A Bluestocking Knits

This and That --

We had a booth sale the other day, and I managed to get a good way down the leg of a Welsh Country Stocking -- this is is Paton's Kroy, a bit heavier than the original wool, so I've had to adjust the stitch counts considerably.

But other than this I haven't done much knitting, still absorbed in Swedish church-books.  Found this the other day, which amused me greatly --

Imagine the ruckus when papa found out that little Stina had been looking for a piece of paper and decided to make do with one of those old books in the vestry....

And in bookish news, I haven't seen "War Horse" yet, but came across this charming little video in which three of the actors talk about the book and their childhood reading -- that Tom Hiddleston was rather precocious, it seems!

Recycled costume alert!

Jennifer Ehle as Mrs. Logue in "The King's Speech" (2010).

Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple, with Joanna Lumley as Dolly Bantry in "The Body in the Library" (2004).

It shouldn't surprise me -- indeed, I am more amused than surprised -- that there is a website for recycled-costume spotters: Recycled Movie Costumes (the two pictures are from there).

I'm a bit late to the game on "The King's Speech" here, which I saw a few months ago and thought was absolutely wonderful.  Pooh to those who complain about its historical inaccuracies -- now, sometimes I complain with the best of them about historical inaccuracies in films, but this one I thought did a brilliant job of both compressing a long story and conveying the hard slog of the Duke of York's/George VI's treatment into a mere two hours.

I must admit that I'm rather biased -- George has long been perhaps my favorite of the English kings.  He took a bad situation and did a splendid job.  I always liked the anecdote of Elizabeth replying to someone who asked during the war if the little princesses would be evacuated from the bombing in London, "The children will not leave without me, I will not leave without the King, and the King will never leave."

Here is a clip from around 1938 showing the King making a speech to open the Empire Exhibition at Ibrox Park in Glasgow.  It is difficult not to feel for him from the very start, and to cheer him on in spirit.

THE KING'S SPEECH

LOTR

You know, I thought that when the girls were both in school -- even better, both at the same school -- that I would have more time.  Wrong!  It's a little-known fact that school- and extra-curricular activities actually expand to fill parental time.

So there hasn't been much knitting....

I did manage a pair of socks this month.  I found the yarn rather unexpectedly at one of my local craft stores -- they usually have mostly acrylics and novelty yarns, although a bit more "upscale" than Michaels' selections -- but at the moment, they actually have a basket of sock yarn! so I snapped up a ball with my 40% off coupon -- Meilenweit Stile in color 8005, a blend of blacks, creams, lavendar-greys, and sages.

It was not, I admit, particularly pleasant to knit, feeling rather stiff and artificial in my hands, but it has softened up a bit with washing, and I'm counting on it being as filzfrei and extra-strapazierfähig as promised on the label ("non-felting and hard-wearing").  It bled a bit in the sink the first time -- a midrange blue, curiously, so apparently the black isn't really -- which toned down the cream somewhat.  I'd thought the cream was a bit loud, as it happens (!), so for myself I wasn't terribly annoyed, but it's something to take into account next time.

 

These are plain stockinette with an eye-of-partridge heel and the squared-off grafted toe from the Jaywalker pattern.

I will probably forever after remember these as my "LOTR" socks, as I watched the entire cycle of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies and a fair bit of the extras as I knitted!

Now I'm picking up that Ravenclaw "Prisoner of Azkaban" scarf that I started in summer.  (Wool scarves in summer! what was I thinking?)

Mish-Mash

Every so often we have mish-mash for dinner, when the refrigerator is full of single servings left over from the week's meals.  Tonight, Laura had the last slice of pizza, Julia had Swedish meatballs, and David and I had the remnants of my first promenade through My French Kitchen by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde -- lentil and sausage casserole and garlic soup, respectively.  This is a lovely, evocative book that set my mouth watering as soon as I saw it.  The lentil dish is pleasant and earthy (much depends on the sausages, I suspect), and the garlic soup very tasty.  I didn't much care for the Poule au Pot, but then I've made various versions of this and never found it to speak to me much, so I can't fault Harris'.  Her Boeuf en Daube, redolent of bay and thyme and olives and an entire bottle of white wine, was heavenly!

