A Bluestocking Knits

Reading "The Hobbit"

The girls and I finished reading The Hobbit last night.  Reading it aloud was quite a different experience from reading it silently.  Certainly I found myself aware of the pronunciation of names, and how often I'd gotten them wrong, and still do.  I read so much as a child that I often pronounced words the way they looked; I still do this with "sword", for instance, including the "w".  It's hard, reading The Hobbit now, not to say "biffer, bohffer, and bom-ber" especially, partly because the habit is so ingrained after all these years, and partly just because it's funny.  This led to my thinking last night that I would write notes (in pencil, of course) at the bottom of a page where the name appeared, and so this morning I made a list, then started here at Tolkien Geek, and travelled to far corners of the Tolkien internet universe, especially to Wikipedia and The Encyclopedia of Arda. I did not actually find one single list of pronunciations, and so I post it here, willing and ready to accept discussion were someone with greater knowledge to comment.

I puzzled over "Dáin son of Náin" quite some time.  "Dane son of Nane"?  "Dine son of Nine?"  Alas, there is yet no consensus.  I found "An Analysis of Dwarvish" delightful in its very thoroughness, although, surprisingly, given that thoroughness, nowhere are the acute-o as in Thrór and acute-a as in Dáin mentioned.  Possibly this is because Dáin, Glóin, etc. are use-names in Westron and thus translations from the Dwarvish ....

Also rather surprisingly, no one seems to divide these names into syllables.  I have seen the occasional phonetic spelling that differed from the usual, and included them below.  (A deeper study of the root words would be useful here, but, well, I haven't got the time.)

"Bilbo" should, I suppose, strictly be pronounced "BEEL-boh".  I have never yet heard anyone say it like this.

The "r" should be a lovely rolling sound, which most Americans don't or can't do -- listen to a Swede saying them at Tolkien Pronunciation Recordings, or even better, to Tolkien himself reading some excerpts from The Lord of the Rings.  I've written this below as double-r.

Balin = BAH-leen

Beorn = BEH-orrn or even BAY-orrn, not BEE-orrn; compare Beowulf

Bifur = BEE-foor.

Bofur = BOH-foorr

Bombur = BOHM-boorr, with the “o” long as in “go” not short as in “bomb”, or possibly BOH-mbur

Carc = KARK

Dáin = DAYN; probably not “dine” as in “nine” and “line” as that would be the Elvish pronunciation

Dori = DOH-rree

Durin = DOORR-een, with the “u” long as in “boot”

Dwalin = DWAH-leen

Fíli = FEE-lee

Gandalf = GAHN-dahlf, with a short “a” sound as in “father”; or possibly GAH-ndalf; not "GAHN-dalv"or "GAN-dalf/v"

Girion = GEE-rree-ohn, with a hard “g” as in “go” and “get”

Glóin = GLOH-een

Golfimbul = GOHL-feem-bool

Gwaihir = GWY-heerr, with a hard “g”, and a long “i” in the first syllable as in “eye”

Kíli = KEE-lee

Nori = NOH-rree

Náin = NAYN; see above under Dáin

Ori = OH-rree

Roäc = RROH-ahk

Smaug = SMOWG.  There is quite a lot of discussion about as to whether this is pronounced "smowg" or "smog".  I started out with the American "smog", pleased by the association of dragons with nasty, smelly air pollution, then later evolved to a more RP "aw" sound.  Technically, the vowel should be "ow", as in "town" and "clown", and in the interjection you use when you bump your head, which, not coincidentally, is the same as the equivalent modern Norwegian interjection, "au".

Thorin = THORR-een

Thranduil = THRRAN-doo-eel

Thráin = THRRAYN; see above under Dáin

Thrór = probably THRRORR; it is unclear why the vowel has a diacritic, or how this affects pronunciation

Óin = OH-een; it is unclear whether the letter “ó” is merely an “o” with a diacritic, or if it is a separate letter and therefore should take a separate place in the alphabet as does the Norwegian “ø”

Changeable

I can't seem to sit still these days.  The weather is cold one day, springlike the next, alternately rainy and grim, humid, windy, or blazingly hot, and my spring knitting careens back and forth nearly as wildly.

Garter Heel Sock, from the Vogue sock book -- I didn't like the garter top much, so made it a 3x1 rib, lined up with the pattern on the leg because it amused me.  Am feeling somewhat indifferent about this sock, and I am not entirely sure why.

