Mealey's Miscellany

I have a new blog!

2010-09-26T22:59:00.004-04:00

It's integrated into my website—check it out! My whole Blogger archive is available over there as well. Huge thanks to David Galli, who did (and is doing) an awesome job designing it. Isn't this exciting?

Adventures in Peru: the Amazon, part 1

2010-09-19T14:00:00.003-04:00

A colorful crush of traffic on the way into Iquitos.

I enjoyed every minute we spent in Peru, but our time in the Amazon was particularly special. Kate, Jill and I took the overnight bus from Trujillo back to Lima, then flew to Iquitos, which is where you take the boat into the jungle. (You pass through a market on your way to the dock, and our guide pointed out a stall selling weevil shishkebabs. Needless to say, I had no wish to linger.)

We were trying to decide between two tour operators the night before we left, one kinda slick and touristy but with whom we knew more what to expect, and in the end we went (and were really happy) with the alternative, Otorongo Expeditions. The jungle lodge is really quaint and peaceful and comfortable, the owners and staff are fantastic (especially Oscar, our guide), every meal was vegetarian-friendly and thoroughly delicious, and we saw amazing wildlife on every excursion. We can't recommend Otorongo highly enough.

Taking the (usually horse-powered) sugar cane press for a spin at the rum factory on our way to the lodge. Afterwards we got a taste test, and as you can see Kate didn't like it as much as I did:

Below: the walkway between the dining and guest rooms at the lodge; the resident macaws; dragon's blood, good for all sorts of skin ailments; breadfruit.

Swaying in the hammock room at the lodge listening to all those layers of sound coming from the forest around us—the calls of birds, insects, frogs, and monkeys—oh, it was one of the most tranquil experiences of my life!

Reading The Time Machine in my favorite place.

Next post: wildlife photos!

Adventures in Peru: North of Lima, part 2

2010-09-13T09:00:00.004-04:00

(North of Lima, part 1.)

We based ourselves in Trujillo for Chan Chan, Huaca de la Luna, and el Brujo; the first two sites are a short collectivo ride (i.e., local minibus service) outside the city, and el Brujo is about an hour distant. There isn't a heck of a lot going on in Trujillo itself, although there was quite a bit of interesting colonial architecture.

One of many ornate screened balconies where a lady might look out on the street without being seen from below.

One evening we wandered into the courtyard of a private club.

Most memorable, however, is the sketchy guesthouse in which we caught one of the desk clerks in our bathroom, claiming to be cleaning it at six o'clock in the evening (naturally, with no cleaning products to hand). Nothing was missing from the room, but I was still suspicious. 'He was sticking his nose in our underwear,' I said. 'It's the only logical explanation.'

Chan Chan, built by the Chimú in the ninth century, was a vast city constructed entirely of adobe. Plentiful pelican, fish, and otter motifs, and the diamond-shaped walls (fishing nets!), show how the Chimú appreciated what the sea provided.

(See the otters on the walls?)

The next day we did Huaca de la Luna (Moon Handbooks link here), the 'Temple of the Moon.' I think this was our favorite archaeological site (it was definitely mine)—fascinating polychrome wall reliefs (giant spiders, vanquished warriors in neck chains being led to sacrifice), excellent guide, totally adorable Peruvian schoolgirls. There are two huge adobe structures here, both constructed by the Moche people layer upon layer over successive generations during the first millennium A.D.—the Temple of the Moon was used for religious and ceremonial purposes, the nearby Temple of the Sun for the military and administrative stuff. The Temple of the Sun, looted by the conquistadores, is still undergoing excavation work and isn't yet open to the public. Children used to play soccer on the sand before these ruins were discovered underneath.

I know this shot must look kind of posed and phony, but honestly it isn't—our guide was about to snap a photo of the three of us, and these adorable little girls were shyly watching on, and we invited them to come over.

I also took a panorama at Huaca de la Luna—I don't know why it's playing so jerkily, but you get the idea:

By our last day in Trujillo we were a little bit ruined out, but el Brujo (another city constructed by the Moche between 1400 and 2000 years ago) was still very much worth the visit, particularly for the Señora de Cao, a young woman who was evidently a very powerful political leader. Her mummy was discovered in 2006 along with a fifteen-year-old handmaiden sacrificed presumably to tend to her needs in the afterlife; experts concluded the Señora had died in childbirth around the age of twenty.

What the walls probably would have looked like a millennium and a half ago. If I remember correctly, this is Ayapec, 'the great decapitator.' Eep!

The brand-new museum at el Brujo houses the mummy of the Señora de Cao, and you can still see the undulating tattoos on her arms. I was really fascinated to discover that when you look into the glass case you aren't actually looking at the Señora, but at a mirror image; the mummy is lying safely out of sight. I was trying to figure out why the sight of the mummy at Sechin bothered me so much when I was only in awe of the Señora—it must be because of who they were in life. The Señora was entombed in layers of precious cloth and gold baubles, while it seems cruel to display the body of the sacrificed girl when she'd already had to suffer that supreme indignity. Anywho.

Next post: THE JUNGLE!

Adventures in Peru: North of Lima, part 1

2010-09-09T08:00:00.003-04:00

One of the ruins at Caral, a city over four thousand years old.

There were three phases to our adventure in Peru: first Kate and Jill and I spent four or so days doing the archaeological sites along the coast north of Lima; then the three of us took an overnight bus back to Lima followed by a flight to Iquitos, where we made arrangements for a stay at a lodge on the Amazon. There were four marvelous days in the jungle. Then we flew back to Lima to meet up with Elliot and Spencer, and we did the more touristy parts—Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, the Sacred Valley, etc.

Anyway, we visited five pre-Incan archaeological sites on the first part of the trip: Caral, the oldest city in the Americas; Sechin, the home of a warlike culture dating between 1800 and 900BC; Chan Chan, the largest adobe city ever built; Huaca de la Luna, built by the Moche, who flourished during the first millennium A.D.; and el Brujo (also Moche), home of the tomb and mummy of the Señora de Cao—a powerful female ruler whose arm tattoos are still clearly visible. (More on her next time.)

At Caral we met Nathalie, a lovely Frenchwoman who lived in Spain for many years and was traveling on her own for a few weeks before meeting up with her boyfriend. We took a taxi back into town together and had dinner at a little restaurant by the sea (which was a lot less picturesque than it sounds, but it was still a nice time).

Charming.

A view over the ruins at Sechin from the walkway that goes up the hill behind it and around the site.

Sechin was a much smaller site, and we were able to walk around without a guide. There's a small museum, and in the basement we were appalled to find the preserved body of a teenaged sacrificial victim stuffed on the bottom shelf of a rickety glass case. Jill was saying something about mummies actually being comforting to her somehow, not creepy, but then she amended her statement: 'Well, I didn't find her comforting because she was buried alive...' Her mouth was wide open. Taken with the bloodthirsty nature of the stone carvings that Sechin is known for, this one was certainly the most disturbing of our archaeological visits.

If you'd been unlucky enough to be born here three thousand years ago, this is the guy who would have chopped off your head to feed the sun god. Or maybe just for kicks.

And now for something completely different. We saw these signs on every bus:

("Only for number one.")

I must say this perplexed me greatly. Like, what if I can't help it?

This was one of those situations where the sights blow you away but the towns you've got to sleep in aren't quite so amazing—although we did manage to find a friendly little spot in Barranca (our base for Caral) for jugo de piña and some breakfast cake.

Next post: Chan Chan, Huaca de la Luna, and el Brujo.

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #9

2010-09-04T10:00:00.001-04:00

On my last day in Vermont, Paul and Niki and I met Michael (otherwise known as 'the boy with the long red hair') at his shop for lunch. He restores pianos in this spooky factory space built in 1904:

I found cool stuff inside besides the instruments.

Niki played this gorgeous piano dating from 1890, and nearly had a heart attack when I told her later that it costs $36,000!

This one's a pump organ, if I'm not mistaken.

After lunch at Wicksticker's (where, like I said, we had beer and peppermint schnapps on the house), Michael took me back to the shop for a little while, but it was too nice an afternoon to work. So we went for a swim.

Our favorite swimming spot on the Poultney River.

It was a perfect last day—at the end of it Gail made her sublimely delicious enchiladas, and we had this for dessert:

(This holy mother of all fruit tarts is from a bakery in Middlebury, but she makes amazing desserts too. Gail is one of those enviable people who can, seemingly without effort, turn a random pile of raw ingredients into edible gold.)

I'm going back to Vermont in a week or so, so I'll have more photos to post then!

Said and Unsaid

2010-09-01T10:13:00.004-04:00

I was thinking about dialogue on the Greyhound bus ride home the other day. I have borrowed many a good line from strangers on public transport—the gem of that trip was 'Have you been to the bathroom in Baltimore? I felt safer in prison'—and sometimes these lines are so good they sound like they HAVE to have been made up.

Here's an example. I wrote the following, and my editor asked me to change it because she couldn't imagine anyone actually speaking this way:

Every so often I get a craving for the kind I can’t find at night. You know the sort of man I mean: a vegetarian Buddhist in thrift-store corduroys, doesn’t drink, rarely pays a visit to the barber. Last time I found one I was coming home on the PATH train at half past six on a Sunday morning; he boarded with a friend, both with twelve-speed bicycles in tow. I knew I had to have him when I heard him say, “You know when you’re riding down a country road and come upon the skeleton of a barn? I love that.” He didn’t notice me then, but I made sure he left his pocket journal on the train...

Yes, I heard a guy say that, word for word. I loved how much that offhand remark told me about his personality, and the well cared for bicycle at his side reinforced my impression. I didn't go home with that boy, but Eve sure did.

What can really make good dialogue, though, is all the things that go unsaid. Here's another exchange I scribbled down on Monday afternoon:

HE: So...are you going to be around long enough for us to go out?
Something about being on a Greyhound bus gets me really horny. You'll do.

SHE: I don't think so. I'm too old for that shit.
I'll talk to you across the aisle, but there's no way in hell I'm going back behind the dumpster with you at the next pit stop.

HE: Yeah, I don't do the bus thing either.
[a moment later] But I can cook up seafood better than you can buy it at the harbor.
I'm gonna pretend like you didn't just shut me down. In fact, I'm gonna give you one more chance, because I haven't met a woman yet who could resist my crabcakes...

This reminds me of nights in the study room back in grad school, when Seanan would write two lines for every one line of dialogue he composed: one for what was coming out of the character's mouth, and the second for what he was actually saying. Dialogue—reading it, writing it, overhearing and 'appropriating' it—is one of the most delightful aspects of being a storyteller, and doing it well makes it just as satisfying for the reader.

Home from Peru!

2010-08-30T22:00:00.002-04:00

Welp, I'm back. It was such a fantastic trip that I felt none of the usual 'I've been gone long enough, I'll be glad to get home again.' I just feel melancholy.

Jill and Kate on the Amazon.

We saw and heard marvelous creatures in the jungle, oohed and ahhed at pink river dolphins making brief appearances above the surface of the Amazon, walked up and down temples where young girls were sacrificed to old gods, got all our bones jangled in tiny moto-taxis (I called them putt-putts), watched condors wheeling over Colca Canyon and climbed up Machu Picchu (the mountain the city is named after, that is). The food was far better than we were expecting (surprisingly veggie-friendly), and I've never laughed so hard in my life.

So here are some random highlights—I won't start blogging in earnest until next weekend, when I get to download Kate's pictures.

It vants to suck your blood.

Rum is YUM.

[Oh, and for the benefit of those few readers—if any, bwahahaha —who are not related to me, I should clarify that Kate and I went with Kate's boyfriend Elliot, his mother Jill, and his brother Spencer. It was Jill and Kate and I for the first half—when we did a bunch of pre-Incan archaeological sites like Chan Chan and Huaca de la Luna, then spent four days at a jungle lodge on the Amazon—and then we went back to Lima to meet up with Elliot and Spencer, and that's when we did Machu Picchu and all that.]

This is what happens when you fall asleep in the taxi.

At Machu Picchu. I don't know what is going on here.

Spencer, Jill, and Elliot, waiting for our flight to Cuzco. Elliot finished Petty Magic on the trip. I get four and a half stars.

Cool doorknocker in Trujillo, our base for exploring Huaca de la Luna and other archaeological sites. We disapprove of the Spaniards for all the disease and violence they wrought upon the natives, but must admit the colonial architecture is splendid.

I love this doorknocker in particular because of the ring. I wore my grandmother's ring on my finger for most of the trip because Lonely Planet says it's not a bad idea to invent a boyfriend or husband.

Kate: How's your marriage going?
Me: Great! We never fight!

More soon.

Something Jolly

2010-08-14T16:00:00.000-04:00

I'm having an awesome time in Peru! Really excited to check out the textiles at the Cuzco markets, and in the meantime I've got this to show you:

I really needed something colorful to knit on after my grandfather died. Starting a scarf out of Donegal tweed at the end of May didn't make much sense, but just looking at it cheered me up. And now that I'm moving to Vermont I'm glad to have it, because everyone keeps telling me how cold it gets up there in the winter.

I used leftovers from other projects, so it matches my Gretel beret. Kilcarra Tweed is so awesome—it may be a bit scratchy, but the colors are delicious and the yarn softens with washing anyway.

Pattern: V-Striped Scarf by Lise-Lotte Lystrup, from Vintage Knitwear for Modern Knitters.
Yarn: Kilcarra Aran Tweed in pea green (1), teal (1.25 balls), and purple (1.5 balls), and Donegal Studio Tweed (same as Kilcarra) in fuschia (1).
Needles: #7s.
Raveled: here.

And here are basic pompom instructions.

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #8

2010-08-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Nick and Niki with Lilypads.

The polebeans really took off once we got the teepees set up.

Cattle crossing at the Larsons' farm. Oh, rural life.

Here we are (Niki, Nick, Gail, and Paul) at our favorite snack stand, chowing down on the BEST sweet potato fries ever. Mr. Wicksticker's is set up in the owner's own front yard, and it's right down the road from our favorite swimming spot. Because we have gotten to be such frequent customers, Mark (a.k.a. Mr. Wicksticker—he also makes candles) has taken to giving us free stuff. That day we got a jug of his very own maple syrup (and we gave him some beer), and the day before I left he gave us beer and peppermint schnapps. (Yes, peppermint schnapps, at two in the afternoon.)

Paul and Niki with Queenie, and Avalon peeking out from behind. I'd intended to take many more pictures of the animals, which I'll do when I get back in September.

Kate and I are leaving for Peru today and I wasn't organized enough to autoblog this time, so the blog is going to be pretty quiet for the rest of this month. There'll be plenty to blog about when I get back!

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #7

2010-08-08T12:50:00.001-04:00

This isn't going to be a useful post or anything—just some photos of us all having too much fun.

Paul makin' the bacon. (Yes, that is a mohawk'd Nick in the background. Ben had shaved his head the night before.)

Ginevra and Niki were the pancake queens: blueberries and raspberries (from the garden), banana, and banana with chocolate chips! I'm not much for pancakes, but I think I ate more than anybody else that morning. They used pumpkin pie spice, which made them that much tastier.

He's got pizzazz even while he's washing the dishes.

More tomorrow!

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #6

2010-08-04T08:00:00.001-04:00

Well, I'm back in New Jersey for a few more days until we leave for Peru, and I'm missing Harmony Homestead terribly. Seven weeks passed in a blink!

