Genevieve's Journeys

Continuing to chug along at parkruns. New PB, though my legs ached ferociously on Sunday.

I may change my 'home' base to the run I've done the most, as it's a much nicer park to run around than the first one I attended.

North London is hilly; there's nowhere in a park that's going to offer 5k flat running. I might as well choose the one that's most attractive.

Yesterday and today a heron visited the pond in my workplace's courtyard.

You have to look closely, for the one on the left; the one on the right is a plastic decoy...but to attract or deter more herons isn't clear.

And yes, we have a cheesy gnome with a fishing line. So sue us.




On my lunchtime run I saw a heron in the stream in the park, and since it's just a short flap for a heron from courtyard to stream I'm guessing it's the same one.

Is is avian-ist to say that all herons look alike to me?

In the 'Drachenwald first-world problems' category:

I'm finally making myself new veils, to replace the ones I felt terribly under-dressed in at Double Wars. I've wanted both new flat veils and ruffled ones for ages, plus a Birgitta cap (minus the fiddly-but-functional midline needlework).

My barrier to improving my veils wasn't materials, it was instructions.

Only in Drachenwald can all the instructions on making ruffled veils I can find be in languages I don't speak...til I asked Mistress Lia for her top source, and she pointed me at this lady's excellent photos (sorry they're in FB).

So I have new flat veils for the weekend, plus several miles of ruffle for sewing in the vehicle...plus knitting.

It's just as well I work in the sticks. I'd never survive the temptation of regular exposure to good shops.

I had 1 day to attend meetings in S. London near Waterloo. Waterloo stn, as every London knitter knows, is dangerously close to I knit London.

And so it came to pass that I entered the shop in search of a single needle, tripped, and fell into their bargain bin, dislodging my wallet in the process.



The thick yarn is blue faced leicester roving, 100g. The pink and purple is silk 4ply (actually counted 7plies, but never mind), 100g each. The Addi needles, nuff said.

The DPNs are the smallest I now own, 2mm and 1.5, for trying fine stockings.

Thanks to zmiya_san's loan of a yarn winder and a ball winder, I've been skeining and winding a lot of yarn lately.

Here's my 4kg of yarn now skeined, washed and wound, towards a major jumper project.

Thanks to my recent guest Gwendolyn, I now know how to wind silk successfully - on a toilet roll. Here's a couple I prepared earlier.



Lady Gwen is the EK visitor at DW last year, who did silk weaving, starting with growing the silkworms from scratch. When I first heard about her through Lia's posts and pictures I thought 'that's right off the scale' for craftiness. But Gwendolyn isn't mad...just really, really thorough. :-)

Today is hot for London, around 29 dec C apparently. Glorious, excellent for drying still more skeined and washed yarn.

Robert is away slaying orcs. I have 3 days to sprawl on the sofa, read books, be cat furniture, and call taco chips and instant noodles dinner.

I could clean the flat and put away all my fencing kit from Double Wars.

Or not.

More likely to try to get round the park again, even if it's not at running pace. The bigger part of the park is actually furthest from us.

Haven't had the bandwidth or motivation to keep LJ up to date - flat out at work still, Raglan looming.

Feels like:

Can't talk during the day, busy workin'.

Can't talk during the weekend, busy scribin' or sortin' stuff.

Can't talk evenings, busy stitchin' or scribin' or recovering from work.

Some good stuff:

Thamesreach's 15th anniversary was last weekend which we marked with a rapier revel and our usual potluck feast. We told stories of our first encounter with Thamesreach, and sat 24 people to dinner. Very satisfying.

I'd put together a passport for Katheryne Gordon and her family to Ealdormere, as they are moving to Brennistein Vatn, for his highness to present on behalf of TRM, which was well received. Hopefully the family's PCS scrolls will reach them in Ealdormere.

The scribes have come through once more with fabulous willingness to do scrolls for Raglan. I spent a very pleasant evening looking through the scroll blank collection, largely thanks to badgersandjam who assembled it, and am very grateful for it, as it makes some of the magic possible.

