Alpaca Reading Mitts

I love these because they are nice and fuzzzzzzzzzy.

Okay, so they shed and pill like crazy, but they’re made from 100% alpaca yarn, so that is to be expected. They stop shedding after a month or so and then the lovely fuzziness remains and they become gloves of happy sighs all round.

The only problem I had with making them was the picot edge. Not that it’s difficult to do, it’s pretty straight forward. I just can’t count and kept sewing it on wrong. The picot edge itself is a lovely finish though, nice and snug so that it doesn’t just slide of whenever you have your hands pointed downwards.

Pattern: Reading Mitts
Yarn: Garnstudio Alpace. 1 skein 2916: Dark lime
Needles: 3mm addi lace circulars
Modifications: None really, might have made the body of the glove a bit longer, since my hands are enormous, but the rest is exactly as written.

RATB 2012 – January

Queue people going GURL, YOU CRAZY. Or maybe that’s just my sassy friends. Who are imaginary. and disembodied. Mainly they’re just voices. Moving on…

Cruising on the high of actually finishing last year’s 51 books challenge I decided to do it again. And yes, me and my insanity are enjoying this land of leters.

This was preceeded by me buying myself an ereader to ring in the new year, because fuck social gatherings on new years eve man! Only joking . The real reason is, as people who’ve seen my room can attest: my bookcase is getting to the point of overflowing. And since my wallet is also rather too empty to support my bibliophilic ways, ebooks is where its at for me now. My back’ll probably thank me. For those of you wondering, there are plenty free book sources out there, including amazon’s daily deals/free classics (just download the cloud reader). Btw, does anybody else find it a tad bit ridiculous that ebooks cost about the same as regular books even though there’s no overhead costs for paper etc? I mean I’ll deal, but still. What up people?

And now without further ado, BOOKS I READ IN JANUARY:

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

This was mandatory reading for my American Literature after 1900 class, and it was quite the experience. I like Roth’s writing style, and I like the paranoid obsession with the past and the pastoral. The framing device was unique and somehow appropriate in leaving you guessing whether it was all true and allowing for a segway into the notion of universal truth as well as exploring the relationship between author and subject as well as reality and fiction. I can highly recommend it, though it is a bit of a beast to get through.

Aesop’s Fables by Aesop

The classics are wacky. Everytime I read something over 2000 years old the only thing that comes to mind is: boyyy u crazy. This is also weirdly gruesome in places. They’re basically moral stories for children, but some of them, well, I can understand why “modern” parents would be all NO DONT READ IT, towards their kids. Personally I see nothing wrong with dead bears, but hey to each their own. Go forth and read. Fables are always hilarious .

Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck, and Bite Me by Christopher Moore

This is a trilogy, if you had not noticed yet. And they are hilarious. I mean it. Fabulous. They’re comedic vampire YA novels. They don’t sparkle, but everybody is apparently completely batshit crazy, or you know exactly as normal people are. I loved the goth teenager girl’s passages, because teenager’s do indeed have a rather, shall we say, askew view on the world, which comes forward in all tis annoying and antogonizing beauty here. Also, it doesn’t get much better than a shaved fat cat that gets turned into a vampire . They’re easy and breezy to read through and might make you snort out loud on occasion. Go forth and read!

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Rampant anti-feminist stances or not? Personally I don’t like to see a woman being “tamed” by being denied food, rest and basic peace of mind, so the comedy bit didn’t quite resonate all that well with me. Not one of my favourites of Shakey’s work (OFCOURSE I HAVE FAVOURITES I’M AN ENGLISH STUDENT!), but it has its moments. It’s final passage is might interesting for a variety of reasons I won’t get into, but suffice to say it bears more than a single reading. As does all of shakey’s work really .