Whether we were working or playing, every minute was fun.

We stopped for ice cream after an afternoon at the Manchester farmers' market (where Paul was playing) and a good long browse at Northshire Books (where Linsey picked up a blank book entitled The Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin. Bwahahahaha.) From left: Jasmin, Gail, Paul, Nick, Linsey, Niki, Sal, and on the bottom, Geneviève with Grace and Luna. If you look closely you can see that Sal isn't wearing any shoes. That's because his only pair got smelly beyond any possibility of continued wearing, so after ice cream we went to a shoe store, where they had JUST locked the door (it was about 7pm by then). The woman looked down at his feet, unlocked the door again, and ushered him inside. The rest of us sat in the car and laughed and laughed.

A few days later (July 17th, to be exact), we went for a ton of interesting sustainability workshops, good food, awesome live music and contra dancing at Solarfest. Above, Leslie is leading us on a 'weed walk,' where we learned a lot about the medicinal uses of wildflowers like yarrow and stinging nettle.

And of course, we spent most of each day in the garden:

You will notice that we were way behind in the planting, and there's a very unfortunate reason for that. At any rate, everything got put in the ground eventually and we're hoping for the best.

This is why they're called polebeans. Paul showed us how to lash, and then Birch Bark Jim (he's the best, I wish I'd gotten a picture of him) helped us construct the tee-pees. That was the most fun I've had in the garden so far.

More photos soon!

Blurbs and other fun stuff

2010-07-24T08:18:00.002-04:00

Fun book stuff is starting to happen! Petty Magic recently got a couple of lovely blurbs from two of my favorite authors:

A charming curiosity shop of a novel, packed to bursting with secret histories and glittering marvels. With Petty Magic, Camille DeAngelis has given us a glimpse into a strange and enchanting world. It's dangerous good fun, and well worth getting lost in.
—Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection

Love, magic, history, witches: it's all here, between the covers of this lovely book. Updike might have written it, if he'd had a better sense of humor.
—Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

(Also, in case you missed it, you might want to read my post about how Daniel has inspired me.)

The other exciting thing is this profile published Thursday in my local newspaper, the Burlington County Times!

I'm also working with the designer of these two fabulous websites to come up with a brand-new blog; more about that later.

Operation Mincemeat

2010-07-22T20:00:00.001-04:00

World War II offers us far more interesting, amusing and subtle examples of intelligence work than any writer of spy stories can devise.

—Admiral John Godfrey

In Petty Magic, I refer to a couple of the most spectacular World War II hoaxes, both of which were part of a larger deception plan, Operation Barclay—constructing sham army camps to fool Nazi reconnaissance, and planting phony intelligence documents on a corpse in uniform. It took several incredibly imaginative, 'corkscrew-minded' intelligence officers to hatch each of these plots, and in my novel I give all the credit to my magician-spy, Neverino. These hoaxes were first devised not by a magician, but a novelist!

The hoax involving a corpse in uniform was codenamed Operation Mincemeat (Churchill had forbidden the use of obvious or jokesy code names, but apparently no one listened to him), and it's the subject of a riveting new book by British journalist Ben Macintyre.

To begin regaining control of Europe in the summer of 1943, the Allies first needed to take back Sicily—and the Germans were just as aware of its strategic importance. Taking advantage of Hitler's 'Balkan fixation' (because the Third Reich got most of its raw materials from Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia), the Allies would convince him that they were planning to invade Sardinia and Greece instead, and that Sicily was the phony target.

Human agents or double agents can be tortured or turned, forced to reveal the falsity of the information they carried. A dead body would never talk.

So here's the gist: the corpse-with-phony-identification idea originated in Basil Thomson's novel, The Milliner's Hat Mystery, published in 1937. Ian Fleming, the naval intelligence officer who would later pen the James Bond novels, was a fan of Thomson's, and he included it in the "Trout Memo," a list of possible hoaxes that was distributed among the intelligence chiefs at the very beginning of the war. Two other officers in MI5—the eccentric, unassuming Charles Cholmondeley ("Chumly") and the supremely confident lawyer Ewen Montagu—developed the idea and saw it to fruition.

Once the higher-ups at MI5 consented to the ruse, these two officers embarked on an elaborate planning process. St. Pancras coroner Bentley Purchase informed them that the body of a homeless Welshman, Glyndwr Michael, had just been brought in, and Cholmondeley and Montagu spent the next couple of months (with Michael in deep refrigeration) inventing his alter-ego, Major William Martin, complete with love letters and photographs, hotel bills, and snippy missives from his father and bank manager. Cholmondeley and Montagu spent so much time inventing him that they began to feel as if Martin had actually been a friend of theirs.

Cholmondeley, Montagu, and the other planners knew how the Nazis thought—their two biggest flaws (with regard to military intelligence and espionage, anyway) being 'wishfulness and yesmanship'—and if they could allow those phony documents to fall into the right hands, thousands of lives would be saved on both sides.

The operation got off as planned, and by the time 'Major Martin' arrived in Huelva, Spain, he stunk so bad the local forensic pathologist dismissed the inevitable anomalies (the corpse's face and the face on his ID card didn't quite match up; the body was too decomposed to have been in the water only a few days, as his documents attested) in favor of getting the heck out of the room. The body was laid to rest in a Catholic cemetery, and the suitcase and its contents got lost in a maze of Spanish bureaucracy and intrigue before the Nazis finally got their hands on it. The rumor of a Greek invasion spread, and thus began to substantiate itself; Hitler was convinced, and the ruse was complete.

The material is fascinating regardless, but Macintyre does a great job of bringing to life each character involved in the plot of Operation Mincemeat—from the aforementioned jolly coroner of St. Pancras ('He loved Gilbert and Sullivan operas, toy trains, boiled eggs, and his model piggery in Ipswich. He never wore a hat and laughed loudly and often') to the brave submarine commander assigned to the dispatch of 'Major William Martin', Bill Jewell, who only begins to fear for his life after falling in love with a Wren in Algiers. We get a keen sense of each player's desires and ambitions, their private histories and their miserable working conditions.

So why are so many details of the planning of Operation Mincemeat only now coming to light? After the war was over, there was still the possibility of a political backlash were the full story of the hoax to come out. British diplomats had conspired to deceive Spanish officials, so the revelation would have no doubt damaged Anglo-Spanish relations; furthermore, back at home, those who had orchestrated Operation Mincemeat had obtained the corpse by not-strictly-legal means, and exposure would have caused quite a bit of trouble for the coroner and other government offices involved in that particular aspect of the deception.

So, in The Man Who Never Was and on the international lecture circuit, Ewen Montagu spent forty years telling a story that was hopelessly incomplete—for the above reasons, and because Cholmondeley and several others abided by their MI5 oaths of secrecy for the rest of their lives. Macintyre had access to Montagu's personal archives, and along with information that has become available only in the last twenty years or so, he was able to write the most complete account of Operation Mincemeat we'll probably ever have. Its unputdownability is a testament to Macintyre's prowess as a storyteller. Highly, highly recommended.

[Edit: Since I wrote this I found there's another book on the subject that's also come out this year called Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat by Denis Smyth. It'd be interesting to compare them.]

Eastern Europe retroblog: back to Budapest

2010-07-19T23:50:00.001-04:00

Kate enjoyed her freshly squeezed orange juice at a sidewalk café.

You know that stage in every trip when you realize you are 100% ready to be home again? Hopefully you don't reach that point any more than a day or two before your scheduled departure date; but in our case we'd been traveling for five weeks and Kate had been missing her right arm for nearly two [we'd said goodbye to Elliot in Sarajevo], so I think we reached it as soon as we got back to Budapest.

I started writing about some of the minorly unpleasant things that happened over those last couple of days, but I think I'll just show you some nice pictures and be done with it!

Exterior and interior shots of the Great Synagogue (Kate took the latter); a pretty fountain sculpture in a city park; a wonderfully atmospheric old shopping arcade; me at the same sidewalk café, having the most delicious coffee (with honey!) ever.

And that concludes my Eastern Europe retroblog. We're going to Peru for three weeks next month, so there'll be plenty more travel photos coming soon!

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #5

2010-07-17T06:58:00.003-04:00

Sorry if I've been a deadbeat blogger lately—between farm life and all the fun stuff we do in between, there isn't much time left for puttering around on the internet (which, if I'm being honest, is what I'm always doing at home). Anyway, here's what we got up to last Thursday evening:

Circus Smirkus is a circus run and performed by children and teenagers. I can't tell you how amazing they are—it's like a professional show, so much so that you keep regretting your wasted youth (dude, I was watching Gilligan's Island all summer) even as you are continually delighted by the spectacle. If you ever get a chance to see one of their shows, don't miss it.

Clown noses come with your ticket. Me and my new little bro Nick.

These acrobats are like fifteen. Holy moly!

Zucchini Blossom Fritters

2010-07-08T22:50:00.001-04:00

Zucchini blossoms are one of my favorite sights in the garden. Mouth-watering memories of the amazing zucchini flower fritters at Betty's restaurant on Lesbos (see my Greece retroblog post) got me wanting to fry some up for dinner.

It's really easy—wash the blossoms and cut out the pistils; whisk an egg and add milk and flour to make a batter (pancake batter consistency, I'd say); add salt, pepper, and a little something extra (I used cumin); fill the skillet with olive oil and fry 'em up. They have a lovely subtle-sweet flavor, and taste great dipped in tomato sauce.

Back in Babyville

2010-07-03T08:30:00.001-04:00

I haven't mentioned my knitting in ages, mostly because I've been making gifts:

I knit this for Sally, my Mary Modern editor, who had a baby girl in April. It's the infamous Pea Pod Baby Set by Kate Gilbert, which is no longer available online (so many people on Ravelry are frustrated that they can't knit it). If you are reading this and don't have a copy, you know that I couldn't possibly email it to you if you dropped me a line to ask. Oh, no. (Raveled here.)

The Little Coffee Bean Cardigan by Elizabeth Smith is my new favorite pattern—I knit these for Lindsay's baby (due in July) and my nephew (sized up for a 2T). Let me tell you, I'll never knit a baby cardi in pieces ever again, and crazy stripes are a great way to use up odd balls. As you can see, the sleeves on the second Little Coffee Bean are much longer—I knit the first version to the pattern, but then I decided I wasn't too keen on the half-length sleeves; although I guess I'd have to see it on the baby to know for sure if it would look odd or not. (Raveled here and here.)

This hat (super-easy pattern here) isn't for any baby in particular—I just wanted to knit something fast that would cheer me up the week my grandfather died. (Raveled here.)

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #4

2010-06-30T19:09:00.004-04:00

Lavender and nasturtiums for sale at the Sunday farmers' market in Dorset.

Shots from the garden: the polebeans I planted my second day here (much taller since I took this pic); tomatoes; rhubarb (Gail makes the most amazing rhubarb peach crisp—I'm going to blog the recipe!); zucchini (hoping to make fritters out of the flowers, I'll let you know how that goes).

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #3

2010-06-28T21:57:00.003-04:00

The sunset edition! Took this one on the ride home from swimming on the Poultney River last week.

And these were taken tonight:

Eastern Europe retroblog: Brčko, part 2

2010-06-27T08:30:00.001-04:00

(Brčko, part 1.)

Saturday 23 June 2007
Had a wonderful tour of not one but two mosques, both of which are new buildings. The original ones were destroyed in the war; a sheikh, a very nice man, showed us around, with Mujke [MOY-kuh] translating. I enjoy hearing the call to prayer, and not just because it sounds exotic. It’s also simply a beautiful sound—even if it is often a recording. Counterpart to church bells, almost.

Coffee with Briony and Mujke afterwards, and then we finally got around to visiting the outdoor fruit and veggie market (also with B.) So glad we made it—dinner is going to be yummy tonight. Can’t remember ever seeing such fresh and robust heads of garlic.

Briony is from England, and was conducting part of her doctoral research in Brcko in the summer of '07. I was hoping to see her while I was in London, but unfortunately our schedules weren't going to jive. Next time!

16 June 2007
Our apartment here has a very lived-in feel, down to the eyeglasses and balled-up socks on the curio shelves, the rotten apple on the kitchen windowsill (Kate threw it out the window and busted out laughing—there’s a wild apple tree in the courtyard outside, she wouldn’t have gotten away with it otherwise. You can hear the occasional thump as an apple falls to the pavement), the cobwebs dangling from the eaves on the balcony (no view, but we hung up our laundry out there, and some coal-black cobwebs clung to our skivvies. Yuck), cologne bottles and half a dozen toothbrushes in the bathroom.

The owner later paid us an unexpected visit at 6:30 in the morning, for no apparent reason.

Kate in the courtyard.

Next and final post: back to Budapest!

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #2

2010-06-25T07:47:00.002-04:00

As promised: puppypalooza! (I neglected to mention that they are Vizslas.) Most of them are going home with their new families tomorrow. It's going to be awfully quiet around here.

Grace (she's the pup Gail and Paul are keeping) and Lilypads (so named for her extra digits) have a tussle in the puppy pen.

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #1

2010-06-21T23:40:00.002-04:00

My new favorite spot for reading and writing.

The last week and a half has felt like an age in the very best way; I hardly recognize myself. I am sunburned, bruised, covered in midge bites, I haven't bathed since Thursday—and I couldn't be happier.

Planting bush beans.

Gail and Paul are two of the very kindest, most authentic people I have ever met. They treat me like one of the family, and I already feel like I've known them for years. (I'll get a good picture of them and post it next time.)

A fragment of china, found in the garden, that may have belonged to the very first homesteaders here—a hundred and fifty years ago, Paul guesses. (It might be early 20th century, but it's so much more romantic to imagine it's that much older.)

I play with nine puppies every day. This is Bean. (All but one of the nine are spoken for, and they'll be going to their new homes this weekend. One of the new owners rechristened their puppy 'Uncle Peter,' which I found hilariously inappropriate.)

I had a feeling it would be this way, but I can now say for certain that manual labor has an amazing effect on one's creativity. I've gotten so many great ideas while gardening or doing dishes; I haven't been at the computer much, and yet I've been worlds more productive than I ever was at the library. I've made space in my head, and a lot of really good things are showing up.

I have so much more to say about Gail and Paul and all their interesting friends, but it's getting late and I want to post this. More puppy photos in dispatch #2!

Eastern Europe retroblog: Brčko, part 1

2010-06-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

Toward the end of our Eastern European adventure Kate and I arranged to volunteer at a children's summer camp in a Bosnian town called Brčko (pronounced 'Birch-ko'— and if it's not then we were saying it wrong the whole time). There would be children of all religions and ethnicities here, and the idea is to foster friendship and cooperation between them. It was a very positive experience overall—thanks to our lovely volunteer coordinators Dina and Sanjin, other new friends Briony and Mujke, and a bunch of really sweet kids—but as with every other volunteer experience I've had, there were definitely aspects I found ineffective or at least inefficient.

Monday, 18th June 2007
Thoroughly frustrated…yesterday we passed three boys rooting through the dumpsters at the far end of our block, and of course one of them approached us and asked for money. THOSE are the kids who need help, but as Dina pointed out, the Roma don’t want or think they need any help. They don’t want a better life for their families, and that is totally incomprehensible to me.

