The Bog of Lost Scholars

30 May 2007

A Thought on Past Lives

Filed under: Random Ramblings — Castiron @ 21:46

You hear about all these people who claim that they were Egyptian princesses or Aztec warriors or such in a former life. That’s not terribly interesting to me. You know who I want to have been in a former life?

Anonymous, that’s who.

No, not the unknown anonymous. The Anonymous that everyone’s heard of. Anonymous, the author of thousands of songs, stories, and poems. Now, that would be a cool former life.

“Oh, you were Napoleon in a former life? And you were George Washington? And you were a random peasant somewhere in England who lost all your teeth by twenty and were dead in childbirth before twenty-five? (Just between us, I buy your story more than I buy those other two pompous weirdos.)

“Well, friends, I trump you all. I was more famous in a former life than any of you could dream of being, for I was…Anonymous.

“You haven’t heard of me? Well, of course not, but you certainly know my work. The early English play “Everyman”? Mine. The Song of Roland? Mine. “Ring around the rosy”? Mine. The entire contents of Child’s ballad collections? Mine.

“What do you mean, how did I manage to write things in multiple centuries and countries? By being reincarnated as Anonymous more than once, of course! Sheesh, ask a silly question….”

Yeah. That would be very cool.

23 May 2007

Doily and Socks

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 22:07

Somewhat to my surprise, a couple weeks ago I finished the doily from Idrija Lace.

Doesn’t the pattern look like chicken feet? I’m still thinking about doing it someday in yellow and calling it “Chicken Dance”.

I also finished a pair of socks out of Cherry Tree Hill Sportweight. This is my first pair of 100% wool socks; I’m a little leery of pure wool because I’m not convinced it’ll last long (I’m heavy and I walk a lot), but I’ll give this pair a try and see.

Other craft progress:

  • The Vesuvius socks are pretty close to done; I’m likely to finish them this week.
  • Since my son’s been out of town, I’ve pulled out the Flanders Map and the Fantasy Sampler cross-stitch projects, and made visible progress on both.

21 May 2007

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Filed under: Film and Media — Castiron @ 22:56

Only five years late on this movie; not too bad by my standards!

My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Eh. It had some nice moments, but it had a lot of moments where I could barely resist making snarky comments to my boyfriend about chick flicks. Ian was moderately attractive and quite pleasant, but the entirety of his personality seems to be summed up as 1. he’s bored with his background, and 2. he thinks Toula’s cute and interesting. And Toula can pretty well be summed up as 1. she wants to get some distance from her crazy Greek family, and….no, that’s about it. I don’t have any real sense of what (other than hormones) holds this couple together in the face of a major cultural difference; it’s just “ooh! I’ve found a man who I have the hots for and who isn’t scared off by my crazy family!” And that isn’t satisfying.

I actually found the family much more engaging than the romance. The parents and aunts and uncles were entertaining (and I’ve met women like the mother). The brother’s practical jokes on Ian were a bit embarrassing to watch, but what made it hilarious was when the parents immediately knew who’d set Ian up. Watching the various interesting cultural bits made me think about the whole issue of assimilation/”Americanization” — a lamb roasted whole on a spit in the front yard isn’t any less “American” than grilling the same lamb sliced up on a barbeque, but a lot of the folks who are really loud about wanting immigrants to assimilate would probably object to said lamb on a spit. The dancing was kind of neat, though speaking as a folk dancer, the dancing would have been a lot more interesting if there were more scenes where you could actually see their feet.

And I totally called it on the location of the house.

18 May 2007

The Grand Sophy

Filed under: The Castiron Reading Journal — Castiron @ 08:34

Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy. Okay, now I see why people gush about Heyer. This book is amazingly fun. Sophy is a wonderful character, strong-minded and independent; she’s wrong just often enough to keep from being totally annoying, but she’s right most of the time.

The one thing that marred this book a bit for me: The anti-Semitic bit was probably accurate for the time the book’s set in, but I still found it a little unpleasant.

9 May 2007

Attack of the LOLCat

Filed under: Random Ramblings — Castiron @ 22:55

I have been amused by the various appearances of LOL cats, but since my cats are sadly deceased, I figured I didn’t have to worry about them wreaking havoc on the Internet.

Then again….

8 May 2007

I am achieving knitting-foo.

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 22:20

So, in our last installment, I’d ripped out all the border I’d worked on the Mesa shawl (about 1/3 of the length) and started over. And lo, it went smoothly, and I finished the border with a decent amount of yarn to spare.

And then as I was admiring my handiwork and preparing to block the thing, I noticed this:

BadWord, I thought.

I considered the possibility of ripping the border a second time. AnotherBadWord.

However, there was one mitigating factor: I’d added the last skein of yarn just past the error, so it was possible to undo the knot, pick out the yarn, unravel the yarn to the error, reknit, and graft.

Ever tried to graft in a lace pattern? BadWord. BadWord. ExtremelyBadWord

But even with ripping and redoing the graft five times until it was passable, it was still faster than ripping and reknitting the entire half border. And while it’s possible to tell that the graft’s there, it looks decent:

I’m very happy with the results.

Other craft progress:

  • The ugly socks are done.
  • So is the mini sock kit that was a surprise goodie in my latest Loopy Ewe order.
  • The Vesuvius socks are up to the heel gap.
  • I actually knit an inch on the Ivy socks.
  • I’m probably going to rip and restart the linen towel; I made an error, and the thing’s too wide anyway.

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