The Enchanted Isle by William Davenant

This is an adaptation of the Tempest, and it’s strongly influenced by the ideals of Davenant’s time. The plot’s…more than a bit different, most of the coup de grace moments are cut, and the ending has changed, as well as the… okay the entire thing’s different, but the setting and most of the main cast remains intact, save for a few additions and subtractions in the minor character department . If you’re into adaptations you can’t go wrong here.

RATB Complete list of books read in 2011

2011
1. Fires of Heaven – Robert jordan
2. The legendary adventures of Alexander
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (x2) – Mark Twain
4. Far from the Maddening Crowd – Thomas Hardy
5. The Dwarves – Markus Heitz
6. Animal Farm – George Orwell
7. The wizard of Oz – L. F. Baum
8. Around the World in 80 days – Jules Verne
9. Five Weeks in a Balloon – Jules Verne
10. De Kraai – Kader Abdolah
11. The Last Witchfinder – James Morrow
12. Scottish Myths and Legends – Hamilton
13. The Poor mouth – Flann O’ Brien
14. John Bull’s Other Island – Bernard Shaw
15. Preludes and Nocturnes, Sandman vol 1 – Neil Gaiman
16. Watt – Samuel Beckett
17. Good Omens – Neil Gaiman
18. Sand
19. Dream Country, Sandman vol 3 – Neil Gaiman
20. The Voyages of Sindbad
21. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
22. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
23. Good Wives – L.M. Alcott
24. Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime – Oscar Wilde
25. A portrait of an artist as a young man – James Joyce
26. Salome – Oscar Wilde
27. Peter Pan/Peter Pan in kensington gardens – J.M. Barrie
28. The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett
29. Lord of Chaos – Robert Jordan
30. The Stone Rose – Simon Messingham
31. The Crown of Swords – Robert Jordan
32. Irish Fairy Tales – Joseph Jacobs
33. Interview with a Vampire – Anne Rice
34. The Resurrection Casket – Justin Richards
35. The Doctor Trap – Simon Messingham
36. The Taking of Chelsea 426 – David Llewellyn
37. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
38. The Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury – Arthur Conan Doyle
39. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
40. Emma – Jane Austen
41. The fall of the house of usher – Edgar Allen Poe
42. Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas – Frederick Douglas
43. The strange case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
44. Benito Cereno – Herman Melville
45. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
46. Lady Chatterly’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
47. Othello – SHakespeare
48. Ireland: A very peculiar history – Jim Pipe
49. Hamlet – Shakespeare
50. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
51. Twenty thousand leagues under the sea – Jules Verne
52. The Last hero – Terry Pratchett

53. King Lear – SHakespeare
54. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling

2012
1. American Pastoral – Philip Roth

RATB – December

The Crying of lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED AND EVERYTHING IS WEIRD.
The best Post-War Novel you will ever read.
LITERALLY!
It’s actually about postal wars. Mostly though, mostly it’s about conspiracy theories, the fundamental interconnectedness of it all, and slowly going doo-lally.
And, oh yes, everybody’s dropping acid, besides you.

The last Hero – Terry Pratchett
I CRIED.
It’s terribly poignant, completely cracktastic and utterly lovely. Beautifully illustrated as well. Watch me weep over linework.
A story about getting old, and deciding to go out with a bang. Also dragons. Also Gods. And Leonardo Davinci.
I love this book to little bits. If you like the Discworld series, you will love this.
Go forth. and read!

King Lear – Shakespaere
Children are shitty.
AND I MEAN REALYY SHITTY
as in when you’re dying and all you want is 100 dudes to keep you company, they won’t even pay to feed them, shitty.
and if you ask them if they love you, one of them will always tell you you’re being a bit creepy, so no.
and then when you disinherit them they’ll marry a prince and invade your bleeding country, which you gave to those other two bints who refuse to house you.
oh and you’ll die
so will she
and the rest
EVERYBODY WILL DIE.
but not before going we wander around the heath for a while. and go blind. and nearly jump off a cliff.
I always get the feeling I either should or really should not write summaries of stories.