We were there less than two weeks, but we quickly settled into a routine of workshops and coffee afterwards at Dina and Sanjin's favorite cafe, Jazzwa.

Wednesday, 20 June 2007
The workshop this morning was quieter but still a success—we did the ‘pass it on’ story exercise and illustrated a few of the stories afterwards, and of course most of the kids got plenty of laughs when they were read out. We started with 'Once upon a time a brother and sister left home with their pet goat in search of adventure,' and though the goat dropped out of pretty much all the stories (never featured in Dina’s quick translations, anyway), there were still a few gems. ‘The boy squeezed the bird and mayonnaise came out’; ‘they ate five kilograms of chocolate and had diarrhea.’ Lots of farting too, naturally. Our favorite illustration was a marsupial dragon—a ‘dragaroo.’

At three we were treated to a tour of the town library, which is housed in a crumbling but wonderful imperialist Hungarian building dating to 1892.

Two views of the library:

There's so much to say about Brčko that I should split it into two posts. Next time: fresh (and not so fresh) produce, other people's toothbrushes, and an unexpected early-morning visitor.

I ♥ Angela Carter, part 2

2010-06-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

(I ♥ Angela Carter, part 1.)

At midnight, especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches; then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that.

(from 'The Werewolf')

This is the most beautiful book I own.

It's the first U.S. edition of The Bloody Chamber (published in 1977), a collection of deliciously creepy retellings of classic fairy tales and legends like Bluebeard's Chamber, the Erlking, and Beauty and the Beast. The heroines of these stories are brave and sensuous and morbid; the collection's usually pegged as 'feminist fairy tales' but they're so much more fun than that label lets on.

One of my favorite stories is 'The Lady of the House of Love'; as you read it you can totally imagine yourself as the 'beautiful queen of the vampires', alone in the gloom of her ruined chateau:

Closely barred shutters and heavy velvet curtains keep out every leak of natural light. There is a round table on a single leg covered with a red plush cloth on which she lays out her inevitable tarot; this room is never more than faintly illuminated by a heavily shaded lamp on the mantelpiece and the dark-red figured wallpaper is obscurely, distressingly patterned by the rain that drives in through the neglected roof and leaves behind it random areas of staining, ominous marks like those left on the sheets by dead lovers. Depredations of rot and fungus everywhere. The unlit chandelier is so heavy with dust the individual prisms no longer show any shapes; industrious spiders have woven canopies in the corners of this ornate and rotting place, have trapped the porcelain vases on the mantelpiece in soft gray nets. But the mistress of all this disintegration notices nothing...

The prose throughout is beautiful and evocative and pleasantly disturbing. There's an awful lot of romanticization of death in popular culture these days—(enough already with all these cheesy vampire sagas!)—and while the stories in The Bloody Chamber are often preoccupied with sex, death, and decay, this is not at all the indulgence of some teenybopper goth fantasy. Her beauty is a symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness.

Like I said, I am rationing the oeuvre of Angela Carter, although I suspect I have already read her best novel—Wise Children, her last, published in 1991. If you've never read her, The Bloody Chamber might be a good place to start.

Another Adventure

2010-06-13T08:00:00.004-04:00

My nifty new galoshes.

Today I'm off to Vermont to volunteer on an organic farm near Manchester! I'll be up there 'til the end of July. There's WiFi, so hopefully I'll be blogging lots of pictures of puppies and goats and vegetable patches and such.

Aaaaaand that's about all I got. Happy Sunday!

Eastern Europe retroblog: Mostar & Sarajevo

2010-06-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

An Islamic graveyard in Mostar. Spooktastic.

We arrived in Mostar pretty late—it's a pleasant town best known for its historic bridge (which crazy locals occasionally like to jump off of), but we were pretty much only there to break the journey to Sarajevo. We chose a restaurant in the old town where the waiter spoke Italian, and I managed to communicate that Kate and I wanted only vegetables on our plates.

The next day we took the train to Sarajevo. Way too many pigeons, strong Turkish coffee for breakfast and delicious spiral-shaped spinach pastries and juniper juice for dinner, shops full of beautiful shawls and metalwork.

(Below: the main drag of the old town, the Baščaršija, which dates to the 16th century; a fountain in the courtyard of a mosque.)

I don't know what this building is—or used to be—but it's a real shame to let such an amazing piece of architecture fall into disuse and disrepair.

Three goofballs at the Sarajevo Brewery. Elliot sampled the local dark lager, Kate got baklava and I had a campari and orange. This was before I became a (very occasional) beer drinker. I think this was Elliot's last night—he took a train back to Budapest to go home, and Kate and I went on to the volunteering part of the trip.

Inside the Orthodox Cathedral.

Next: Brčko, Bosnia, where Kate and I volunteered at a children's summer camp.

Sundress #2

2010-06-08T08:00:00.003-04:00

(Sundress #1.)

So, I promised myself I wouldn't buy more fabric until I'd used some of what I've got.

And then, naturally, I bought more fabric.

I'm still planning to make the basic dress out of Cal Patch's book, but I've got to draft the pieces first, and I wanted a second sundress now. I first found this fabric (the line is Santorini by Lila Tueller) while I was in London, but it was mad-crazy expensive (something like £11.50 per meter, which is roughly $15 per yard, when the fabric retails here for $8.95), and I wound up getting it on sale from My Needle & Thread (another Etsy shop). With the bold outlines around each leaf and flower, the fabric reminds me of a stained glass window.

(Park photos by John the Bad.)

Sundress #2 took longer than #1 even though I skipped the pockets again. I realized midway through that my machine really needed a tune-up, so I packed it up and took it to the local Sew 'n Vac; I was holed up at Rachel's (she is a lifesaver, let me tell you) working on the new magnum opus; and then with my grandpa's funeral and family time and all.

(Kind of a goofy photo of me, but a better shot of the dress. Also, from looking at this one I think I need to adjust the right strap. My right, that is.)

This dress has already been very much splashed on and stained with SPF 70 sunscreen.

The only change between #1 and #2 is the length of the bodice—this time I did a few more rounds (38 instead of 35).

Now I'm ready to try something more challenging! I'm going to make a dress to wear at my launch party in October—fingers crossed it works out...

(She stuck a crochet hook in a ball of yarn and called it a yarnipop.)

[Edit 6/21: Kate asked for a close-up of the bodice. I was concerned that the larger print would look odd under the shirring, but I think it looks totally fine.]

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T09:23:00.002-04:00

Memorial Day means more to me this year.

The Navy Hymn is printed on the reverse.

Gosh, do I miss him.

(Home is the Sailor, part 1; Home is the Sailor, part 2.)

What's a beldame?

2010-05-28T08:00:00.008-04:00

Waterhouse's painting after Keats' poem, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci."

When people ask me about Petty Magic, I usually use the word 'witch' even though my narrator hates that word with a red-hot fiery passion—just because 'witch' is quicker to understand. (There's an old-school witch on the cover, too, spiriting a little girl away on her broomstick—but this is ironically appropriate.)

Think of us as sibyls or seraphs—fearsome, oh yes, but more or less benevolent.

Eve and the other beldames in Petty Magic live at least twice as long as ordinary women but age half as quickly. They can turn themselves into animals, travel thousands of miles in a twinkling, or render themselves invisible, but they get worn out and need to sleep and recharge just like anybody else. They can be sweet and solicitous like fairy godmothers, or...not. And they tell lies, so they say, only to keep the men in black from locking them up.

Because Eve is more superwoman or benign enchantress than vindictive old hag, I wanted a different word for her. In Coraline, Neil Gaiman refers to the 'other mother' as a beldam, as in 'crone' or 'witch' (the word comes from Middle English—bel, grand, and dam, mother, grandmother being the original meaning). In the dictionary 'beldame' is only listed as an alternate spelling, but in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (written in 1819, revised in 1820) Keats's beldame is from the French, a 'beautiful lady'—that is to say, a sorceress.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd—"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

The belle dame is a dangerous woman—a fairy, or a sort of banshee—who, in medieval legend, would lure men into an enchanted forest and make them lose all desire for anything else, even to go on living. The poem harks back to the chivalric tradition, in which 'women were to be loved from afar and to be considered unattainable.'

Another version of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by Frank Dicksee.

Archetypes aren't terribly interesting unless you can somehow subvert them (or better yet, subvert and reinforce). Can a 'dangerous woman' have (mostly) good intentions? Maybe not Keats' beldame...but definitely mine.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Split, part 2

2010-05-25T16:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't felt like writing lately, let alone blogging, but sometimes the way to feel like doing something again is just to do it. I got some good writing done today for the first time in a week and a half, and now—back to the retroblog!

One last post about Croatia. After Hvar, we spent another afternoon in Split before taking a train to Mostar in Bosnia.

A passionflower spotted in a public park.

This time we took a short bus trip out to Salona, the extensive ruins of a Roman city built on an earlier Greek settlement. It took us awhile to walk through the whole site, which has a bit of everything: streets, temples and early Christian churches, homes, public baths, aqueducts, a large amphitheater...

We met hardly any other tourists here—it was eerily quiet. The last picture reminds me a little of the ruined Emerald City in Return to Oz (kind of a bad film, I know, but a guilty-pleasure childhood throwback).

Next up: Mostar and Sarajevo.

Home is the Sailor, part 2

2010-05-23T09:00:00.002-04:00

(Props to Kate for tackling the scanning of a big stack of old family photos.)

We were really tickled when a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer wanted to do a write-up on my grandfather and his accomplishments. The link is here, but in case the article gets taken down at any point, I'm going to repost it.

Published May 22, 2010.

Theodore Colangelo, 90, defense-mapping official

By Claudia Vargas

Inquirer Staff Writer

Theodore Colangelo, 90, of Cinnaminson, a sailor during World War II who went on to be director of the Defense Mapping Agency distribution center in Philadelphia, died of prostate cancer and multiple system atrophy Monday, May 17, at the Masonic Home of New Jersey.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred from a Defense Mapping Agency office in New York state to the Philadelphia distribution center in 1959, he was a supply clerk. By the mid-1970s, he had risen to director, managing more than 120 employees, said former colleague Gerald Bonner of Cinnaminson.
Mr. Colangelo was known as a firm leader whom employees respected for his openness to new ideas, such as having an evaluation panel for promotions. But his biggest accomplishment was coordinating the military branches working within the distribution center.
When Mr. Colangelo first arrived, Bonner said, the Air Force and Navy foremen "were all trying to operate in their own ways."
Bonner, who was hired in 1975 as the personnel officer, found himself dealing with minor issues. Mr. Colangelo reorganized the joint operation to flow smoothly, he said.
"It was humming. I got bored," he said, adding that he left in 1980.
Mr. Colangelo retired in the early 1990s after 45 years of working with military mapping systems and distribution.
Mr. Colangelo had come to the United States as a 10-year-old from his native city of Pietragalla, Italy, with his seven siblings and widower father. Arriving in 1930, Mr. Colangelo and his family settled in Schenectady, N.Y.
When he was 16, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and a year later the Navy, where he was a seaman aboard the Erie.
After serving for three years, he returned to Schenectady. But a year later, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and he rushed back to the Navy, his daughter Eileen DiLullo said.
As a machinist mate on the Samuel N. Moore, Mr. Colangelo, during at least one typhoon, worked frantically to keep the destroyer's engines running, his daughter said.
Shortly before being discharged in 1947, Mr. Colangelo was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. While recovering at the VA Medical Center in Brooklyn, he fell in love with Dorothy Smelz, a social worker assigned to him. Six months later, they married.
Mr. Colangelo started working for the Defense Mapping Agency in 1948.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred to Philadelphia in 1959, he wanted a single-family home, so he settled in Cinnaminson, where he lived in the same house until he died.
He aimed to always be home by 5 p.m. to be with his family, his daughter said. But Mr. Colangelo sometimes had to work 20-hour days - and that's when Dorothy Colangelo knew something unusual was going on in the world.
In the days leading up to President John F. Kennedy's public announcement of the Cuban missile crisis, Mr. Colangelo had been holed up in the distribution center for many hours, his daughter said.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Daniel; daughters Susan D. Grant and Mary Ann McWilliams; four grandchildren; and a sister. His wife died in 1996.
A funeral was held Friday, May 21, at Snover/Givnish Funeral Home, Cinnaminson. Interment was at Lakeview Memorial Park, Cinnaminson.

Grandpa would have been so pleased to see this in the paper. I knew next to nothing about his career at the Defense Mapping Agency, and it was strange (in a good way) to be hearing about it for the first time in the newspaper.

Thanks to everyone who left kind messages on the blog, Facebook, or by email (I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee to catch up on my correspondence right now). I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging topics soon, I promise. It's just that I feel odd writing about anything else right now, you know?

'Home is the sailor, home from the sea.'

2010-05-17T23:24:00.006-04:00

My grandpa Ted passed away this afternoon. He was ninety, and hadn't been well in quite awhile, but it still came as a bit of a shock. You know how, when you're little, you think your parents are invincible? That's how I'd always felt about Grandpa Ted.

(With his father and four of his six sisters. Thanks to our cousin Paula for this picture.)

During the war my grandfather was a petty officer aboard a destroyer in the South Pacific. He went for more than a year without setting foot on land, and that was the easy part—he'd survived kamikazes and two typhoons, during which the temperature in the engine room reached 180º F. When he got back to the States, he spent nearly a year convalescing in naval hospitals; for the rest of his life he dealt with some serious medical problems as a result of war-related injuries, and yet he always seemed to defy everybody's expectations. (Just to give you an idea, today he received Last Rites for the fifth time.) He never thought he'd live to see ninety; I sometimes joked he'd outlive us all.

(Summer 2005. This is how I want to remember him—robust, striding around the block in his Abercrombie & Fitch ballcap and t-shirt.)

(At the Mary Modern launch party with Grandpa Ted, Grandmom Kass, and Grandpop Mike, July 2007.)

We didn't always agree—heck, that feels like an understatement, given our diametrical political beliefs—but he was a good man, and I loved him very much.

(Two pics from summer '06, with kids and grandkids.)

I want to tell you the story of how my grandparents met. At the naval hospital in San Diego, they told him they were sending him home to New York for his big operation, and gave him a choice between hospitals in Queens (St. Albans) and Brooklyn. He knew that St. Albans was the newer hospital, and naturally he wanted to be treated at the best facility available. He opened his mouth fully intending to say “St. Albans,” but “Brooklyn” is what came out. If he’d chosen the hospital in Queens he would never have met my grandmother.

She was a lovely 23-year-old volunteer social worker, midway through an M.S.W. she would never complete. Sitting up in bed, he’d strain for a glimpse of her as she passed by his room. So he could speak to her, he kept asking for another pack of playing cards, and she asked him tartly how he could possibly lose so many decks. He wore her down, of course, and they married seven months later.

I've always been fascinated with this story for that one inexplicable slip of the tongue. Thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing Brooklyn, Nonno.

(What's even more uncanny is that she wasn't supposed to be in Brooklyn either—she'd been assigned to a hospital in Trenton, but another volunteer, who'd been assigned to Brooklyn, asked my grandmother to switch so she could be close to her family. My grandmother agreed, even though Trenton offered free housing and Brooklyn did not. She was that nice.)

I'm so glad I got the chance to sit down with Grandpa Ted while he was still in good health and ask him about his childhood in Italy and his life during the war. I've been meaning to edit the raw audio and put all the stories on CD. Now would be a good time, eh?