So, then, this post will be a mish-mash too, since life has been increasingly hectic chez Bluestocking these days, and little that I have to say would stretch to a full post on its own.

I made an Odessa the other day for my aunt, whose cancer is returning.  Cashsoft DK again, so wonderfully soft and comforting -- this color is 525 Kingfisher, and worth seeking out, a lovely tealy greeny-blue.

I could not resist the lure of the laceweight -- the ball is one skein of Skacel Merino Lace, in 339 Pale Grey, luminous and pearl-like -- I'm thinking something Shetlandish.

A cup from Annie Modesitt's clever Fiesta Tea Set, in some ancient Tahki Cotton Classic that I dug up from one of the deeper drawers in my closet.  Am not sure yet if I'm going to make the rest of the set in the same color (wh. is all I have), or find some peppier shades, or just enjoy this piece on its own.

I put up a photo album in the sidebar of some of my dad's model trains, the ones I have.  Trains were such an intrinsic part of his life that I feel absurdly grateful to have these.

My Daisy troop is up to fifteen.  Fifteen kindergarten girls in one room!  Need I say more?

I've been watching a lot of movies lately, curiously enough all Norwegian ones, hard to knit to since I need to read the subtitles, my Norwegian stretching mostly to exclamations -- "Gud!"  "Nå da?"  "Fy!"-- and words that I probably shouldn't know.  Anyway, first was "Insomnia", a bleak and gritty crime thriller from a few years back, in which a detective in the far north accidentally shoots his partner during a murder investigation, and finds himself increasingly mired in guilt and the insomnia of the title as he tries to cover up what really happened.  "Hamsun" is the story of  Norwegian Nobel Laureate novelist Knut Hamsun's involvement with Hitler's occupying forces during World War II, and of Hamsun's turbulent relationship with his wife, a fervent Nazi supporter.  It's a ghastly, riveting film -- like watching a car crash that one is powerless to stop -- with Hamsun played with arresting dignity by Max von Sydow. 

"Kitchen Stories (Salmer fra Kjøkkenet)" is the lightest of the bunch so far -- and by far -- and one that I can recommend without hesitation for those who like quirky, subtle, character-driven comedy.  The premise is that Swedish researchers in the postwar craze for scientific research and efficiency are sending a team of observers to study Norwegian bachelor farmers' kitchen habits -- resulting in the quietly absurd set-up in the photo.  One of these objects of study has had a change of heart and resents the intrusion stubbornly, but through a series of small events he and his ostensibly objective observer become unlikely friends.  The ending is bittersweet but entirely believable and satisfying.

Little-known Fact #133: All Norwegian movies feature Sverre Anker Ousdal in some role, large or small.

(Not that I'm complaining, mind.  Fellow polar geeks will recognize him from "The Flight of the Eagle", the lyrical and harrowing film based on the Swedish attempt in 1897 to reach the North Pole by balloon, and

as Roald Amundsen in 1985's "The Last Place on Earth".  The sight of Amundsen and his men skiing towards the South Pole is as stirring a thing I've seen in many a year.)

I read the last of the Aubrey/Maturin series while David was in Hong Kong.  I'd been reading them slowly, trying to spin out the last few as long as I could, but then one night after finishing The Hundred Days, I picked up Blue at the Mizzen as if there were no covers between the two, just another chapter break.  It was like running down a hill -- I ran through it in delight, unable to stop myself and not caring a whit, and was surprised when I turned over the last page with something like utter joy and came to the end, not without a bit of a thud at my sudden return to reality.  So, that's that, and I guess -- unless somebody stands me 21 for my birthday -- I'll start over again from the beginning.