I once saw a performance of this play in Dutch, which I did not understand because the plot’s a bit confusing. All those people trying to screw each other over, how does one keep track. I wouldn’t call it a lovely play, none of the tragedies really are lovely, but it’s an intriguing one.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea – Jules Verne
TEDIOUUUUS.
Verne can get a bit tedious on occasion, which I noticed in his other novels, but this one takes the proverbial cake. Maybe it’s because marine biology is very much not in my field of interest, but ye Deities excruciating does not begin to describe it. AT LEAST 1/4th of the book is fish descriptors. That’s not to say he doesn’t paint a lovely picture of the seaworld. He does, but after 100 pages you kind of get that there are fish, they have a variety of colours and apparently are all excellent for dining on. THe plot’s good though, if a bit out there. Nero’s a very strange character…and that’s all that I took away from this novel.

That and the fact that squids are terrifying.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
My love for the Potter it knows no bounds. I’ve decided to read all the novels once more, because I’ve forgotten quite a lot of the detail. Especially of the latter two books. The first five are actually pretty solidly up there, since I read them to the point of exhaustion while I was waiting for 6 and 7 to come out. Arguably I could just read the final two books, but Potter’s an experience. Let’s start from the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start.
To read you begin with
The Philosopher’s stone.

Sandman volumes 1-3 – Neil Gaiman
Preludes and Nocturnes (1-8)
Contains the following comics
1. Sleep of the just
2. Imperfect Hosts
3. Dream a little dream of me
4. A hope in hell
5. Passengers
6. 24 hours
7. Sound and Fury
8. The Sound of her wings

The Doll House (9-16)
contains the following comics

9. Tales in the sand
10. The Doll’s House
11. Moving in
12. Playing House
13. Men of Good Fortune
14. Collectors
15. Into the Night
16. Lost Hearts

Dream Country (17-20)

Contains the following comics

17. Calliope
18. A dream of a thousand Cats
19. A midsummer’s Night Dream
20. Facade

Comic books! Okay, graphic novels really. These are horrendously good and delightfully disturbing. Go forth and read. When I say disturbing, I mean it though, so if you’ve got a queasy stomach, maybe there are not the best thing to read, seeing as the gory details are actually illustrated .

RATB – November

And as we go from december into the cold and frigid embrace of january. Not that it’s cold. I actually didn’t even need a coat today.
Guess what. I ACTUALLY MANAGED TO FINISH THE CHALLENGE. I feel this bodes well for my future endeavors. I like lying to myself.

So here’s november, approximately.
Hamlet – Shakespeare
The famous to be or not to be monologue…and more.
I always forget that everybody dies at the end of these Shaksperian tragedies, and here pretty much everybody dies.
We had to read an adaptation of this called the Hamlet machine. If anybody wants to explain that one to me, feel free. I’m still going wtf.

Othello – Shakespeare
Gender and race issues, and then EVERYBODY DIES AGAIN. Well, not everybody, but most people. It’s a good play. Murder, conniving bitches and intrigue always make for a fun reading experience.

I could give you an in-depth review of both of these, but I’m pretty sure it’s all been said before. I enjoy shakespeare, though on occasion the language does start to blur together and I want to weep salty tears of non-comprehension. The plots are easier to grasp, though the intricacies require various read through to be honest especially when it comes to, lets say, hamlet, which takes like 6 hours to perform in full.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D. H. Lawrence
Not very enjoyable. It was okay, but I wasn’t blown away by it. Pick it up if you’re interested, if you’re not, don’t. I’m very meh about this book. The sex scenes were HILARIOUS though .

Ireland: a very peculiar History – Jim Pipe
That it is. I picked this up on my journey to Dublin, and well I’m a stickler for funny history books. It’s informative, but also hilarious. It gives out a bunch of weird facts. I LOVE WEIRD FACTS.

I’ve always wanted to know how to make pickled pigs feet, haven’t you? Well now YOU CAN!