(Outside the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, sometime in 1947.)

Home is the sailor, home from the sea. (I think I like the A.E. Housman version better than Stevenson's.)

[Note on 19th May: I have made a few edits to the above for historical accuracy—after talking to my aunt Eileen and listening to the stories we recorded in 2007, I realized I'd made a few mistakes.]

The Backyard Tourist, part 2

2010-05-17T02:00:00.000-04:00

I'll never knock Philly for being grubby ever again. Can you believe these photos were taken inside the city limits? This is Wissahickon Valley Park, the north-west portion of Fairmount Park. If you can ignore the distant hum of air and road traffic and focus instead on the birdsong and wind in the trees, it really does feel like you're out in the middle of nowhere.

One of the trails takes you under the Walnut Lane Bridge, which is pretty awe-inspiring from this vantage.

After leaving the park one day, I walked halfway across it before I realized where I was. This bridge is only a hundred years old, of course, but there's something so majestic about it, like a Roman aqueduct. You're so far below the traffic that it's easy to pretend it hasn't been used in centuries.

Following the trail, there's a wooded ridge on one side and, on the other, Wissahickon Creek far below you. At the top of one of those ridges (Mom Rinker's Rock, according to Wikipedia) there's a statue of a man I took to be William Penn, with the word TOLERATION inscribed at the base (also according to Wikipedia: the statue isn't meant to be any Quaker in particular).

You know what this means? Seven years of good luck.

The Wind in the Willows, part 2

2010-05-13T14:32:00.003-04:00

Especially for you, Pare:

And a better view of the stairs:

Can't even see the house from the street, but I want to live here so bad.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Split, part 1

2010-05-11T14:30:00.000-04:00

The view from the train from Dubrovnik to Split (if I remember correctly, this landscape is technically in Bosnia—check out the map).

We found ourselves in Split (in Croatia) twice, before and after our trip by ferry to Hvar Island. (Oops—I should have posted 'part 1' before Hvar!) We didn't spend the night either time, but we had several hours to spend sightseeing each way, and on sojourn #1 we visited Diocletian's Palace, which dates from the late third, early fourth century A.D.

It's a huge complex, some parts below and some above ground, and it's so well preserved that there are actually shops and market stalls located inside it.

Elliot at the entrance to...erm...I can't remember, even with the aid of Google. Cool shadow, though, no?

Below: the cathedral bell tower, which we climbed. Felt kinda woozy at the top—I'm not terribly good with heights but I always make myself go up anyway.

Hammin' it up, as usual. We found a good pastry shop on the quay, and sat on a bench under those palm trees where we spilled powdered sugar all over ourselves.

Next: Split, part 2.

Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy

2010-05-08T08:00:00.003-04:00

It's high time we had some more witchy stuff on here!

Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy by Grillot de Givry has got to be the weirdest book I have ever cracked. The publisher's product description is somewhat misleading:

From raising the dead to foretelling the future, this historical tour of the occult offers a captivating exploration of sorcery and ceremonial magic. Prepared by a noted French historian, it ventures into virtually all of the classical arts, with 375 rare black-and-white illustrations derived from paintings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and architecture.

The author doesn't actually approach the material with the objective eye of a historian; he writes about necromancy and love philters and suchlike as if he actually believes in all this stuff. I can't decide if he's brilliant or cuckoo.

It is also very easy, according to several Black-books, to become invisible by carrying the heart of a bat, a black hen, or a frog under the right arm. A more elegant method is to wear the Ring of Gyges on your finger; you can then become visible or invisible at will simply by turning the stone inward or outward. This ring must be made of fixed mercury; it must be set with a little stone to be found in a lapwing’s nest, and round the stone must be engraved the words, “Jésus passant ✠ par le milieu d’eux ✠ s’en allait.” You must put the ring on your finger, and if you look at yourself in a mirror and cannot see the ring it is a sure sign that it has been successfully manufactured.

How nutty is that? There's plenty more where this came from, but I left the book at Seanan's when I was moving out of Galway and forgot about it while I was in Tipperary, so further excerpts will have to wait.

Great Book #46: The Wind in the Willows

2010-05-06T16:30:00.001-04:00

'It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.'

The Wind in the Willows is one of those classics I really don’t know why I never read. Now I wish I’d read it as a child, because as I was listening to the Librivox recording (with a variety of readers, most of them excellent) I kept thinking too much like an adult:

A toad riding a horse! Rats and moles eating bacon and lobster! Field mice singing Christmas carols! How silly!

I also wish I didn’t know anything about Kenneth Grahame, thanks to “The Tragedy of Mr. Toad.” [Recently it has been pointed out to me what a rubbishy newspaper the Daily Mail is, so I apologize if 'Femail,' etc. offends anybody.] As I was listening, I did often think about how this book was the most substantial thing the love-hungry Alastair ever got from his father…at least according to the article.

But setting all that aside—this really is a lovely book, full of beautiful descriptions of nature and the changing of the days and seasons.

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water's edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture.

Most of the episodes in The Wind in the Willows emphasize that true friendship occasionally entails a bit of personal sacrifice, and that loving your friends for who they are doesn’t mean letting them go off and make outrageous fools (or menaces) of themselves. This is all communicated quite nicely without bonking children over the head with ‘the moral of the story.’ That said, I bet everybody looks forward to those chapters following the exploits of the incorrigibly conceited Toad, because the other animals are too sensible to be anywhere near as interesting.

'Glorious, stirring sight!' murmured Toad, never offering to move. 'The poetry of motion! The REAL way to travel! The ONLY way to travel! Here to-day--in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped--always somebody else's horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!'

'O STOP being an ass, Toad!' cried the Mole despairingly.

Toad’s gleefully insane obsession with motor-cars, his imprisonment for auto theft and his flamboyant escape and subsequent adventures while impersonating a washerwoman—these passages are even more enjoyable than all the poignant bits about Rat and Mole’s particular friendship, though I feel a bit guilty saying so.

Toad in drag, fleeing the authorities.

[picture the following shrieked by a huuuge British guy with painted-on warts]:
I'm being attacked by a cushion! AHH! I'm being attacked by a shoe! AHH! I'm being attacked by my foot! AHH!
—Toad in the Masterpiece Theatre version of "The Wind in the Willows"

I ♥ Shaye

2010-05-05T13:30:00.002-04:00

Something really crappy happened in the publishing world last week.

Let me back up. From the day I got my Mary Modern book deal (14 March 2006—can't ever forget a date that important), I felt really happy to be a part of Shaye Areheart Books. Shaye and Sally (my editor on Mary Modern) always made me feel not only that they loved my book, but that they cared about me personally. I got the impression that it wouldn't make one bit of difference to Shaye if I never made a bestseller list, so long as I kept telling good stories.

Now, this sort of thing happens quite a bit—CEOs and other folks in lofty positions occasionally get ousted in publishing just like any other business—and I don't want this to turn into an anti-corporate rant or anything. (Well, all right: I composed the rant, and have just hit 'delete'.) I just wanted to ask that when you pick up a hardcover copy of Petty Magic this fall, stop and look at the colophon on the spine. It ought to have been a steaming coffee cup, with SHAYE AREHEART BOOKS written underneath.

Recap

2010-05-02T19:20:00.000-04:00

I've been back from Yaddo several days now, and it's all starting to feel like a marvelous dream. To be able to write and read all day in a quaint little sun-lit study with no interruptions whatsoever, and a plastic lunch pail packed with a sandwich and fruit and carrot sticks wrapped in wax paper; to go for a run in the woods, or lay my yoga mat out on the back porch, and listen to the birds and the squirrels going about their business in the trees; to meet up with new friends at dinner, and play games in the pool house and have wine and snacks by a fire in a cozy sitting room, and to go back to work for a little while afterwards, if I felt like it...the whole experience was magical, it really was. One Saturday I laid in bed all afternoon reading Neverwhere—even ate my lunch in bed—and I didn't feel one bit guilty about it!

As I said, I was a little nervous about going without internet access, but it actually felt really good to be unplugged and unreachable, unless I wanted to be (and I did quickly check my email a couple times a day, usually after breakfast and before dinner). And of course I was meeting so many interesting new people that I wanted to get to know them all better, rather than spend much time on the computer in the evenings. Everyone—staff and residents—was so incredibly kind and friendly!

I know each person's experience of an artists' residency is going to be a bit different, and I think we were all looking to gain slightly different things, but for me the social aspect was almost as important as the actual work. We talked for hours about books (our own, and others'), and art, and pop culture, and shared horror stories from our childhoods, and I went to bed every night just feeling really, really content. I was fortunate enough to give my first-ever reading of Petty Magic after my new friend Nova read from her forthcoming novel, Imaginary Girls (look for it, summer 2011...it's going to be amazing!)—and even more fortunate afterward to be able to have one of those marvelous conversations with her that would, the next morning, allow all the disjointed bits of my fledgling novel to click into place. I love that kind of conversation—one you can look back on as a real turning point.

So, if you are reading this and thinking of applying to Yaddo, I have one piece of advice: DO! If you haven't published a book/had a show/whatever yet, don't let that stop you; part of what makes Yaddo so awesome is that they bring together writers and artists of all levels of experience.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Hvar

2010-04-27T08:00:00.001-04:00

Hvar was probably my favorite stop on our Eastern European adventure. Lavender fields (which we did not actually get to see, but we picked up plenty of soap and sachets to bring home), azure sea, perfect weather, atmospheric old town...

Sunday, 10 June 2007

Hvar is going to be the highlight of our trip, I just know it. We arrived on the ferry from Split last night (at 6pm, still plenty light out) and found a guy who brought us back to an adorable little apartment with an ivy-draped terrace for only 80 kuna per person per night. That’s about $15. (Most hostels cost more than that!)

I’m sitting at the table on this terrace and a little lizard just darted across the rough stone wall. I’m drinking Earl Grey, waiting for K&E to return from shopping for breakfast and feeling content. We got pasta, bread, and white wine and ate out here last night—more satisfying than many of our dining-out experiences here. When it got dark we lit a pillar candle and listened to the strains of the music festival down in the town square—there was some sort of choir performing (it sounded more like a barbershop quartet, with more than four), and cheesy pop and U2 and Sting playing at break-times. There were ten-year-old ballerinas (all in pink, of course) hanging around outside the supermarket—free food and red balloons.

There is a very eloquent little sparrow sitting on a wire nearby…

(That's Kate's underwear on the line right over Elliot's head, by the way.)

Next post: Split!

Yaddo in Pictures, part 2

2010-04-24T01:30:00.001-04:00

The stairs at West House; two views of my study; reading on the back porch on a sunny afternoon; a walk in the woods.

Yaddo in Pictures, part 1

2010-04-21T19:58:00.001-04:00

A neo-gothic pile; the gardens (which are open to the public); Katrina's room; another view of the mansion; one of the gargoyles in the dining room (gosh, that sounds familiar...)

Eastern Europe retroblog: Dubrovnik

2010-04-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

Again, photographs of a beautiful place render description rather unnecessary. Dubrovnik is touristy and therefore everything is relatively expensive, and the walkable old town wall doesn't seem quite so marvelous when you realize it was recently reconstructed...but my, what a lovely place! After we walked the walls we went to the nearest beach and had ourselves a soak.

You'd walk around more than once, of course, which meant you'd be passing the same tourists two or three times. I remember walking by a couple of middle-aged English ladies in sensible shoes, and smiling every time I caught a snatch of their conversation—they were SO happy to be there. Everything was a delight to them. Man, I love people like that.

“Mosquito bites all over, including my face…Kate’s all bitten too—we joked we have the plague…Been sniping them, and when I do there’s a smear of blood on my palm. My own blood—the little bastards! One just dive-bombed onto my thigh. Smack! Serves you right.”

(Detail of a fountain just inside the old town entrance.)

We'd arrived late in the day, and while we walked a quiet street right by the city wall we spotted a sign for a bar. We passed through the wall, and found this outdoor spot literally perched on the cliff. It was touristy, of course, but over drinks we enjoyed one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life.

Next installment: Hvar Island.

84 Charing Cross Road

2010-04-15T08:00:00.007-04:00

I never knew a book could be such a joy to the touch.

While we were in London Deirdre was saying what a wonderful book (and film) 84 Charing Cross Road is, and how sad it is that a Pizza Hut is on the site of that venerable old bookstore. Then when we were back in Galway she surprised me with a copy of the book, which my mother seized and devoured as soon as I got home. It took me a couple months to get around to it, but wow—what a great book it is!

Thank you again for the beautiful book, I shall try very hard not to get gin and ashes all over it, it's really much too fine for the likes of me.

A vivacious New York writer, Helene Hanff, sends a letter in 1949 to a secondhand bookshop in London asking for help locating a few obscure titles, initiating a correspondence that lasts almost twenty years. The book is by turns hilarious and poignant; Helene is quick with the zingers (I don't want to give too many away here), but when she hears that meat and eggs are still severely rationed in post-war England, she orders a food basket to be delivered to the staff at Marks & Co. for the holidays. Her primary pen-pal, Frank Doel, is all stereotypical British reserve at first, but it's clear just how much he comes to treasure her friendship. Your heart aches every time he asks when Helene will finally make that long-awaited trip to London.

From where I sit, London's a lot closer than 17th Street.

My edition contains both 84 and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, the diary Helene kept during her sojourn in London in the summer of 1971. (Ordinarily I refer to authors by their surnames, but Helene is too much a kindred spirit for that. Reading this book is like making a new friend.) I got a heady feeling when she visited The George, that great old pub I told you about back in January, because I was there with Deirdre. What can I say, I get a kick out of little connections like that.

Another connection that really floored me: while Helene is in London, Leo Marks introduces himself as the bookshop owner's son, invites her out to dinner, and his wife later paints her portrait in Russell Square. LEO MARKS! Codemaster for the Special Operations Executive! How awesome is that? (See page 299 of Petty Magic; or just click here).

'Tell me,' said Leo. 'You've written a beautiful book. Why haven't we heard of you before? What was wrong with your earlier work? Too good or not good enough?'

'Not good enough,' I said. And he nodded and went on to something else, and I think that's when we became soul mates.

Part of the reason why 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street (and all her other books, too, no doubt) have resonated with so many readers is this marvelous feeling of kinship across time and space. Helene felt it for Donne and Pepys and John Henry Newman, and we feel it for her.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Montenegro

2010-04-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

This is going to be one of those posts where the pictures speak for themselves. Kotor was really, really beautiful, and the hike up to the fortress was good exercise and very rewarding. As I recall, the food was pretty meh, but with views like these, who cares?

Next up: Dubrovnik.

Welcome to Babyville, part 3

2010-04-09T08:00:00.002-04:00

Think of all the people we'll love who haven't been born yet: Kate said that, and I appropriated it. Now one of them has—on March 9th, Ailbhe and Christian had a healthy baby boy! (He's big, too: 8 pounds, 3 ounces.) When I packed this up I addressed it to the baby, which tickled me to no end:

I have to make another one of these dinosaurs for my nephew. So cute, and a lot easier than I thought it would be—I'm much more confident with a crochet hook after finishing this. Ailbhe was particularly excited about it one because Christian had a plush dinosaur as a child and really wanted to find something similar. (Pattern here, raveled here.)