I've just finished reading the fourth in the Brother Cadfael series, St. Peter's Fair, retrieved deep from the basement storage area of our local public library.  It's interesting, reading the books hard on the heels of one another, instead of a year or two apart as I did when they were published -- I begin to get a sense of Peters' developing style and feeling for the characters. I had quite forgotten after so long that Hugh Beringar in his first appearance -- in the second book -- was in fact an opponent, not an ally of Cadfael's.  Almost makes me want to see the television series again, but not quite.  Only for Sean Pertwee,

for whom I almost seriously considered starting a write-in-campaign-of-one to Peter Jackson, as I had long pictured Sean Pertwee in my admittedly fertile imagination as Faramir, one of my favorite characters in "The Lord of the Rings" cycle.  Not too much of a stretch, though, I think!  (I would rather, too -- not that I've anything against Viggo Mortensen -- have seen Sean Bean as Aragorn, as he was much more my idea of the character -- but that's another story, for another time.)

Booking Through Thursday: Encore

Booking Through Thursday asks this week,

Almost everyone can name at least one author that you would love just ONE more book from. Either because they’re dead, not being published any more, not writing more, not producing new work for whatever reason . . . or they’ve aged and aren’t writing to their old standards any more . . . For whatever reason, there just hasn’t been anything new (or worth reading) of theirs and isn’t likely to be.

If you could have just ONE more book from an author you love . . . a book that would be as good any of their best (while we’re dreaming) . . . something that would round out a series, or finish their last work, or just be something NEW . . . Who would the author be, and why? Jane Austen? Shakespeare? Laurie Colwin? Kurt Vonnegut?

David asked me last night, "Where are your mystery books?" and I pointed to a shelf in the living room.  He was gone for some moments, then came back with not a mystery but Master and Commander, the first in the novels by Patrick O'Brian chronicling the adventures of Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin in the early 19th-century English navy, and basis for the brilliantly atmospheric if somewhat hodge-podge movie of the same name.  We sat together for a while, David reading and I knitting, but I kept glancing over at his book, and before long put my knitting away and picked up The Nutmeg of Consolation, fourteenth in the series.  Why I've left it so long, I can't say -- it's been two years at least since I read the previous book.  What was I thinking?

I was rewarded nearly at once by this, as the marooned sailors take a respite, from their hard work of building a schooner from the wreckage of their frigate, in a game of cricket:

"What Stephen did not fully appreciate was the degree of pleasure that Jack took in this particular ceremony.  As a captain Aubrey was exceedingly worried by the shortage of food and marine stores, particularly cordage, by the near absence of powder, and by the coming total absence of arrack and tobacco; but as a cricketer he knew that close concentration was necessary on any pitch, above all on one like this, which more closely resembled a stretch of white concrete than any Christian meadow, and when he came in second wicket down, the yeoman of the sheets having been bowled by the sergeant of the Marines for a creditable sixteen, he took centre and looked about him with an eager, piercing, predatory eye, tapping the block-hole with his bat, wholly taken up with the matter at hand." (p.11)

A masterful paragraph.  It conveys something of Jack's charisma as a leader, his dedication to his men, his attention to detail (when it concerns his ship, at least) and his sportsmanship and raw energy, with a nice touch of humor, and also something of Stephen's obtuseness when it comes to cricket (shadowed by his even greater denseness when confronted with naval terminology, which despite knowing umpteen languages and impossibly arcane minutiae of medical and zoological terminology, not to mention having spent by this time some dozen years at sea with Jack, remains a blank to him).  And it is of course, bar the opening line, all one sentence.

("Nutmeg of Consolation" is an honorific carried by the Sultan of Pulo Prabang (in the South China Sea), who features in the previous book, whose title is borrowed by Jack to christen his newest vessel, "a tight, sweet, newly-coppered, broad-buttocked little ship, a solace to any man's heart" (p.80).)

