aliens, vampires and ghosts

I've started swatching for Jack's Alien Illusion scarf. This swatch is in his first choice of maroon and black. The alien shows up quite well when the swatch is viewed from an oblique angle but I think I'll still swatch in lime green and black to give him a choice.


 I was making good progress, or so I thought , on my Landgirls top until I realised that the right front and left front didn't quite match. GAHH!!   I ripped it back, started knitting again, then decided that I needed a break from the dark jade green wool and Landgirls was put back into the knitting bag to think about what she had done.

So, on with Alien Illusion, in a trad scarf style , not a looped scarf style. Jack is not known for being fashion forward...

I'm enjoying listening to Bram Stoker's Dracula at the moment. I've never got into the Twilight series (too silly, too sparkly) but I used to love watching Christopher Lee as the Count- a proper scary vampire! Heather Ordover at Craftlit is doing Dracula at the moment, and it is pretty spooky stuff. The original novel is in epistolary form (letters and journals, rather than a 3rd person narrator, or the omniscient author's view) and there are some terrific voices there for Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, Lucy Westernra etc. I particularly enjoy Dr Seward's journal which, as he recorded it (on wax cylinders?) rather than wrote it has been produced with an authentic scratchy sound. Dracula is a fantastic study of the late 19th century scientific mind (recordings, photographs and telegrams form  part of the story) battling medieval superstitions. It's fabulous!

Over at Forgotten Classics Julie is covering Genesis and Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart . Hughart's novel is set in an ancient China that never was and features Master Li and his sidekick Number 10 Ox trying to find a rare elixir to save the lives of the children of Ox's village who are all in a coma. Master Li has to be clever and cunning as he tries to outwit the powerful people in his way and even has to tackle a dancing ghost. It's very, very funny and well worth a listen.

So, I'm surrounded by strange beings at the moment and hopefully the knitting will behave itself! 

mysteries and enigmas

My Zen mp3 player has been buzzing with mysteries from many and varied periods of history while I've been getting the Milo sock underway.

I finished Hugo's Les Miserables the other day, and I'm glad I waited until I was (ahem) middle-aged before I listened to it.

I loved the way Hugo interspersed the story with essays on the Battle of Waterloo, the French Penal system, the sewers under Paris, and life in a convent and the barricades in Paris during the revolt of 1830. It was riveting.
I studied European History in the 19th century for A level History 30 years ago and I wish the teacher had read extracts from Hugo's work to gave a flavour of the revolt.

At the same time the story of Jean Valjean and the child Cosette is gradually unravelled by Marius and at the end Cosette learns her mother's name, though not her father's.

It is well worth listening to this classic rather than reading it, and I'm sure it will be one that I will revisit in 10 years time or so, as I'm sure I will gain an even greater appreciation of it.

When I finished this I turned to the latest chapter of "The Uninvited" read by Julie on Forgotten Classics- so from 1830 to the Roaring Twenties, and from history to a mysterious ghost story.
I like ghost stories, (but not modern horror stories) and the change of pace and tone was refreshing, so much so that I downloaded "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith set in Suffolk in the 1930's. (brilliantly narrated by Jenny Agutter) I know that I read this about 20 years ago, and had been gripped by the love story but hadn't really absorbed the literary stuff.

At the end, when Cassandra's father is writing again he is exploring the link between our enjoyment of puzzles and riddles with our attempts to understand the big questions such as the nature of God and the Universe.

Funnily enough, Julie had given a link to A History of the World in 100 Objects, a BBC podcast which is available on itunes for people outside the UK.
small beer?

The podcasts last about 10 minutes and are a fascinating insight into the development of writing, literature, and how that has shaped cultures. The objects include some of the earliest writing which is a record of payments of beer for state workers (I like that!) and some relics from the Indus valley which have symbols on them as yet undeciphered.

Hopefully some clever people will be able to puzzle out the meanings of the symbols of this long lost civilization.

An enigma the Indus valley

Meantime the patten on Milo is set and I'm finding it easier to follow the charts and feel much less puzzled!

learning from the past

I've got lots of literary podcasts on my mp3 player at the moment.

My newest find is Forgotten Classics. Julie is reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she goes into a lot of the historical detail about Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Abolitionist movement.


It is a very apt book to be listening to when the US has elected its first Black president. Being British, I don't have the emotional baggage associated with the slave trade (and the pain of the Civil war) as due to Wilberforce's efforts slavery was abolished in the British empire in 1833. The English Civil War was fought between the Monarchists and the Parliamentarians, and perhaps a similar schism is still in British society from that war. (I must find some good literature relating to the English Civil War: all suggestions welcome!).
Julie is a great podcaster, not only for her narration skills but because she highlights other good podcasts relating to literature and history. Definitely one to check out!


I'm enjoying listening to Notre Dame de Paris (the Hunchback of Notre Dame) on Knitlarklane. The themes of social justice and morality are still relevant today, power still corrupts and there is as little compassion now as there was then.





Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is the book currently being read on Craftlit. Again, an American classic which is unfamiliar to me, and without any emotional baggage for me, this seems strikingly

modern.

Hawthorne was tremendous at capturing the characters of the day and sympathetic to the pain & suffering of Hester Prynne. The townsfolk of 17th century

Boston had little compassion for Hester's fall from grace, and even now western society is very quick to judge and condemn people's failings (except for adultery, which is merely entertainment fodder for the tabloid press).




Sometimes when reading or listening to classics the language/opinions of the day can be jarring or offensive, but I think we have to face up to what is in human nature, warts and all. I'm not one for sanitising the past, and as Julie says on Forgotten Classics-

" it is said that who forget history are doomed to repeat it, the reader does not wish to be responsible for dooming anyone by censoring either history or literature, therefore the book will be read as it is written, offensive language and all"