Eastern Europe retroblog: Belgrade

2010-04-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

We were only in Belgrade for a day—but what a day! We visited the Tesla museum and hung out in the fortress-slash-park; and while we were having dinner in a very charming old part of the city, it started to pour like crazy. Our table was outside under an awning, so the whole thing was rather dramatic from where we were seated.

(Isn't this the loveliest wrought ironwork you've ever seen? It's the front door of the Tesla museum.)

(I don't remember the name of this church, if I ever knew it.)

Next installment: Kotor, Montenegro.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a postcard I found at the Christkindlesmarkt in Nuremberg (seasonally appropriate, I know. The Christmas ones are even cuter). On the back:

221 Osterkarte, um 1900

@Verlag L. Däbritz, München
Alleinvertrieb ART H. Hilscher
Printed in Germany.

Quick Dispatch

2010-04-03T19:38:00.004-04:00

1. This place is AMAZING. The people are lovely, the place is lovely, and I'm getting a load of work done.

2. New rule re social networking: I'm only logging in to accept friend requests and follow people back. I can justify this because I don't want to lose track of new friends.

3. Silly Mealey. Nobody gives a crap if you check your email in the middle of the day.

4. Not that I'm checking my email in the middle of the day. Because I'm not.

5. I will admit to a nap though. And I wrote 400 words afterward, so even the nap was productive.

Going Dark

2010-03-31T05:00:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving for Yaddo today, and I've promised myself there will be no blog-reading, tweeting, or facebooking while I'm there. Wild with anticipation, of course, but there's also a whiff of ‘trial by fire’ about the whole thing: either I have the most productive month of my life, or I go completely potty from internet withdrawal. (There is internet access, just not in the studios, and I know I won't be sneaking into the WiFi area during working hours for fear of being seen. Sometimes shame is a very good thing.)

(What I'm packing: a copy of Mary Modern for the Yaddo library, some Petty Magic ARCs, one of the Moleskine notebooks Elliot gave me for Christmas, lots of looseleaf paper and gel pens, and a bunch of great books for research and/or pleasure. There's also a book of Dürer etchings—I thought I might use them for inspiration, you know, just sit and ruminate on "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" until I start getting ideas. I'll let you know how that little experiment goes.)

If I can get some good photos (and permission, when needed) I’ll be sure to post them (after 4pm!), and in the meantime this thing is set to auto-blog: more photos from Eastern Europe, great books, and some random nerdy stuff.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Bucharest

2010-03-30T07:59:00.001-04:00

(A grave marker in the courtyard of the folk museum.)

Everywhere we went in Romania, people seemed incredulous that we would want to spend a night in Bucharest. Truth be told, we were only there to have lunch (which turned into just drinks—alas, there was a misunderstanding with the dates) with my Romanian publisher, but we ended up really enjoying our visit to the folk museum, and the weather was great (which always improves your opinion of a place, no? can't help it.)

And of course, the architecture and vaguely Byzantine holy art were highlights.

We watched a restoration artist high up on the scaffolding, touching up these frescoes (are they actually frescoes?) And the courtyard of another church building nearby:

(Ornamental caryatids outside the arcade where we had dinner for Elliot's birthday.)

Next up: a whirlwind visit to Belgrade, complete with a flash flood.

Galley giveaway winners!

2010-03-29T08:00:00.003-04:00

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest! I drew names over coffee on Friday morning, and the winners were @AngelaPardue, @angelynnodom, @eheinlen, @melistress, and @chickwithbooks. The galleys are going in the mail today.

(That's my WIP bucket bag from MadebyLoumms. Their bags are ADORABLE and very well made!)

Sundress!

2010-03-24T19:59:00.004-04:00

(Thank you for all those enthusiastic comments about Petty Magic—I wish I could give every one of you a galley!)

On a sultry day in Brooklyn last summer, I envied every girl out and about in a pretty sundress. Feminine vanity aside, they were keeping a lot cooler than I was in jeans. I wanted sundresses, one for every day of the week.

The pattern is Heather Ross's Mendocino sundress, which she has generously posted on her website. I usually try to buy from a designer/shop offering free patterns, and I did pick up some awesome Mendocino fabric via Fabricworm, but I decided to use it for a different dress out of Cal Patch's Design-It-Yourself Clothes: Patternmaking Simplified. (More on that later.)

I know this is going to sound really nerdy, but I've been in love with this calico since I was a teenager. I'd bought a few yards of it at a mom-and-pop fabric shop back in high school for a dress I got quite a bit of wear out of but am much too embarrassed to show you, and every time I looked at that old dress in my scrap pile I wished I had more to sew something up using a proper pattern. I finally made it back to that shop before Christmas, and what do you know—they still had the fabric, and it was still four bucks a yard!

I remember Kelly saying (back in the day) that it was the sort of thing one's grandmother would wear—"in a good way." This fabric is very vintage-y (heck, it probably is vintage)—that's why I love it so much.

A few notes, if you want to make this dress:

—It was $6.47 at FedEx Office to get the pattern printed on a 24 x 44" sheet of paper. A little bit more than I thought it would be, but taping a lot of smaller pages together would have been rather tedious. (Apparently FedEx ate Kinko's. Whatever it's called nowadays, the email-to-print service is pretty nifty.)

—The schematic indicates that you should position the pockets 14 to 18" below the top of the dress; I decided on 18" because I'm tall, but when I finished sewing the seams and tried it on (insofar as it could be 'tried on' at that stage) my hands hardly reached the pockets. I decided they weren't worth adjusting, seeing as I probably wouldn't use the pockets anyway, so I just ripped the pocket seams and stitched up the sides. But if I make this dress again I'll go with a pocket placement of 14".

—You need elastic thread for the shirring. A nice lady at Jo-Ann pointed me to Dritz brand in the notions section (with all the other types of elastic), which is a lot less expensive per yard than the smaller spools you find on the rack with all the other types of sewing thread. (It's $1.59 for 30 yards of Dritz versus 11 yards of Gutermann. Or you could buy a ginormous spool of it here, but I can't imagine ever needing or using $40 worth of elastic thread unless you're also making jewelry.)

—Found some handy tips at Projects & Preoccupations. For one, the back hem needs to be taken up a bit more than the front because of the extra fabric at the bust—that probably wouldn't have occurred to me on my own! So I pinned up the hem and tried it on before sewing.

(Long-arming it. I wanted to get a detail of the shirring, but every close-up I took was basically 'and here are my boobs!')

This dress was quick to make, too—took less than a week. The pattern says you can sew the whole thing in an afternoon, and if I make another one I'm sure it'll go a lot faster.

I'm excited to be getting more proficient at sewing, but I have GOT to become tidier and more careful—I have a bad habit of dropping pins in the carpet. Yesterday I went for a run, and on my walk back to the car I felt something sharp in my sock. Yup. A pin. I'm lucky it didn't stab me in the foot. And last week I woke up and found safety pins under my pillow...at least they were closed!

(Thanks to my mother for the first photo.)

Petty Magic Teaser & Galley Giveaway

2010-03-22T17:15:00.013-04:00

The galleys have landed!

Petty Magic goes on sale on October 5th, and is now available to pre-order on Amazon.com! From the back cover:

Petty Magic:

Being the Memoirs and Confessions of

Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker.

In this brilliantly imagined tale of adventure and timeless romance, acclaimed novelist Camille DeAngelis blends WWII heroics with witchcraft and wit, conjuring a fabulously rich world where beldames and mortal men dare to fall in love.

Evelyn Harbinger sees nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At one hundred and forty nine years old, Eve may look like she bakes oatmeal cookies in the afternoon and dozes in her rocking chair in the evenings, but once the gray hair and wrinkles are traded for jet-black tresses and porcelain skin, she can still turn heads as the beautiful girl she once was. Can’t fault a girl for having a little fun, can you?

This is all fine and well until Eve meets Justin, who reminds her so much of a former lover, and one night is no longer enough. Eve spends more and more nights—and days—romancing Justin as her younger self, and noticing the many peculiar ways in which he is so like Jonah, her partner behind enemy lines in WWII and the love of her life. Experts in espionage, Jonah and Eve advanced the Allied cause at great personal sacrifice, and Jonah lost his life. Now Eve suspects that her Jonah has returned to her, and despite the disapproval of her coven, and the knowledge that love with a mortal man can only end in sorrow, she can’t give him up. But can she prove it’s really him?

I have five galleys to give away. Here's what we'll do: to enter, just tweet (or re-tweet) about Petty Magic. If you re-tweet and follow me (@PettyMagic), you'll be entered twice. Of course, if you are already following me on Twitter then you get two too. (Yep, doing it old-school—I'm picking names out of a hat.) If I happen to draw your name twice (or if you've already been promised a galley), you'll just get the one; not that I wouldn't love to give you an extra to pass along, but these things are in short supply.

I'll draw the names on Friday morning. Isn't this exciting?!

The Backyard Tourist

2010-03-19T17:45:00.008-04:00

The Betsy Ross House at 239 Arch Street.

I'm from a town only twenty minutes or so outside Philadelphia, but I don't know the city as well as I should. My dad took us on family outings (the Art Museum, City Hall, the holiday light show at Wanamaker's, etc.), concerts in high school and college with Anjuli, and there was the occasional field trip to the Franklin Institute or where have you...so usually somebody else is doing the navigating.

Kate and Elliot were home last weekend, and we decided to have a mini-adventure in the city on Sunday afternoon. We didn't have much time, so we decided on the Betsy Ross House—we'd never been there before (surprising given that my dad's a history buff), and a visit only takes half an hour or so.

It was really neat to tour an unrenovated 18th-century house, and until you go you don't realize just how little you knew about the lady who designed and sewed the first American flag. I don't remember ever learning in school that she ran an upholstery shop, and that was why she was chosen for the job. Betsy Ross was an incredibly resilient woman: giving birth to seven daughters, widowed three times (twice before the age of thirty!!!), running her own business and surviving wartime Philadelphia and continual economic hardship.

Just around the corner is Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited street in the city (and it very well could be the oldest in the country). All the townhouses on this quaint little street were erected between 1728 and 1836. It's a magical place—very much like a mews I invented for Petty Magic.

And afterwards we went to Marra's, a South Philly institution. Marra's pizza is far and away the best I've ever had. The service is indifferent, but the atmosphere is wonderfully old-school Italian-American. Our dad used to take us here when we were kids.

(Best to get a plain pie though—the veggies are okay, but it's the plain pizza that's really excellent.)

Eastern Europe retroblog: Sinaia

2010-03-18T08:00:00.003-04:00

(This photo was taken in Braşov, where we had dinner at a pizzeria after the Piatra Craiului trip—hooray, no more polenta and sour cream! The little ~~Germany~~ Belgium flags came with dessert.)

There is one thing that sticks in my head about Sinaia—the architecture. Holy cow, what amazing architecture, and not only at Peleş Castle. There were lots of houses like this in Sinaia:

If I were going to live in this house I would have to become a mad artist and adopt at least three dozen cats.

Peleş Castle is really spectacular, inside and out. It was built in the late 19th century to serve as the summer residence of King Carol I. It's one of Romania's biggest tourist attractions, and you can see why.

In the next installment, we are pleasantly surprised to find that Bucharest isn't the craphole everyone's been telling us it is!

Process, part 2

2010-03-16T08:00:00.003-04:00

(Process, part 1.)

Here's a page from one of my NUIG notebooks. People always seem surprised that I don't write in chronological order, but to me it makes sense (during the rough draft, once the thing has been loosely plotted) to write whichever scene I feel like writing, and stitch them together afterward.

(Click here for a better view.)

In this case, I'd only just started the draft in earnest (notice the date up top: 6 October 2004), but I was already working on the graveyard scene that begins on page 218. Some famous writer said that if you know how your novel is going to end before you've written it, then it isn't worth writing at all. Biggest load of baloney I ever heard.

Victory Jumper—squee!

2010-03-15T08:00:00.007-04:00

(Victory jumper, part 1.)

Is this not the most fabulous thing I have ever knit?!

Pattern: Your Victory Jumper by Home Notes (published June 2, 1945)
Yarn: Regia 4-Ply (kardinal, #1078, just over two skeins) and Lang Jawoll Superwash (all of three skeins of petrol, #0088, and a skein of green, #0116)
Needles: #2.5s for the body, #1.5s for the ribbing
Raveled: here (with full notes on mods made).

I was hoping this would turn out kick-ass so I could wear it in my new author photo (which has yet to be taken). I was also hoping there'd be sunshine this weekend, but alas.

I have only one wish-I'd-done-differently this time, and that's the sleeve length. I wish I'd knit them a couple inches longer so the ribbing doesn't scrunch at the elbows. But that's pretty nit-picky I guess.

(Thanks to Li'l Pete for the photos.)

Eastern Europe retroblog: Piatra Craiului

2010-03-10T08:00:00.003-05:00

From Sighişoara we took the train to Braşov, a medium-sized town we used as a jumping-off point for a hiking trip in the Piatra Craiului mountains. (Pee-AH-trah Cry-OO-lee.) We also made a day trip to Rasnov, and spent a very wet afternoon at the fortress there:

While we were in Braşov I also got my first (and last) taste of polinka. If the bartender had served me battery acid I wouldn't have known the difference.

So, the hiking trip. We left our extra stuff at the hostel in Braşov and took a train to Zărneşti, a rather frightening little place—ramshackle cement huts, muddy unpaved roads and way too many stray dogs—and hiked to a cabana we'd found in Lonely Planet. We weren't sure what to expect, because the guidebook description was pretty vague (which is a sure sign the author hadn't actually been there; don't ask me how I know); but we were pleasantly surprised to find the place was basically a hotel—rustic but clean and comfortable. In the restaurant Kate and I ordered more polenta with sour cream and defrosted veggies (and we were lucky to find that much!), while Elliot got, ahem, adventurous. To this day I bet he still isn't precisely sure what he ate for dinner.

This dog followed us out of Zărneşti all the way to the cabana. It became such a nuisance that Kate and Elliot named it Sophia, after Kate's crazy freshman-year roommate, and we only got rid of it the following afternoon (yes, it hung around outside the cabana overnight) when some farmers' dogs went after it.

Anyway, we spent most of the following day on a walk deeper into the mountains. When we passed farmsteads with people outside we felt quite awkward, but fortunately nobody laughed at the dumb tourists, or yelled at us to get off their land. We didn't encounter any other hikers, as far as I can recall.

It was getting pretty nippy as we climbed; towards the end we were walking in snow.

Me: “I can’t feel my butt!”
Elliot: “Don’t worry. It’s still there.”

We were going to climb this. Then we decided we'd rather just go back to the cabana and watch Elliot eat some more cat intestines under a giant moose trophy (why didn't I get a picture?)

On the walk back we played GHOST. I insisted that "xylophonic" is a word, but Elliot was having none of it.

Next installment: Sinaia.

Process

2010-03-09T09:00:00.003-05:00

I was sorting through old journals recently, and found some very rough notes for Mary Modern taken before I even got to Galway.

(Better view here. Or just click on the photo.)

I thought it might be fun to put up a few pages to give you a glimpse of the story in its earliest stage of development. (I don't know about you, but I eat this stuff up.)

(Better view here.)

After all, you've got to start someplace...