Primavera.  Was rather unsure of this when I started, but it's growing on me.  Do not be alarmed by its scrongy appearance.  It is quite stretchy, despite being basically a 7x4 rib, and I find myself more dismayed by the splittiness of the Trekking Pro Natura than I am by the pattern itself.

Ahem.  This was the Friday Harbor socks from Knitting on the Road, three times.  I really liked the wool, the cuff pattern, the way the wool looked in the cuff pattern -- but the first time it was so small that I couldn't get it over my instep, the second time with an added repeat still so tight that it stretched the stitches mercilessly, the third time with yet another repeat far too big.  My only consolation is what a pleasure it is to wind this stuff into a ball.

I've got my nose in a book more often these days, instead of knitting, it seems.  Have recently finished chain-reading another string of Joanna Trollope novels, wh. I enjoy very much.  It struck me recently, finding my copy of the Persephone edition of Wise Virgins where I had subconciously kicked it under the bed, that even though I don't always like all of the characters in Trollope's novels, I am interested in what happens to them.  I found myself wrenched out of WV more often than not, because Woolf was so cuttingly judgemental about the characters that he obviously didn't like, that I felt myself curiously defensive on their behalf.  Very dislocating, defending characters against their own author.  Am thinking now of rereading some D.E. Stevenson, or I might try something new, an Elizabeth Taylor ....

Easter Eggs

From an egg-decorating party we went to today --

Spring Fling

I was in Redlands the other day, and stopped by The Yarn Deli, as I'd never been there before and heard good things about it.  Honestly, I only meant to get a skein or two of sock yarn, but they were so scrumptious that I came away with four.

It's a nice shop, small so it has a limited selection but of some very pretty stuff.

Pagewood Farm's Denali superwash merino/nylon in New Horizon.  I couldn't quite get an accurate photo of the color -- it's more purple than this, but with a hint of grey/black

Trekking Pro Natura wool and bamboo blend, in 1544, a pretty dusty-rose.

Chameleon Colorworks Bambino superwash merino/bamboo/nylon blend, in Viridian.

The lady in the shop offered to wind up the skeins for me, but I confessed that I like the feel of it in my hands.  She laughed and said that she never came between a knitter and her wool.

Malabrigo superwash merino in Abril.  I confess that this last is the one that is sitting in my lap as I write, this cold spring day, so that I can caress it and every so often brush it against my cheek and inhale deeply the lovely woolly scent....

Reading Aloud

We had a very bookish Christmas this past year.  In October or November, I had impulsively picked up in a local independent bookstore a beautifully illustrated edition of The Secret Garden and began to read it aloud to the girls; it so fascinated both of them that they each secretly snuck off with it to read ahead.   At Christmas, then, among other stacks of things -- Noel Streatfeild, Eva Ibbotson, et al., thanks to Amazon's 4-for-3 promotions -- for them to read on their own, I bought the girls a selection of things I thought would make more good reading aloud, and a few weeks later when Daddy hared off to Florida, we settled in with E. Nesbit's 1906 classic, The Railway Children.  We all enjoyed it very much, the girls' first shrieks of laughter arriving quite early on, in Chapter One, at the thought of Three Chimney's garden in the gloom --

    There was a low wall, and trees inside.
    "That's the garden," said Mother.
    "It looks more like a dripping-pan full of black cabbages," said Peter.
    The cart went on along by the garden wall, and round to the back of the house, and here it clattered into a cobble-stoned yard and stopped at the back door.    

and continuing at the children's pitch-perfect dialogue, whose occasional bickering tempers any Victorian sappiness.  Favorite bits have now entered our family lexicon -- "Ripping!" and "My heart's in my boots!" especially.  And when we'd finished reading the book, we watched the 1970 film, the one with Jenny Agutter as Bobbie and Bernard Cribbins as Perks.  That was just as lovely as I remembered it, too, but in a different way, very idyllic and warm-hearted.   (But how creepy that Dr. Forrest is!  I veered wildly between thinking, oh, Bobbie's going to marry him when she grows up! and alarm at how pre-pedophilic he seems at times.  Strange.)

Not long after that, drunk with success, I began The Hobbit. 

 

I thought at first that it might be a little much for the girls -- who are after all only nine and six -- but on the other hand felt that the poetry of Tolkien's prose would surely enchant them.  They laughed heartily at the dwarves' making themselves at home in Bilbo's comfortable hole, and shivered with fear at the trolls in the moonlight.  Daddy took over reading this when he got home -- Bilbo is just about to escape from the dungeon of the king of the Wood-elves.