I've written one article recently about using the order of precedence, and have another under review about basically where awards come from ('when a mother and father award love each other very much...'). I'm intending it for the next Baelfyr.

The occasion for it is growth in Insulae Draconis, and new people not as familiar with the conventions of our region as others, so I'm trying to fill the gap in a constructive way.

In late June we visited with Vitus as family at a backyard BBQ: these are less common in England than elsewhere, as a) shortage of backyards and b) intrinsic belief by the English that any attempt to BBQ is doomed to failure.

Happily Vitus is German and is untroubled by such insecurities. :-)

He now has 2 divots on the right side of his skull where he had surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain following his slip.

He says there's an option to put plates in to cover but they're 'cosmetic' and don't really help add more protection...but he might get them just to trigger the body scanners at the airports. :-)

Isabel his lady looks beautiful - not everyone does at 8 months pregnant but she's managing it.

Weekend before last we spent some time hanging out with Nasr and Haroun, and eating pizza, which apparently made Haroun's day.

A couple of weeks ago I got to spend an evening with Sir Wiglaf, one of my favourite people in Drachenwald. He's based in Austria and doesn't visit much, so any time to spend with him is precious. This was on Ye Holy Gaming Night so Robert was otherwise engaged! so it was just the two of us, at least to start.

I had a beer with him then we went to dinner with Nasr and Bridget a friend of N&E's from Calontir, going for Mexican food.

I can count the number of times I've had mexican food in Europe on one hand and still make rude gestures - I even miss Taco Bell for pete's sake. It was a treat of an evening.

I've sent Wiglaf some suggestions for his 'peer doc' which is posted on greydragon.org. Since it's dated 2000 it's practically web-medieval itself, but it's still totally worth reading.

Reading it gives you a sense of what a conversation with Wiglaf is like, which is to say, somewhat surreal. :-)

England has 2 long weekends in May - one of the best innovations in bank holidays ever. It means that English spring and early summer is full of breaks, because Easter rolls back and forth between late March and April, as well as these two long weekends.

(Unfortunately the English have no break from Labour Day to Christmas - they desperately need a Thanksgiving. OTOH, they don't have a glorious fall to enjoy, whereas English springs are very charming.)

This year, the second bank holiday followed the 'tradition' of 3 days of rain.

Robert was away slaying orcs in a field Somewhere in Northamptonshire. He came back muddy to the knees, and very glad of a shower.

On my own, I entertained myself with a weekend of shopping. My shopping goes in fits and starts; I spend weeks without buying anything more exciting than lunch, and then lash out one weekend and replace great chunks of wardrobe or entertainment supplies. This weekend, it was mostly about Stuff to make More Stuff.

• Saturday: Cornelissens' for the next pack of pergamenata, plus my shop-visit treat of a new bottle of ink and new nibs.


• Sunday: eBay for yarn suitable for baby projects, for the round of sprogs due between now and August. After a couple of weeks of scouring the intawebs for ethical yarns that are local, well-made and affordable, it's sort of fun to search for the 'junk food' of knitting, cotton-acrylic blends in baby colours. Feels sort of like eating the whole bag of taco chips by myself...


• Monday: the fabric shop with the scariest, or silliest, looking website on the planet: Fabricland.co.uk

Canadians: this is not your kind of Fabricland. This is a special southern England Fabricland all of its own.

This is the kind of website that makes web professionals like ingaborg cringe; it breaks all the rules of accessibility, usability, readability. It uses frames, it uses garish colours, it uses crying baby gifs for pete's sake. It shouldn't work.

And yet...I find it compelling, and I'm delighted by how low-tech and totally homemade looking it is. It totally conveys the tone and style of the business. It looks just like the shops feel when you walk in - like a outdoor market stall on the internet, which is appropriate, because that's how the business started (in Reading, not London).

I think it's awesome, and it makes me laugh. It was totally worth the trip to Kingston-upon -Thames.