Eastern Europe retroblog: Sighişoara, part 2

2010-03-05T08:00:00.002-05:00

The torture and weapons museums were a barrel of laughs and all, but my favorite sight in Sighişoara is the Church on the Hill. It is the most picturesque graveyard I have ever had the pleasure of wandering through. To get there, you climb a covered staircase dating to the 17th century:

And at the top there's a church (locked, when we went), and a rectory:

(Lucky priests!)

And then there's the graveyard, with all the old headstones tucked into the hillside.

Elliot: "Give me some of that coconut chocolate."
Kate: [farts]

Next: Piatra Craiului.

Dame Alice

2010-03-04T08:00:00.004-05:00

(Here's a bit about the most famous Irish witch, Dame Alice Kyteler, adapted from a Moon Ireland sidebar.)

Easily the most colorful character in Kilkenny history, Dame Alice Kyteler was a businesswoman in the early 14th century who gained more money and power with each husband she acquired. There were four in all, and since each died under mysterious circumstances it was inevitable that Dame Alice should be accused of witchcraft. According to Peter Somerville-Large in Irish Eccentrics, Dame Alice allegedly led her coven in parodies of the Mass using dead men's fingernails and the shrouds of unbaptized boys. "She sacrificed nine red cocks and nine peacock's eyes to her incubus, Art, or Robert, who had carnal knowledge of her in the shape of a cat [or] a hairy black dog..."

Though formally charged in 1324, her influential friends (her brothers-in-law, mostly) had the offending bishop, Richard de Ledrede, imprisoned for seventeen days. The trial commenced upon his release, however, and Dame Alice and her servant girl, Petronilla, were sentenced to burn at the stake. Dame Alice fled the country the night before the execution, leaving loyal Petronilla to her fiery fate on the third of November, 1324. (Somerville-Large gives the 3rd of September, 1325 as the date of execution.)

Alice Kyteler's firstborn son, William Outlawe, agreed to give alms to the poor and re-roof the choir stalls at St. Canice's Cathedral to avoid the gallows. Dame Alice was never seen or heard of again.

If this story captures your imagination as it did mine, you'll want to hunt down a copy of Emma Donoghue's The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (Half.com link here). "Looking for Petronilla" is the best of the collection.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Sighişoara

2010-03-02T08:00:00.002-05:00

Sighişoara, a medieval citadel town in Transylvania, was easily my favorite stop in Romania—by turns tranquil and spooky. Plus, Sigguhshwahruh rolls so satisfyingly off the tongue! (We have been informed that this pronunciation is not quite correct, which fortunately does not make our way any less fun to say.)

On the train from Budapest. I'm reading The Pesthouse by Jim Crace, my own personal Santa Claus. (Got oodles of compliments on that t-shirt, including a marriage proposal from another American tourist in Dubrovnik.)

A view of the 14th-century clock tower from the center of town; the view from the top (doesn't it make you want to live here forever and ever?); allegorical clock figures; a shot of the handrail.

It's a long way from Jersey.

Next is Sighişoara part 2: the covered staircase and the Church on the Hill.

Great Book #45: Lord of the Flies

2010-03-01T08:00:00.011-05:00

I somehow got out of reading this one in middle school Language Arts class, but I was always curious about it; Lord of the Flies is one of those novels nobody seems to like (or if they do they don't own up to it). It’s a shocking book, but what shocked me most was how much I enjoyed it. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, which is always a particular treat since you hear the story exactly as it was intended to be read.

Even if you haven't read this book you've probably heard how ugly it gets: English schoolboys plane-wrecked on a deserted island during World War II attempt to form a civilization, which quickly disintegrates. Ralph is focused on maintaining a signal-fire so they can be rescued, while Jack is only interested in hunting pigs and unseating Ralph as 'chief'. Jack succeeds in turning the rest of the 'tribe' against Ralph, and they literally begin to hunt him down like a wild animal.

It doesn't matter that how they came to be there—why all boys and no girls? evacuated from where, to where? None of the boys mention having been anywhere outside of England—is implausible, and the ending even more so. The boys' descent into savagery is horrifying because it is, for the most part, believable. On any school playground anywhere in the world you can witness myriad minor cruelties that, in the absence of adult supervision, could snowball all too easily; the innocence of childhood is just a veneer over our cruel primal instincts. Jack—what is he, twelve, thirteen?—uses the prospect of a phantom in the forest to rally the boys behind him, paints his face with pig's blood, and does not care that his obsessive ambition to lead the group results in at least two violent deaths. The fearmongering and the struggle for power, the mad despot, the merciless scapegoating and the torturing of anyone who dares to disagree...it all sounds awfully familiar.

Golding's prose can be, erm, too evocative (particularly when the boys go after a wild pig with bloodthirsty glee), but some of the descriptive bits are really splendid: "the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence"; "a sudden communion of shining eyes in the gloom"; "the tree trunks and the creepers that festooned them lost themselves in a green dusk thirty feet above him". And it's not just the jungle atmosphere he nails: "Piggy sat expressionless behind the luminous wall of his myopia." I wonder if somebody with perfect eyesight could understand how apt that sentence is, because I sure do. (Poor Piggy! We never find out what his real name is.)

Golding begins and ends his recording with a conversational bit about how he came to write the book. He said he had to make the group boys only, because if it had been mixed the book would have had to be primarily about sex, and if it had been only girls they would have behaved a whole lot better and there wouldn't have been a story. I don't know about that—at times in my adolescence it certainly seemed like the cattiness of girls was a far more insidious thing than the boys' tendency towards violence and domination—but I did appreciate this: 'I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior, and always have been.' As my grandmother says: 'Amen, brother. Amen.'

Eastern Europe retroblog: Budapest

2010-02-27T15:00:00.005-05:00

Kate and Elliot and I went backpacking through Eastern Europe in May and June 2007. We wanted to combine travel with some sort of service project, and while that part didn't turn out exactly as we'd hoped (more on that in the Bosnia installment), we still had an amazing time. Just looking back over the photos is thawing out my toes (more snow tomorrow, says the weatherman, and these days the weatherman is always right), so I think I'll start retroblogging a bit before the three- year mark.

(Three years! How did that happen?!)

We did Budapest for a few days, then Romania—Sighişoara, Braşov and Rasnov, hiked in the Piatra Craiului mountains, back to Braşov, Sinaia, and to Bucharest to meet my Romanian publisher—then a night train to Belgrade, one night in Kotor in Montenegro; then Dubrovnik, Split, and Hvar Island in Croatia; then a night each in Mostar and Sarajevo, where we split up—Elliot had to go home, so he took a train back to Budapest, and Kate and I went on to Brčko (still in Bosnia) to volunteer at a summer camp for ten days.

There aren't as many descriptive journal passages on this trip; I was focused on taking notes for stories and working on rough drafts of answers for a Mary Modern Q&A, because the book was coming out two weeks after we got home. I also read even more than I usually do when traveling—three Angela Carter novels, The Pesthouse, and a bunch of other good books. I copied this little gem from Wise Children (one of my very favorite novels) onto the first page of a new journal:

“It doesn’t matter if what happens next spoils everything; the anticipation itself is always pure.”

(So true, it hurts.)

(Kate going for attempted drowning #2 at the Gellert baths.)

I have to say, apart from the baths Budapest wasn't my favorite stop—we had a weird hostel experience, and all the supposedly quaint and old-fashioned bars and cafes the guidebook recommended turned out to be tourist traps.

Of course, the middle-aged men in speedos at the Szechenyi baths made up for all that...

And here are a few shots from Castle Hill (the painting is a detail of Klára Zách I, on display at the Hungarian National Gallery; better view on Wikipedia):

Elliot: “It’s not that I’m being contrarian. It’s just that I’m right.”

Outside the opera house—we did the tour, which was worthwhile. (I have a thing for sphinxes. I don't know why, except that they're awesome.)

Next installment: Sighişoara, Romania (my favorite!)

Witchcraft versus Sorcery

2010-02-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Another tidbit from Peter Somerville-Large's Irish Eccentrics:

'The distinction between witchcraft and sorcery seems to be one of degree; sorcery is the more sophisticated pursuit, since its practitioners seem to be rather masters of the devil than his slaves. Of course, the advantage is only temporary.'

So remember that the next time a winged man-goat offers you wealth, success, and eternal life for a nominal fee.

[Woodcut from Life.com.]

Victory Jumper

2010-02-22T08:07:00.001-05:00

I'm not a monogamous knitter, for the most part, but I'm making an exception for this because it is keeping me cheerful:

I have been wanting to make the Victory Jumper in a not quite so patriotic color scheme. (Here's the link to the original pattern page on the Victoria & Albert Museum website; the pattern was published just after V-E Day.) A teeny bit of irony: I'm knitting it in German sock yarn.

(Actually, Lang is a Swiss company, so the blue and the green are neutral.)

Isn't it a lovely color combination? I'd originally picked up the Jawoll and Regia at a couple yarn/craft stores in Berlin, and when I showed Kelly my loot she pointed out how well the three colors would look together.

Colors aside, I think it's a good idea to use wool/nylon sock yarn—this way the underarms won't felt like they did on the jumper I made out of Yorkshire Tweed. (Something I have learned: it is not wise to use 100% wool for a jumper you plan to wear against the skin.)

(Should have windexed the mirror first...)

Oh yes, there will be three-quarter sleeves. Wrote up the other mods I'm making on my Ravelry project page.

Irish Saints and other Human Oddities

2010-02-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

In the course of researching my new novel—(what a terrible thrill I just got when I typed that!)—I came across a delightful book called Irish Eccentrics by Peter Somerville-Large. The chapter on "Miracle Makers, Rhymers, Witches, Giants and Oddities" is especially weird and entertaining:

There were ten speckled saints and eleven leper saints. Others more fantastical had attributes connected with ancient fertility beliefs. Many were prolific, like the female saint, Darerca, who had seventeen sons and two daughters. The sons all became bishops while the daughters remained virgins. A bisexual like Mochue Cicheach had remarkable breasts which 'fed babies of future eminence.' Other saints had three and even four breasts. Others were odder still, like Fer Caille, who had buttocks like cheese, one arm and one leg and a long enough nose to be looped around the branch of a tree.

(No, I'm not making this up.)

More excerpts to follow...

The Art of Kissing

2010-02-14T10:35:00.005-05:00

"Arrange it so that the girl is seated against the arm of the sofa."

Back in high school I came across The Art of Kissing, a reproduction of a booklet first published in 1936, and seeing as it's Valentine's Day I thought I'd dust it off and blog about it. As the following passage will show, it has very little to offer in the way of practical advice:

"For a kiss can never be absolutely defined. Because each kiss is different from the one before and the one after. Just as no two people are alike, so are no two kisses alike. For it is people who make kisses. Real, live people pulsating with life and love and extreme happiness."

Gotta love that florid old-school prose, especially when applied to the subject of "osculations"; we are also provided with a very illuminating definition of the word tumescence. Every time I rediscover this book I wonder about the author, 'Hugh Morris.' Debonair man-about-town, or middle-aged pervert hunched over a typewriter in a terrycloth bathrobe? (Two guesses and the first doesn't count.)

"Different Sizes of Mouths Require a Different Technique in Kissing."

Morris quotes liberally from the love poems of Catullus, Horace, and somebody named Sir John Suckling, but as you might expect from a pamphlet published in 1936, misogyny is the overarching theme: "It is, therefore, necessary that the man be taller than the woman" because a man "must always give the impression of being his woman's superior, both mentally and especially physically."

(Good God, am I glad I was born at the right end of the twentieth century!)

It gets worse—the author stops just short of condoning out-and-out rape. "If she flinches, don't worry. If she flinches and makes an outcry, don't worry. If she flinches, makes an outcry and tries to get up from the sofa, don't worry. Hold her, gently but firmly, and allay her fears with kind, reassuring words. Remember what Shakespeare said about 'a woman's no!'"

Oh, but he's just warming up: "However, if she flinches, makes an outcry, a loud, stentorian outcry, mind you, and starts to scratch your face, then start to worry or start to get yourself out of a bad situation. Such girls are not to be trifled with...or kissed. It is such as they, in most cases, who still believe the story of the stork which brings babies because of the consequences of a kiss."

What an absurd little man you were, Hugh Morris! No doubt you concocted all this dangerous nonsense simply because every woman you encountered was much too smart to be snogging the likes of you.

I sat down to make fun of this thing and look what came out. Sorry about that. I think I'll go eat some candy hearts now.

(Thanks to eliz.avery on Flickr for scanning all the delightful illustrations. Check out her photostream, there's plenty more where that came from.)

Snickerdoodles

2010-02-11T09:00:00.001-05:00

I meant to post my aunt's snickerdoodle recipe before Christmas, but I had trouble recreating the fabulously chewy and flavorful cookies she produces seemingly without effort. (This is heavily tweaked from a recipe out of a magazine, I can't recall which one.)

4 cups flour
2½ cups dark brown sugar
1½ cups unsalted butter, softened
3 large eggs
3 teaspoons cream of tartar
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons baking soda
6 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used olive)
6 tablespoons cinnamon

(The more cinnamon you use, the better—dump it in! My aunt Kathy's snickerdoodles are like a cinnamon explosion in your mouth.)

Preheat to 400º. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for ten minutes. Yields about four dozen medium-sized cookies.

Snapshots from Galway

2010-02-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church; a double rainbow (view from the Bridge Mills); the prom at low tide; boats on the Claddagh.

Gretel #2

2010-02-05T08:00:00.001-05:00

I haven't knit a hat to keep until now. Fuschia—fuchsia?—oh heck, magenta—may not be the most flattering color on me, but it makes me very happy whenever I look at it. This yarn has delicious little flecks of lavender and purple and green. I love Donegal tweed: vibrant colors, very sturdy, softens with washing, excellent value.

Pattern: Gretel by Ysolda (regular size; the Gretel I knit for my grandmother was fitted)
Yarn: Studio Donegal Aran Tweed (a.k.a. Kilcarra), 2 balls fuschia, from This is Knit.
Needles: #6s for ribbing (should have used #5s) and #7s.
Raveled here.

I was afraid the ribbing would be too stiff on #5s, but it's too loose on #6s—I think I'll thread in some elastic to make sure the hat stays put.

We pray for those we have loved, and see no more.

2010-02-04T08:00:00.008-05:00

While I was in Rye I entered St. Mary's Church during the daily service, and decided to sit down in the back and pay attention just for curiosity's sake (I'd never been to an Anglican service before). This line from the prayers of the faithful has stuck with me—we pray for those we have loved, and see no more.

Today would have been my grandmother's 87th birthday. She's been gone nearly fourteen years but I still miss her every day, and every time I pass the cemetery I think about the day they bought the plot, how she told my parents they could wave whenever they drove by on Route 130. Then, according to my dad, she started laughing hysterically, which kind of weirded him out; but if I'd been there, I know I would have laughed too.

Anyway, every so often doesn't it feel good to celebrate the people who have helped make us who we are? My grandmother was kind and smart and patient and wise. She was selfless to a fault. She made the best meatloaf (and I say that as someone who hasn't eaten meat in almost ten years). She was one of the few adults who would play games with us—Old Maid, Go Fish, Trouble, and swimming races. She always let me win.

And she was, of course, a voracious reader.

Now this portrait looks over my writing desk.