Patrick O'Brian died, alas, in 2000, and I am reading the fourteenth book in a series of twenty (twenty-one, if you count the one unfinished at his death), but even though I can console myself with the thought that I can certainly read the whole canon over again from the beginning once I've finished, there is a certain wistfulness that there are no more to be had.  One of the things I appreciate most about these novels is that despite the nearly-interminable amount of naval jargon, it isn't really necessary to know much of it.  One can infer from context that a topgallants are a kind of sail, and so on -- and more information can be found at The Gunroom and the aptly-named Guide for the Perplexed, or in any number of O'Brian lexicons -- and quite a lot is explained to Stephen as things go along! -- but even lubbers such as myself can simply enjoy such passages as this, "Royal masts were sent up and their sails were set upon them, very fine and delicate canvas too; and since the wind, a good steady topgallant breeze, was now abaft the beam, studdingsails too made their charming appearance, four on the weather side of the foremast and two on the main, with a crowd of staysails; spritsail and spritsail topsail, of course, with all the jibs that would stand, a noble array.  Presently skysails flashed out above the royals, and all hands watched the water rise high at the bows, sink to the copper abaft the forechains and then race hissing along her side, leaving a broad wake behind, stretching straight and true to the west by south" (p.110), which creates a fine picture in the mind's eye but does not hinder the storyline if rigging is a mystery.

Well, I could go on, but this post is quite long enough already, I suspect!  Suffice it to say that I recommend these books highly as brilliant and entertaining historical novels, with great depth of characterization and elegant prose.  Cracking good reads, too.  Give you joy, as Stephen Maturin might say, if you've yet to discover them!

Thoughts on the Log Cabin Socks

These were finished in a bit of a rush, before the hot weather hits and I don't even want to think about thick wool -- the Log Cabin Socks, my first project from Handknit Holidays by Melanie Falick, despite my having owned the book for over a year now.  I must confess that I did not particularly enjoy making these socks.  It's my first experience with Cork, so I will reserve judgement on it until I knit it at a more reasonable gauge, but here I felt like I was trying to beat it into submission -- not the experience one wants with one's knitting.  It didn't help, to be sure, that my Surina bamboo needles have splits in the tips (again!), so kept catching and splitting the wool.

I was also, like quite a lot of the knitters who have already made these socks, a bit perturbed at the difference between the instructions and the photograph.  Directions for the heel flap don't mention leaving out the last few cables, but I just worked the sts as established after Row 18 of the chart, instead of switching to the second cable portion.  I've heard that the book has rather a lot of errors (there is an errata page from the publisher), but luckily the only other one that I noticed was more one of clarity than actual error: the last part of the heel turn should be something like "Rep Rows 1 and 2 three (four) times, omitting final K1 in last rep of Row 1, and final P1 in last rep of Row 2."  The heel was a bit wonky, but I suppose that's due more to the gargantuosity of Cork than anything else.

I had the morning to myself for finishing, and so I thought this movie would be appropriate --

Log cabins and all, don't you know.  "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" has really grown on me.  I was a bit bored by it when I first saw it, but I've come to appreciate its rustic charms.  My feminist hackles raise a bit, of course, but there is enough in the characters to counter most of that!  Howard Keel is wonderful enough to make me think that I would have married him on the spot, too!  And I like that Milly knows her own mind well enough to take the risk, but is spunky enough (in the best possible way) to stand up to Adam when she needs to.  I don't need to say anything -- well, not very much, anyway! -- about how terrific the dancing is, as the barn-raising number alone is enough to guarantee the movie its place in musical-comedy history, but the music is fabulous too, beautiful Gene de Paul/Johnny Mercer tunes that leave me humming them for days.

The accompanying documentary on the single-disc DVD has some interesting tidbits and interviews, as well.  Sometimes I find the behind-the-scenes information so distracting that I don't enjoy the movie as much as I would like to -- which I found to be the case in some of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, for instance -- but here it's just fun.  One of the brothers, for instance, was played by a non-dancer, such an intimidating thing in the company of Jacques d'Amboise and Russ Tamblyn, et al., that you can see him around the musical numbers but not actually in them, so we have a good time Benjamin-spotting during the dances -- "look, he's on the other side now! oh, sitting down!".  (Reminds me of the little girl in the "Seventy-Six Trombones" number in "The Music Man" who obviously had trouble remembering the steps, as she's watching the feet of the other little girl.  Poor thing! I sympathize whole-heartedly.)