The Doctor Who novels
The Stone Rose – Simon Messingham
The Resurrection Casket – Justin Richards
The Doctor Trap – Simon Messingham
The Taking of Chelsea 426 – David Llewellyn
These are actually audiobooks, but I think they should count for something since they take twice as long to get through. Compared to my own reading speed that is, past results give no guarantee for the future, especially not if they’re my results.I do tend to multitask when I listen to these books. but I can remember pretty much everything that happened in each of these though.

They’re enjoyable expansions of canon and pretty much follow the basic episode formulae, save for the fact that they’re about twice as long as a normal episode in plot content (Actual length of audio files range from 2 to 3 hours)

RATB – October

Late as usual, but I have by now nearly caught up on my reading deficit, so props to me for that at least xD. Only two books behind at this point and that is very manageable, especially since I got some holidays coming up. That’s right, in 15 days I will have the blessed freedom of VACATION. Brought to you by a lack of actually having to hand in course work the week after that. Life. It is good.
On with the readings.

Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allen Poe
Okay, maybe I cheated a tiny bit here, because this story is rather short, but I never enforced a page minimum on myself. Frankly, with all the randomized readings I had to do for American Literature I feel I get to at least count the complete stories.

So Poe. Would you believe me if I told you that this was my first encounter with Poe? Okay, I had of course heard of him, one of my friends is a big fan of his Raven poem, and I watched that Gilmore Girls episode where they have like 5 Poe’s a few times, but beyond a few lines of verse I had not heard or read anything from him.
I can see now why that needed to be rectified, because he is glorious. This story is morbid, fantastically deranged and the ending is just deliciously wtf inducing. I’ll definitely be checking out more of his work, because this was very good.

Benito Cereno – Herman Melville
I feel like I’ve overdosed on Melville this year, because I also read Moby Dick and Bartleby, and frankly he is not my favourite author. Now that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy his work, Moby Dick is certainly enjoyable, but he is on occasion a bit slow. It takes them forver to find that bloody whale, and then there’s this big rush and wham, everybody is dead.

Cereno was much the same, in that it takes forever to get to the conclusion and then everything happens very fast. If you have seen Amistad, or are familiar with the plot it seems to take even longer before the narrator has his Aha moment. It’s pretty important in the sense that it plays on racial prejudice and the narrator’s inability to see what is happining in front of him due to his prejudices, but ultimately I got bored with it halfway through. Of course I finished it, because I had a midterm on it, but I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

Narrative of the Frederick Douglas – Frederick Douglas
I’m not one for autobiography, unless it’s by a person I truly love to bits, and who I know has got the writing chops to pull it off (Stephen Fry anyone?). This one hasn’t changed my mind, but it was a good read. He led an interesting life, and seeing into his mind was certainly enjoyable. Especially his view on how his literacy at first seemed to be a liberating skill, and then it became a burden in that he finally understood how he couldn’t be free. Of course the fact that he does free himself, is very satisfying in the end. His description of religion and how the Church is morally corrupt in condoning slavery, and how the very notion of slavery turns people into monsters was insightful. That he still believes is terribly intriguing to me.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other tales of horror – Robert Louis Stevenson
Okay, I have to confess that I didn’t read this completely. There is one story in there, and it is written in a dialect so incomprehensible to me that I tried and failed. This was a bit of hit and miss for me, some of the stories were elegant and poignant in their description of moral decrepitness and weirdness. Others… didn’t really make much sense. I have to say it is not truly scary in any way. Maybe Karin Slaughter has desenstized me.
The Dr. Jekyll story is entertaining though, so I can recommend a read through just for that story .

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
And more Steveson. Treasure Island is…I don’t know, I came into the book expecting something other than the slaughter of nearly all the characters. The novel was different from what I expected, and also longer. The first act made me wonder whether or not I was reading the correct book, but they do ultimately go treasure hunting. Then everything goes pear-shaped and you get this strange island warfare thing, in which most people die or are left to starve. It’s an adventure story, so if you’re into that, and strangely shaped tiny boats, you should pick this one up. If not, watch a movie based on this someday, I’m sure they’re out there.

Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
On my second read through:
This book is HILARIOUS. Go read it. The first time I read it I hated it. And I still hate it, or rather I hate Tom Sawyer. Whiney git. The rest is glorious. Eternal hearts all round.

RATB – August and September?

HELLO, lovely people. Managed to get snowed under with start of term shenanigans, hence the lack of posting on the book, quilt and knitting front. My apologies. As to the book front, I am roughly 7 books behind on my reading list as of now, which I hope to catch up on before the year is out. WHICH BY THE WAY ONLY 9 weeks! . As to the Quilt, that too had to suffer a bit due to my knitting revival spree of October. I’m currently on 36 squares quilted and counting. And the knitting . Ho boy. I finished a sweater, an anthemion shawl, and two cowls (Honey and a freeform one). Expect posts in the future .

ON WITH THE BOOKS! (and some pictures of my last day in Ireland since I managed to skip that post

Irish Fairy Tales – Joseph Jacobs
Some funny, some incomprehensible, but overall very entertaining. If you like fairy tales, or have young children, I’d definitely recommend this little book to you .

Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice
Oh boy. You know the movie doesn’t do the tortured soul of our dear Louis justice. It was an angst fest, if one wants to be technical, but dear Deities did I enjoy it. The odd relationship between him and Claudia and Lestat, his search for anything at all to matter, deliciousness. Definitely going to read the rest of her work about this particular universe.

Moby Dick – Herman Melville
What a book. It took me a while to get into it, for I found the chapters specifically about whaling a bit jarring when it came to my reading experience. Once I got over the fact that it’s basically two books it was magnificent, strange, otherworldly, completely disgusting and captivating.

Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury – Arthur Conan Doyle

This particular book contains the Adventures, Memoirs and Return of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the Hound of the Baskervilles, formatted as they were in the strand magazine including original illustrations. I got it at a secondhand bookshop somewhere, and I’m sorry for offering a link that doesn’t allow you to buy a new copy. I’m not sure they’re still in print .

Ever since watching the Movie and the BBC modern miniseries of Sherlock Holmes I became slightly obsessed with reading the books. I however, failed, for quite some time to get my hand on some, until this lovely edition crossed my path. I bought it and took it with my to Ireland to read. AND IT IS AS WONDERFUL AS I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. It doesn’t always manage to retain its suspense until the very end, but they are magnificently written whodunnits and mysteries. Now I just need to get my hands on the rest of his work!

Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
We had to read this one for my American Lit class (Amlit before 1900). It was a quick read and overall I enjoyed it. I liked the themes, you know, what is sin, and how does on cope with one’s mistakes. However, I found the wording or rather symbolism a bit over the top and obvious at times. Somebody on goodreads was of the opinion that it was nearly as if Hawthorne was taking you by the head and going look, see what I did there, aren’t I marvelous. That might be a bit severe, but on occasion it did feel like it.

Emma - Jane Austen
This was actually my secondary reading of Emma, because I had to write something on it for my course on the Bildungsroman (which I dropped soon after). My love for Austen, like so many people before me, cannot be contained, but my love for Emma took a while to manifest itself. The first time I read it I was 16 and I took such and instant dislike to the main character that I couldn’t continue without throwing the book away in disgust. Last year I finally read it through completely and now after the second time my love for Emma is most definitely there. She is by no means perfect, some would say she’s quite arrogant, but she is not unsympathetic and she grows into a more likeable character, for me, as the book progresses. Austen is undoubtedly the master of the small town community, but in Emma the foibles and troubles are so wonderfully and funnily rendered, that I just smile my way through the book.

If you are too lazy to read the book, go and watch the most recent adaptation (NOT THE MOVIE WITH PALTROW), from the BBC. It is glorious and manages to capture most of the essence of Emma .