Socks for the New Year

2010-02-01T09:00:00.002-05:00

(Happy Birthday, Shelley!)

I love travel knitting because whatever you wind up working on will bring to mind all the other experiences you had during that trip. These socks will always remind me of hanging out at Seanan's with Deirdre and Diarmuid, and meeting Emma at Foyle's, and that lazy snowy day in Rye, and the sweet ladies in the Ryanair queue (after our flight was cancelled) who had a bet going as to what I was working on (one said socks and the other guessed it was a sleeve on a baby sweater), and knitting with Jenny and John at a pub in Galway that looks like somebody's great-granny's sitting room, and 'crafterevening' with Shelley, and staying up until 4 with Bríd in Dublin.

This pattern is fantastic. I really enjoyed working with the yarn too, although I wish I'd read the Ravelry comments about Smooshy before I decided to knit socks, because a lot of people say it doesn't wear well. The twisted rib feels quite sturdy though, so we'll see.

Pattern: Julia Socks by Emily Johnson
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy, spring tickle (one hank with enough left over for a pair of baby booties, yay!)
Needles: #1s
Raveled here.

(Yes, I stuck my feet in the air and took a picture.)

Bizarre Love Pentangle

2010-01-31T06:00:00.001-05:00

I have had an official request for more fun witchy things, in anticipation of the publication of Petty Magic in October. So here's a gem—I rediscovered this newspaper clipping from 2007 in my notes, from a newspaper Ailbhe brought with her when she came to New York for the Mary Modern book launch.

How to win over an Elizabethan woman with a frog, an ant hill and a ring
Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2007
As a sure-fire way to win a woman's love, it lacks credibility and could lead to a charge of animal cruelty.
An incantation that surfaces at an auction next month in a unique handwritten manuscript of magic spells advises late-Elizabethan males: "Take a frog and put him in a pot and stop it fast."
The anonymous author then advises the love-seeker to bury the pot in an ant hill at a crossroads for nine days. Then the two bones remaining should be put in running water.
"One of them will float against the stream ... Make thee a ring, and take the part that swum against the stream and set it in the ring, and when you will have any woman put it on her right hand ... she shall never rest till she hath been with thee."
The obscure "manuscript grimoire", written between 1590 and 1620, contains a vast range of conjurations, incantations, signs, portents, spells and folk remedies. It was found among the effects of the artist Robert Lenkiewicz, who died in 2002, aged 60.
The painter once faked his own death and kept the embalmed body of a tramp in his studio for 20 years.
Now the slim volume, which includes angelic seals with coded messages, is expected to fetch up to £12,000 at a Sotheby's literature sale in London on July 13.
Dr Gabriel Heaton, a manuscripts specialist at Sotheby's, said yesterday: "This is a richly illustrated Elizabethan anthology.
"Much of the text is set within a Christian framework - but there are also signs of an older and darker tradition in the use of blood rituals and, on one occasion, a reversed pentangle."

Funkahedron

2010-01-30T06:23:00.002-05:00

Look, look—a stellated dodecahedron! I know, I'm a big nerd, but I think nerdiness is kind of a prerequisite here. It's got bells in it too. I hope my little nephew gets as big a kick out of it as I do.

(Pattern from Berroco, raveled here.)

Adventures in London, part 4

2010-01-29T06:25:00.002-05:00

(Here is the fourth and final installment, unfortunately rather short in the picture department.)

I'd been hoping to meet up with the lovely Emma of quelle erqsome, and we finally managed to get together for coffee at Foyle's when I got back from Rye (the day before I flew to Dublin). When Seanan got off work the three of us went to this amazing vegan Asian buffet before catching The Woe Betides at Bush Hall. We felt very old in the midst of so many scantily-clad fourteen-year-olds chugging from vodka bottles stashed in their purses (heck, I would have felt old if I'd been fourteen myself), but it was very good fun and of course The Woe Betides are terrific. (Check them out on iTunes too...I hope that link works.)

Anyway, Emma is one half of Made by Loumms, and I have admired their sock patterns and Etsy goodies for awhile now. I finally treated myself to a sock WIP bucket bag, which came in the mail the other day. It's awesome—really well made using adorable fabrics and nifty buttons, and each bag comes with a little lavender sachet (which I could smell as soon as I opened the envelope). I love that they use every last scrap of fabric to make these sachets—very make do and mend-y of them!

(The project inside the bag is my almost-finished Julia Socks, and the two hanks next to it are my prize yarn (squee!) from the Electric Sheep podcast for being The Funniest Person on the Internet.

Er...okay, One of Two People Who Submitted a Link to The Funniest Thing on the Internet, to be slightly more accurate.)

Rye

2010-01-28T06:12:00.005-05:00

I'd had a vague and way-too-ambitious notion of going to both Oxford and York while I was in England, but in the end I just decided to spend a couple nights in Rye, which is about two hours south-east of London. I'd read a little about medieval churches dotted along a spooky coastal marsh, though in the end I couldn't travel any farther because of the weather.

Rye is enchanting, especially under a liberal dusting of snow. I went to St. Mary's, but the tower was closed for fear of ice on the steps; all the most interesting shops (antiques, secondhand books, vintage clothing, YARN) were closed; and Lamb House (where Henry James lived while writing The Wings of the Dove) doesn't open until March or April. So there was absolutely nothing to do but walk around in the snow taking pictures, but that suited me fine.

Above: St. Mary's churchyard, mid-morning.

Below: the Landgate right after it had started to snow again; another view of the churchyard; at the bottom of Mermaid Street, mid-afternoon; the view from the top of Trader's Passage at 4:30pm; the Old Borough Arms (which I can't recommend highly enough).

Olivia's Birthday Cardi, take 2

2010-01-27T06:30:00.001-05:00

This child is destined to become a knitter, don't you think?

Knitting sweaters for kids is tricky. Ideally you want the garment to fit them for more than one winter, but you don't want to knit too big a size either.

I wanted to make a cardigan for my niece's third birthday, decided on a pattern—Alice Starmore's Secret Garden—and got halfway through knitting the 4/5-year-old size before I realized that, lovely as it is, it would truly look like a big purple sack on her. But if I'd knit the 2/3-year-old size, it would have been quite a bit of work for something she won't fit into this time next year. So I decided to finish the Secret Garden cardi for her fourth birthday, and knit her something quick in time for her party.

Which leads me to the other tricky thing about knitting for kids: there aren't enough patterns out there! I guess I'm just used to having tons of choices when knitting for myself or another adult. I had it in my head that she'd like a top-down garter-yoke cardigan (she's very fashionable, for a toddler), but I couldn't find anything to suit the yarn I had in my stash. So I winged it.

It's basically a downsized version of Melissa LaBarre's Garter Yoke Cardigan from Knitscene Fall '08, although I substituted the short-row instructions from the Sweetheart Cardigan by Laura Brown. I'd originally bought this Knit Picks Swish DK to make me some witches' britches, but I can always buy more when I eventually get around to knitting them. Or not, because the quality of this yarn is ridiculous—at several points it frayed to a hair's thickness, and I had to cut the yarn and start the ball again from the beginning of the row. (I've used Swish Worsted on several projects, and I like it, so I don't know what the deal is with the DK.)

I used buttons from my grandparents' tin—not the cutest option, but cute enough given that I had the right number. I have a half dozen heart-shaped buttons, but I'd rather save them for a project where I can use all six.

(Olivia's birthday was back in November, but I only got a chance to snap some photos just before Christmas, and when I went to Ireland and England I left my camera cable at home.)

Raveled here.

Adventures in London, part 3

2010-01-26T06:06:00.005-05:00

(A view of St. Paul's from the Millennium Bridge.)

On Seanan's day off we went to the Victoria & Albert. I spent the most time at the fashion exhibit, which was of course fantastic, although it was pretty hilarious to see a pink velour hoochy tracksuit behind glass like it was some precious artifact. When you go to the V&A you must have lunch (or at least tea) in the cafeteria, which is full of splendid tilework and stained glass windows featuring clever quotations about food. The other really memorable thing was Elizabeth Parker's needlepoint autobiography, which I feel sure I read or heard about in a blog or podcast awhile back, because reading the embroidery felt awfully familiar.

Then there were incredibly delicious fruity cocktails at Beach Blanket Babylon in Notting Hill, which were worth every cent of £9. (Just don't pay by credit card, because the waiter will try to confuse you into leaving a bigger tip than he deserves.)

The next day I went to the National Gallery expressly to see Venus & Mars (not that I didn't see a lot of other amazing paintings too—being able to view The Ambassadors in person was a really cool experience!), and then to the Royal College of Surgeons Museum, which is the final resting-place (er—of sorts) of the 'Irish Giant', Charles Byrne. (I'd recently read The Giant O'Brien by Hilary Mantel, a fictionalized account of Byrne's life as a professional oddity in London. Very well written, of course, but stinkin' depressing—his "friends" were all sitting around waiting for him to die so they could sell his body to John Hunter for an exorbitant price.)

Now to the meat of this post: the magical print shop that is T. Alena Brett on Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road (there's no website). Thousands of odd or otherwise special little antique prints, most of which are £3-5. I can't say enough good things about this place, or its owner. The building has a fascinating history as well—a long time ago it was a barber's shop, and as a boy Mozart had his hair cut there; and in the early 20th century it was a tea room frequented by several of the war poets (Rupert Brooke, et al). The tables were set up along the tiny balcony where I took the photo above.

Above: the Christmas window display at T. Alena Brett. Below: two of the prints I bought, 'Princess Fiorimonde' and 'Fair at Westminster in the Fourteenth Century'.

Adventures in London, part 2

2010-01-25T06:06:00.004-05:00

New Year's Day was pretty lazy—after hanging around Foyle's for awhile (Seanan was working), Deirdre and Diarmuid and I went to The George for some mulled wine. The building dates to the mid-1600s; Dickens drank there, and Shakespeare at an earlier tavern on the same site. Very quaint and surprisingly untouristy.

On the 2nd we went shopping at iKnit (Diarmuid was a real trooper) and Persephone Books, and eventually we got to the British Museum. I picked up some violet cremes (out of this world!!) at Hope & Greenwood to have at The Woman in Black, which was every bit as spooky as we hoped. Afterwards we met Seanan (who was just getting off work) and had a terrific dinner (with margaritas) at some Mexican place I can't remember the name of.

Above: a medieval grotesque at the British Museum.

Below: the main hall, and the Easter Island statue.

Deirdre and Diarmuid had to leave early on the 3rd, and Seanan was working, so I spent the day (mostly) browsing. There was yarn shopping—oh my, was there yarn shopping—and there was fabric, too, at the hallowed Liberty's, although I didn't end up buying anything because that place is so overwhelming it's impossible to make a decision!

Above: the Columbia Flower Market on a Sunday morning; graffiti art on the back of a truck at the Brick Lane market; Regent Street just before 5pm.

Hat for a Wise Man

2010-01-24T06:00:00.005-05:00

This is one of my favorite pictures of my grandfather—it conveys his personality so perfectly. He is playful and loving and unself-consciously wise; my favorite expressions of his are Don't take no wooden nickels! and What God's got in store for you ain't gonna pass you by.

I've made him two sweaters these last two Christmases, so this year I thought I'd make him a hat, since he doesn't seem to have a proper warm-and-wooly one. I've found a couple of simple hat patterns I can use for quickie gifts, but his hat has to be special.

(Kate is modeling—haven't gotten any shots of him wearing it yet.)

Pattern: a mash-up of the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat and Sally Pointer's Owls and Flowers chart (both Ravelry links); I changed the earflap shaping though, and added the chin-strap and buttons.
Yarn: Cascade 220 Heathers, one skein each of galaxy, turtle, and straw
Needles: #6s for the strap and #7s for the hat itself.
Gauge: 24 sts and 32 rows over 4” on #6s; 20 sts on #7s.
Raveled here.

Most ear-flap hats have long i-cord, chain-stitched, or twisted ties, but I couldn't really see him using the ties on a hat like that. I like it this way because the earflaps can be kept close to the ears using the strap, or held up by fastening the strap over the head, or the strap can just be fastened up on the button on the same side.

If I could knit it over again I'd probably use a finer yarn, cast on more stitches and knit three full repeats. As it is, I ought to have cast on a dozen or so extra stitches, because truth be told it's a little too snug.

(No, he is not having a convulsive fit.)

Grandpop to Grandmom: Turn off the damn light!
Kate: You two are cursing up a storm tonight.
Grandpop: That's married life for you. Now hand me that shoehorn.

Adventures in London, part 1

2010-01-23T06:00:00.005-05:00

On the 31st I flew from Knock to Stansted. Seanan, Deirdre, and Diarmuid met me at Liverpool Street station, and after I'd dropped my bags we romped around town for a bit—browsed at The Tea House and Hope & Greenwood, which has to be THE best sweet shop in the whole world.
The amusements at Leicester Square.

Then we went to Fortnum & Mason, the poshest department store ever, where I felt like a street urchin drooling over the candy counters.

Then we went home and Seanan cooked up a delicious dinner (spicy parsnip soup! in a bread bowl! an olive bread bowl! and filo pastries with spinach and brie and apples and pine nuts! and some no-doubt-yummy chocolatey thing I was way too full for! and he even got me amaretto and cranberry juice!!) It was a lovely laid-back New Year's Eve.

Westport!

2010-01-22T06:10:00.004-05:00

Shelley and James had their wedding in Westport on December 29th. She wore the shawl I knit her, which was perfect because the church was positively glacial. I had a fantastic time getting to know Shelley's friends from Dublin, Arizona, Michigan, and New York. Also, the Wyatt Hotel is outstanding—the staff were nice, the room was lovely (a double bed in a single room, yay!), and the food was much better than I expected. (The vegetarian breakfast came with fried goats cheese. Squee!)

(I love this picture. Most of my photos weren't very good, so I got this one from James' Facebook album. Shelley's friend Carolyn Tacey was the official wedding photographer.)

The day after the wedding a bunch of us drove out to Croagh Patrick (thanks for driving, Lorraine!)—after a delicious lunch at The Tavern, we just walked up to the statue of St. Patrick at the foot of the mountain—and after that we ambled around Murrisk Abbey for a bit.

Next post: adventures in London, part 1.

Welcome to Babyville, part 2

2010-01-21T06:06:00.004-05:00

I'm home! Been anxious to blog about this:

It's a zig-zag quilt, directions courtesy of Purl SoHo, measuring 40" x by 54" because I didn't want the baby to grow out of it right away (the sample quilt measures 32" by 44").

Ailbhe and Christian want to be surprised, which made choosing colors and fabrics slightly more challenging. Nothing too flowery, but I didn't want something too overtly boyish either. (I couldn't see giving the orange-and-blue Purl sample quilt to a little girl, for instance.)

I found this thoroughly adorable Alexander Henry owl fabric for the backing (from Fabric Worm on Etsy), and I think it's perfectly unisex. (This is what I told my mother, who was surprised to learn that owls are hermaphrodites.) (Edit: this was a really dumb joke!)

I chose the zig-zag colors to match the backing fabric, and decided that using salmon (it's not pink!) and blue would balance each other out. The fabrics are mostly fat quarters from Jo-Ann, though I did pick up two of the three salmon fabrics (and the quilt batting) from Purl SoHo while I was in New York. I used this handy tutorial to help with the binding.