"Bless your beautiful hide,
Wherever you may be!
We ain't met yet
But I'm willin' to bet
You're the girl for me!"

"Sabrina"

In honor of what would have been Billy Wilder's hundredth birthday today, I watched one of my favorite of his movies tonight, "Sabrina" with the ever-lovely Audrey Hepburn.

Apparently, Cary Grant was the original choice for Linus Larrabee, played in the movie by Humphrey Bogart -- I can't help wishing that this had come off, as I personally would feel more likely to be torn between the two brothers, the dashing William Holden and the straight-laced (as if!) Cary Grant.  Still, it's a charming movie, full of wit and romance, and Audrey is exquisite!

"Your's Sincerely, &c."

I've at last gotten around to seeing the new "Pride and Prejudice" -- due to the surprisingly early DVD release date!  I got much of the right front of the Swing Jacket knitted up while watching it.

I was astonished to see that except for her very first scene, Elizabeth did not wear a petticoat.  I cannot claim to be an expert in this matter, but I believe that this is akin to a woman going braless in the 1950s -- just not done.  I was also rather surprised that she almost never wore a hat -- now, Elizabeth is something of a free spirit, but although it might be supposed that she would "forget" her hat when walking to Meryton, I cannot believe that she would appear at Lady Catherine de Bourgh's bareheaded.  I am also astonished that Mr. Bingley would simply open the door of Jane's bedroom without first knocking -- and that Lady Catherine would appear at the Bennets' in the middle of the night -- while this lady, too, is strong-willed enough to expect the world to cater to her, a midnight call is rather mind-boggling.  (I think that we are supposed to believe that Darcy's midnight call on Elizabeth, at the Collinses', is a kind of dream, and that his letter's appearance in her hand comes as something of a surprise to her, but this makes the two calls together rather puzzling.)

(Regarding hats, it seems to me that Elizabeth would be much like Laura Ingalls, who would usually wear her bonnet but push it back off of her head.  It seems like she was always grudgingly pulling it back up.)

It's also disconcerting to hear, in the opening scene, a stunningly beautiful piano piece and wonder if we are expected to believe that Mary is playing it, the same Mary whose clumsy music "delights us long enough" later at the Netherfield ball.

And of course, the fact that the film is only two hours makes it much more difficult to explore the nuances of character and family relationships so delightful in the longer versions.  I understand, in this light, that many of my favorite lines have ended up on the cutting room floor, or not even in the shooting script, alas -- although I was surprised that Mr. Bennet's little tease of his wife regarding their new neighbor Mr. Bingley, "It is very unlucky, but as I have actually paid the visit, we cannot escape the acquaintance now" (which I was looking forward to hearing from Donald Sutherland), was altered to no obvious improvement.  Mr. Wickham was a bit of a loss, too -- and I did think it better that his spilling-out of the story of Darcy's perfidy (as Wickham presented it, anyway) was much better coming impulsively (on purpose) from himself, as in the book, than from Elizabeth asking him -- which made him seem less of a cad.

But cavils aside, this is a lovely film to look at.  The locations are utterly gorgeous.  It's funny, how fashions change in the way we film period pieces, isn't it.  Twenty-five years ago, everything was clean and the colors were bright and everyone wore gloves when they touched each other -- ten years ago, we discovered sex, and this year, dirt.  I can believe that the Bennets' home might be shabby, but not, I think, Shabby Chic.  The amount of paint flaking off of the walls was incredible! and would, I think, have opened them up to a censure that Mrs. Bennet at least would have found mortifying.

I did like that there were so many night scenes.  I suppose that in the first series the demands of video required that either filming was done mostly during the day or that night scenes be brilliantly lit -- it does make more sense that night scenes, either at home or at a ball, be by candlelight, after all, and here it seems much more realistic.

It was unusual and yet not unpleasant that the family dynamic has changed here from other versions -- this Mr. Bennet especially is much less disparaging of his younger daughters and his wife, whose silliness is not as readily apparent.  Mrs. Bennet especially gets more justification for her behavior, and actually gets to point out to Lizzie that five daughters need to be married off.

