. I either say too much ("Well, it was about this guy, a hobbit, who was forced into an adventure by a wizard, and, have you ever read Lord of the Rings? Okay, because it ties into that, and the man, his name is Bilbo, has all these adventures......) or I say too little (like "it was a good book" which means nothing).  Until tomorrow then, I remain,


Sincerely yours,
Ms. B




P.S. Just a follow up of the last post, I visited Pablo's scifi poll and realized that I had left science out of my equation. I still think scifi is mostly about society, but there has to be some kind of science in there too, right? So here's the big question, is Stargate science fiction?  What about the new Startrek movie?