Santa had also tucked into Julia's stocking Geoffrey Palmer's reading of Just So Stories, which lay forgotten on top of the girls' dresser until not long ago, when Julia unwrapped it and popped the first disc into the player, where it has played almost constantly for some time, as she reads along with the book they'd ignored for years.




This morning, having the luxury of the week off of school, I suggested Anne of Green Gables, and when Laura snuggled up next to me we started reading from the annotated edition.



Julia professed herself uninterested, but halfway along Chapter Two she crept in and settled herself at my side.  Unlike the Nesbit, I was already intimately familiar with this book, but still I could not keep from laughing aloud sometimes --

    [Matthew] said as shyly as usual:
    "Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don't mind."
    "Oh, I'm so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together fine. It's such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told that children should be seen and not heard. I've had that said to me a million times if I have once. And people laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"
    "Well now, that seems reasonable," said Matthew.

-- as Anne charms us as much as she does Matthew.

One Hundred Hours of Astronomy

Tonight Julia and I went to our local arboretum for part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy global astronomy event taking place all over the world this weekend.  A local club had set up half-a-dozen or so telescopes, and we looked at the moon, Saturn, and the Orion nebula -- not quite like the above photo, but still fascinating.

Julia gave me a very animated lecture, as we waited in the lines, about the planets (in order) and how many moons each one has.  I can see I'll have to stay on my toes with this first-grader.

Because in Spring You Think of Knitted Gloves

No, I don't know why, either.  I just had a craving.  This is the start of Nancy Bush's Norwegian Gloves, a free pattern available from Interweave.  I chose Dale's Falk instead of Heilo for its handwashiness -- plus it felt deliciously soft, unlike Heilo's rather gruff asperity in comparison.

Multi-color gloves are, I must say, not for the faint-hearted.  The pattern itself is not particularly difficult -- it's the fiddliness of dealing with both two strands of wool and five needles.  It took me a while to get into the rhythm of it, especially at the joins where two needles meet, and I don't think I am completely successful yet, but am erring on the side of caution where stranding is concerned, as all advice has it, and leaving the floats a bit loose.

I tried on the glove just after casting on the thumb stitches atop the gusset, and thought that it was a bit small, but after working ten more rounds or so, I realized that it was spot-on.  My gauge is pretty much exactly 7 sts per inch/28 per 10 cm, on 2.5 mm needles.

My problem with it now, you might see, is that the edges of the patterns do not line up with the edges of my hand.  The thumb gusset is too far towards the center of the palm.  This probably makes a prettier glove when lying flat on a table, but on my hand I was continually tugging at it.

I was undecided as of this morning whether I would just carry on and finish it as written, or start over again, but upon looking at the photos, I feel that I really must start it again -- it's painfully obvious in this photo, much more so even than on my hand:

perhaps because I could not actually twist my arm far enough to see it so clearly!

And I think I will take the opportunity to work the red rounds with a jogless jog, too.  In for a penny, in for a pound.

Thoughts on Annas Shawl

This is Annas Shawl, from Anna at Stickfrossa.  It's a simple, fast knit, very satisfying.  I did run back to the yarn shop and get another ball of Felted Tweed as it seemed a bit short, but it stretched quite a lot with blocking, so maybe it would have been all right.  I didn't make any modifications as such, except for not changing needle size for the edging, mostly because I forgot.

The Felted Tweed was very pleasant to knit with, full of texture and wonderful nubbins of blue and white and gold against the dark green.  It is not particularly warm, so makes a nice shoulder covering for cool weather.  I loved the way the edging curled up before blocking, like a little sea anemone --

I watched the entire twelve hours of "Poldark" knitting this ....

Odessa Revisited

This is, of course, the famous Odessa, which is turning out to be quite a hit with the little girls of our social circle.  I made this one as a birthday gift at a party Julia attended the other day.

I got tired of white beads on colored wool, so I did pink beads on white this time -- the beads came in a pack of various shades and textures, but I used only the rounded ones as the bugle shapes apparently had much-smaller holes.  I rather liked the subtlety of the effect of the slightly different pinks.

My Husband Went to Epcot and All I Got Was this Fabulous Cardigan

David went off on a business trip to Orlando a few weeks ago, but all was forgiven when he came home with this wonderful Dale of Norway cardigan for me, in my favorite Setesdal "lice" pattern, from the Norway Pavilion at Epcot.

 

It isn't actually black, but a beautiful charcoal grey with white hairs throughout, very subtle.

 

And of course, the inside, because we're knitters --