Tom Hollander was unexpectedly marvelous as the odious Mr. Collins, who is usually a figure of fun, but here was kind of awful and yet pathetic. 

This indeed an enjoyable adaptation of the novel -- not, obviously, as faithful as the 1995 version nor the 1980 one, which is still my all-around favorite.  But this new one does have its own strengths and beauties.

(And here is a little unexpected Project Spectrum red: "Queen of Night" tulips from the Formal Gardens at Groombridge,

which was used for Longbourn in this film.)

Knitting Olympics

Here we are, all geared up for the Knitting Olympics to start this evening!  Oh, yes, and the real Olympics, too --

(Photo from Torino 2006.)

I must say, I'm looking forward to both.  I've been an armchair athlete ever since the glory days of "Wide World of Sports", and enjoy watching a wide variety of the winter games, although I confess a partiality to figure skating.

In the spirit of pin-trading, the Knitting Olympics folks are making and exchanging blog buttons right and left, and here are some that I've collected --

This one is from Jessica at Rose-Kim Knits, who is obviously "proud supplier of blog buttons to the United States Knitting Olympic Team",

and this one is from Sarah (who helpfully adds, "it actually means 'The Olympic Contests/ Games of Those Who Knit' or 'Those Who Make Loops With Rope'", for those of us with little Latin and less Greek).

For those of us Welsh in blood and/or spirit, there is Team Wales ("teem cuhmrih" or "cuhmree"),

and this one, lest we take ourselves too seriously (as if!), is Team Tea from Elizabeth at KittyCafe.

And my own little contribution, in honor of the unexpectedly large number of Jeannes entered --

 

Thoughts on the February Baby Sweater

Thanks to a few well-scheduled TV programs, I finished the knitting for the Baby Sweater on Saturday -- watched "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" that night, and a few days earlier an episode of "Secrets of the Dead" called "Titanic's Ghosts".  Despite the lurid title and opening sequences, this was actually a serious documentary about using DNA testing to identify survivors of the Titanic disaster.  I've always been fascinated by archaeology, which manages to be both romantic and scientific at the same time -- recreating past lives, researching history, and using analytical techniques to gather and record information.  This one was fascinating for its use of genealogical research techniques to identify and locate surviving relatives, the still-amazing way that DNA evidence can be used to identify blood relationships between the living and the long-dead, and the photographs and personal stories that made us identify sometimes nearly unbearably closely with the people on the Titanic  and their families.  (Imagine having one seat on a lifeboat available, and looking at your five children there on the deck.)

Anyway, this was an easy-peasy knit.  I used less than two and a half balls of the Merinogold, so it takes almost as little wool as it does time.

I also loved that the Gull pattern fit perfectly into the shaping that Elizabeth devised, with the repeats ending just at the places where you divide for the sleeves (and adding on 7 fits another repeat in just as perfectly).  I actually added eight stitches, instead of seven, on the sleeves, because the lace pattern made a rather wonky edge and I wanted to firm that up to make seaming easier; I just knitted the first and last stitch of every row.

The sleeve shaping gave me a bit of pause, and I had to think about it for some minutes until it made sense.  It is essentially a T, with the crossbar to be seamed along the underarm and the downward stroke becoming the sleeve seam.  This is how it goes together --

That extra K stitch on each side of the sleeve seam came in very handy, as the seam turned out almost invisible.  I am, I confess, rather lazy when it comes to finishing (Reason #47 to Love Shawls: There are no seams), so I faithfully followed a little tutorial on seaming by Theresa Stenersen -- good practice for the Swing Jacket coming up.

These white pearly buttons were the only shanked ones I had in the button jar, so they are merely prodded into place for the photo.  Obviously I am starting to get into swing-jacket mode -- I thought this jacket would look as pretty with three buttons as with the six of the original, and it does.

"Result: a beguiling baby sweater with only two seams to sew"!