It's not perfect, but it's only the second quilt I've made—this project was definitely an exercise in anti-perfectionism. I'd never have finished it in time otherwise! There are definitely more quilts in my future...

Oh, and here's the baby heffalump with his sweater vest.

His name is Edmund (pending baby's approval).

Menagerie

2010-01-15T22:57:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I've been traveling in Ireland and England the last few weeks, and naturally I left my camera cable at home. I'll have lots to blog about when I get home next week.

But here's something I can share now—awhile back Ailbhe had asked if I'd make her a menagerie of knitted animals for her little one when the time came. Menagerie member #1 was Mr. Penguin, and here is his first comrade:

It's Ysolda's Elijah, a terrific pattern I've knit once before, using Knit Picks Swish on #3s. I also made him a little vest with leftover Cascade 220 Superwash, but that photo will have to wait until I get home...

(Raveled here.)

Pumpkin Pie Tartlets

2009-12-24T12:00:00.001-05:00

When baking a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, I found I had some dough and filling left over. I took out a muffin tin and baked a few miniature pies, which turned out really well, so I made them again for our Christmas Eve shindig.

I used the pumpkin pie recipe from Domestic Sluttery (plus a dash of a few extra spices—cardamom, nutmeg, and cloves), and my favorite pie crust (from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis). The crust is very simple: 2 cups flour, 2 sticks butter, one egg beaten with enough ice water to make 3/4 cup, 1/2 teaspoon salt, refrigerate for one hour.

And just for convenience (the Domestic Sluttery recipe uses metric measurements), here's the list of filling ingredients for us Americans:

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each of ginger, nutmeg, and cardamom, plus a dash of cloves
2 eggs
1.5 cups pumpkin puree
one 14-oz. tin of evaporated milk

With the oven preheating at 425º, I used a rolling pin and then cut out the tiny crusts with the lip of a drinking glass. (They'll pop out easily, so no need to grease the muffin tin.) They bake at 425º for the first 15 minutes, then at 350º for another 35-40 minutes. Yields about two dozen pumpkin pie tartlets.

These would make a fantastic dessert for a seasonal cocktail party. Also, hardly anybody ate the pie at Thanksgiving, so it sat in the fridge for several days before we finished it—this might sound weird, but I think portion-sized pies are more hygienic.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Then & Now

2009-12-20T16:28:00.007-05:00

The field behind our house, 17 September 2009:

The field behind our house, 20 December 2009:
(Both of these pictures were taken around 4pm.)

And look at this drift outside my bedroom window—isn't it beautiful?

Great Book #70: Suite Française

2009-12-17T09:00:00.008-05:00

I remember the literary hubbub surrounding the English-language publication of Suite Française in the summer of 2006: the trade paperback was stacked on the front table of every bookstore I walked into, with that melancholy tinted black-and- white cover photo of a couple —in a crowded city square, a single suitcase at their feet—who clearly have no idea where they'll lay their heads tonight.

Irène Némirovsky was a Parisian Catholic (of Russian-Jewish extraction) who died at Auschwitz in August 1942 at the age of 39, and this unfinished novel wasn't discovered until the author's daughter started going through her notebooks in the 1990s. I've been listening to the audiobook while I knit, and I understand why the critics have called it a masterpiece: the prose is beautiful, clear and unaffected, and it's remarkable that Némirovsky could cast such cool, keen eye on something so horrible that was happening in real time—the story reads like it was written with the benefit of many years' hindsight.

Most of the characters are intensely unlikable, and in their flight from Paris they resemble rats on a sinking ship. Only the Michauds—humble, hardworking, and sick with worry over the fate of their son—are characters we can get behind. The Michauds are the only men in the book who don’t trample on others to save their own skins; unlike the other men, Maurice Michaud doesn’t consider himself irreplaceable.

Yet there are occasional moments of grace: a refugee crouching in a ditch during an air raid notices a white butterfly flitting among the wildflowers; a mother holds her child so tightly it seems as if she wants to put the baby back into her womb, the only safe place; a young woman tends to a wounded soldier during “the summer they were 20, in spite of everything.”

These moments are rare, however. The book is divided in two (the “suite” being unfinished): “A Storm in June” follows a bunch of miserly, hypocritical Parisian snobs as they flee the city, and “Dolce” observes a community of superstitious farm wives, including two young women locked into cold and loveless marriages. The novel’s prevailing attitude can be encapsulated by Hubert Péricand, who leaves his family a foolhardy teenager eager to see battle, and returns to them a cynical young man:

The people around him, his family, his friends, aroused a feeling of shame and rage within him. He had seen them on the road, them and people like them: he recalled the cars full of officers running away with their beautiful yellow trunks and their painted women, civil servants abandoning their posts, panic-stricken politicians dropping files of secret papers along the road, young girls, who had diligently wept the day the armistice was signed, being comforted in the arms of the Germans. “And to think that no one will know, that there were will be such a conspiracy of lies that all this will be transformed into yet another glorious page in the history of France. We’ll do everything we can to find acts of devotion and heroism for the official records. Good God! To see what I've seen! Closed doors where you knock in vain to get a glass of water and refugees who pillaged houses; everywhere, everywhere you look, chaos, cowardice, vanity and ignorance! What a wonderful race we are!”

Living (and dying) the way she did, witnessing all that she did, it’s no wonder Némirovsky’s characters are either selfish bastards or misanthropes. From the preface to the French edition: "She had absolutely no illusions, not about the attitude of the inert French masses—'loathsome' in their defeat and collaboration—nor about her own fate." She refused to stop writing even when the rest of the French publishing industry were rolling over for the Nazis, and she knew they would eventually murder her for it.

There is a violent act towards the end of "A Storm in June" that disturbed me so much I had to stop listening for a couple of months (I started the book in early October). I don't want to tell you what happened that so turned my stomach, in case this novel is on your list, but suffice it to say my mother will not be reading Suite Française. The passage in question is one of the most shocking things I have ever read.

I get that war is hell and it brings out the very worst in people, but doesn’t it also, if only occasionally, bring out the very best? There were plenty of people who didn’t wish to survive at the cost of their humanity; not every person in France was apathetic, not everyone was a collaborator; just because the word “heroism” is grossly overused doesn’t mean there are no heroes. We see virtually none of that in Suite Française because that wasn't the author's experience; but I imagine it's rather difficult to give your characters a happy ending when you know your own will be anything but.

Patternmaking with Cal Patch

2009-12-16T08:30:00.005-05:00

I'm trying to improve my sewing skills, so to that end I signed up for a patternmaking workshop at the Brooklyn General Store last Sunday. There wasn't actually any sewing involved (yet)—you take your own measurements and plot them on newsprint paper to make a pattern for a jersey t-shirt. As it turned out, I was the only person who showed up for the class, so I basically got a private lesson with the marvelous Cal Patch.

Cal has recently published Design-It-Yourself Clothes: Patternmaking Simplified, which I really wanted to buy on the spot, but I must sheepishly confess that I can't bring myself to pay full price for a book when I can get a discount online. (Cal is totally cool with this, and she feels the same way; authors receive the same percentage whether you pay the list price or get 40% off. It turns out we're both published by Crown/Random House, and we talked about how the titles on the Potter Craft list have gotten much better in the last couple of years. Her book being proof of that, of course!) I'm planning to use some of my Christmas loot to order myself a copy.

Her book is full of patterns that are fresh and modern without being trendy, and they're designed so you can easily modify them to suit your own taste and measurements. It was raining hard when we left Brooklyn General, but I was feeling really cheerful and inspired despite having no umbrella. Cal is a great teacher, and I highly recommend taking a class with her.

Pizzelles!

2009-12-15T14:30:00.005-05:00

My aunt, grandparents and I baked a ton of cookies last Friday: chocolate chip, anisette toast (same thing as biscotti), almond cookies filled with raspberry jam, snickerdoodles (recipe forthcoming)...and the prettiest cookies of all, pizzelles. You can buy them in a plastic tub at the grocery store, but as with everything else in life, the homemade kind is infinitely better. Here are a few shots of my grandfather baking pizzelles using a waffle iron that's at least sixty years old.

'Fante's, 1006 E. 9th St., Phila. PA'

He melts some butter on the iron, drops a gob of dough on, closes it, and leaves it on the open flame for twenty seconds or so, flipping the iron midway through and cooking for another twenty seconds.

It takes up to ten minutes for the iron to get good and hot, so the first half dozen cookies weren't golden brown like they ideally would be.

Here's my grandparents' recipe, should you like to try your hand with an electric iron like this one (or look for an old-school iron on eBay, knock yourself out):

6 eggs
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. vanilla or anise
1/2 lb. butter or margarine
half orange rind and juice

Whisk eggs and add sugar gradually, beating until smooth. Add cooled butter and flavoring. Sift flour and baking powder together and add to egg mixture. Dough should be sticky enough to drop by spoonful.

My crazy 84-year-old grandfather doubled this recipe and stood at the stove for four and a half hours without a break, baking these pizzelles one at a time, blithely ignoring our pleas for him to sit down and rest. Crazy, I tell you.

They taste great with eggnog.

the Aran sweater myth

2009-12-10T09:18:00.005-05:00

(Teach Synge, Inis Meáin.)

I'm always embarrassed to discover a mistake in my guidebook. I may be well traveled in Ireland but I'm certainly no expert, and I am aching to get back to work on the revision so I can correct all the gaffes I've found so far. (Alas, it's been postponed indefinitely because of the economy.)

The latest error concerns the Aran sweater myth, which is so pervasive that it was even included in some of the cultural history books I used for reference. I propagated it thusly on page 339:

In John Millington Synge's heart-wrenching one-act play set on the Aran Islands, Riders to the Sea, a young woman realizes that the clothes of a drowned fisherman (found on the shores of Donegal, and buried there) are those of her missing brother when she notices the stitch she herself dropped while knitting his socks. Art imitates life on these islands, for each family used a unique pattern when knitting pullovers (called báinín, "baw-NEEN") for their fishermen in the all-too-likely event that one should be lost at sea.

You probably won't see any shawls, crios (woolen belts), mairtíní (stockings sans feet), or other traditional garb outside the Aran museum, though the scarves and gloves sold in the shops are no less cozy for their lack of authenticity. Of course, the most popular seller remains the fisherman's sweater, knit in the traditional unbleached wool or a variety of jewel-toned yarns, but you have to wonder if the sweater pattern used by Sarah Flaherty and other speedy native knitters is one designed specially for the tourists.

Otherwise, as Pat Boran wryly notes, Aran jerseys are "now worn almost exclusively by German hippies, University College Dublin science students, and on RTE soap operas."

This story (about cable patterns being used to identify drowned fishermen) was circulated by the head of an Aran knitwear company in the 1930s. Kate Davies, the very talented knitwear designer and textile historian, has enlightened me here. (The distinction must also be made between a family cable pattern (false) and identifying one's own handiwork.)

Sinkhole Alley (First Month's Free!)

2009-12-04T15:10:00.007-05:00

I haven't had all that much to say lately; most of my knitting projects are for Christmas and therefore top-secret, and I'm still stalled on my reading list thanks to an incredibly disturbing scene in Suite Française. (Yes, it is a book about war, but this scene horrified me for a different reason. I'll persevere, and tell you more about it once I've finished.)

My research reading is going swimmingly, however, and I thought you might enjoy this excerpt from Chapters of Dublin History:

Close by Old Church Street on the west were three streets worthy of some notice. The first was the Hangman's Lane, a name naturally not much relished by the inhabitants, and consequently corrupted into Hammond Lane, which it is still called.

In the same way Bumbailiff's Lane, off New Street, on the south side, became the meaningless Fumbally's Lane. There was another Hangman's Lane from Kimmage to Dolphin's Barn, where Tom Calvin, the hangman of '98, is said to have lived. It is now called the Dark Lane. Dublin also contained such names as Cutthroat Lane, Murdering Lane, Cutpurse Row (Corn Market), Hell, near Christ Church, flog Hill (St. Andrew Street), The Common Lane (Watery Lane, now Brookfield Avenue), Gallows Road, Gallows Hill, Gibbet Meadow, Dirty Lane (Bridgefoot Street and Temple Lane South), Dunghill Lane (Island Street) and Pinchgut Lane. Some 18th century street-names were even coarser; yet, they were the recognised official names, figuring in postal addresses, and found in maps and directories. The age of refinement was yet to come, and it has already reached its extreme point in renaming Dublin streets and lanes.

How'd you like to live on Dunghill Lane?? It was actually on the map--that's what really gets me!

Glendalough

2009-11-27T08:00:00.002-05:00

(Continued from Waterford retroblog.)

I have a fond memory of the first time I went to Glendalough, in May 2000. I'd started chatting with an American guy on the bus down from Dublin, and once we'd checked into the hostel we had a drink at the hotel pub, then went for a walk in the graveyard in the dusk. It was deliciously spooky—and that night I stopped feeling homesick. (It was my first time traveling on my own, which admittedly took some getting used to.)

These photos are from May 2006, when I was researching the travel guide: two views of 'St. Kevin's Kitchen' (so called because the little tower reminded somebody of a chimney), and a view of the round tower, which is 30 meters tall. St. Kevin founded a monastery in this valley in the 6th century, but most of the ruins of the 'monastic city' date from the 11th and 12th centuries.

Onion Pie, mmm mmm!

2009-11-24T17:40:00.001-05:00

My sister and I are doing some of the cooking for Thanksgiving this year, and today I baked this simple-but-delicious savory pie for the first time. My grandmother used to make it for family dinners.

3 cups sliced cubed onions
3 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 pastry shell

My favorite pastry recipe is from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs, which yields two crusts and is equally great for sweet and savory:

2 cups flour
2 sticks of butter (cut into thin slices)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten, and enough cold water to make 1/2 cup

Mix the flour, butter, and salt, then add the egg and water. It'll be a little sloppy, so you'll need to throw in a bit of extra flour to make the whole thing come together. This dough needs refrigerating for an hour.

Anyway, back to the filling instructions:

Sauté onions in butter until tender. Pour in pastry shell. Beat eggs slightly then add milk, salt and pepper. Pour mixture over onions. Bake at 425º F for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Some notes:
--This recipe makes a 9" pie.
--I added some cumin and fresh basil to the basic recipe.
--I used both yellow and red onions.
--The two pies were in the oven for just about half an hour.

(I'd rather not use disposable pie pans, but I am making six.)

High time for a new hat

2009-11-22T10:30:00.001-05:00

My grandmother needs a new hat. Every winter she wears this terrible tatty gray thing that has to be twice as old as I am! So I scoured the Ravelry database looking for the perfect beret, but none of the free patterns seemed anywhere near as lovely as Ysolda's Gretel—which is, of course, worth every penny and then some. I was a bit overwhelmed by the tubular 2x2 cast-on at first, but it's like all things in knitting: once you get the hang of it, it's easy-peasy.

I stuck with the smallest size because I figured I'd need a third ball for the next size up, but because I used larger needles than called for I think the beret turned out somewhere between fitted and regular, which is perfect.

Pattern: Gretel by Ysolda, fitted size.
Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed Aran, ivy, 2 balls.
Needles: #6s for the ribbing, and #9s.
Raveled: here.

I think this beret looks great knit in a proper tweed, too; I'll knit one for myself in Kilcarra eventually. (It's one of my favorite yarns, from a mill in County Donegal.)