It's not much help on the medieval fabrics front - the linens are mixed in with all the other suitings; there are no wools to speak of; only a handful of silks. Berwick Street it is not.

But it was a great source of printed cottons, totally wrinkle-proof mystery suiting for another shot at making work clothes, plus some lovely crepe de chine for a dress, for a wedding later this year.

Again, it felt a bit naughty to be buying cotton and synthetics even, after decades of hunting for medieval-compatible fabric. That's me, naughtily buying viscose!... No, I don't go out much, why?

Late in the weekend m_nivalis dropped by for a visit to test nibs and ask opinions on sweaters and on fitting Birgitta caps.

I'm a confirmed veil wearer so I'm always glad to see and hear of new veil arrangements, though I think by itself, without the covering veil, it wouldn't be that flattering.

Some links about St Birgitta caps she recommended:

Catrijn's dressmaker diaries
Same Catrijn's photos of progress (clearly keen on embroidery!)

Splendidly clear tutorial on making a cap without the embroidery down the seam - this one I have a hope of doing.

Wow this Katafalk lady does beautiful work! Every time I think I'm getting a handle on this sewing thing, I find another Swedish or Finnish medieval dress blog, and realise I'm just a duffer.

because that's my life right now!

Highlights:

Move went fairly smoothly. All our stuff is now at our new place, we've checked out of the old one and handed over the keys, and are sorting the last of the services.

It went as well as it did because we had awesome help: RA, part of the Kiwi network, and her highness Eleanor went gangbusters on packing and clearing the kitchen, and shlepping stuff down to the ground floor. This was building on the great goodwill from last week when we had more packers than boxes available: we're still pushing their good work around the lounge.

This heap of boxes outside the flat, ready to go, was a huge boon because the men-and-van were late; we were the second job of their day, and they were keen to minimise their work.

Robert had warned them about the routes into the flat (round the garden path, literally, or up and down some serious stairs) and we all opted for the garden path. They'd underestimated the time required to both load and unload, and Robert's guess was much closer, and they and we weren't finished til 8.30 at night.

I'd gone ahead to the new place, to meet thorngrove, who'd offered to help unpack, and we filled the wait for the moving van with dinner on the Kingsbury high street.

Thank all the appropriate sources it wasn't raining on Saturday. The skies opened on Sunday morning and we thanked the sources again.

On Sunday we were joined by Earl Paul and Lady Anne, who were wonderfully refreshing and cheery and went to work scrubbing, scooping up bits and sweeping through.

Ozbeg arrived midafternoon, and we were able to use the ancient and honourable traditional vehicle of the SCA (station wagons predate SUVs) to move the last 2% of stuff, which grew to about 4% when we remembered the huge wall decoration (lovely reproduction of a brass plaque of a 14th c lord and lady) which would not fit into an eco-vehicle.

By end of Sunday we were like zombies: having trouble focusing on more than one thing at once. It took me 20 minutes to make coffee on Monday morning, something that usually takes 5 mins.

If someone asked me a question I lost the thread of what I was doing and struggled to pick it up - this ability is only slowly returning. Having dozens of things to put away is not helping.

SO: we're moved, all our stuff (so far) survived the trip, there were no tears, Robert and I still like each other, and (as far as we know) our friends still like us.

Haggis has coped admirably. She commented on the trip occasionally on the 45 min car ride in her carrier, and set to exploring as soon as we let her out of the bathroom. She's hopping up and down to Explore the New Out, but we're keeping her indoors for a few days yet, to get used to the space.

She's used the litter under sufferance, after checking the new space very thoroughly for other options and exits; clearly civilised kittehs use the great outdoors for preference.

She's found that the coarse doormat is excellent for clawing, which is fine with us, and the windows are a good height for CatTV.

Downsides

The fridge and freezer don't work, as we discovered the day after Robert had stocked the freezer.

They're 'integrated' units (read: more expensive ones, built to hide behind the cupboards) and someone defrosted the freezer with a sharp tool, possibly damaging it. The visible damage was obvious, but It wasn't obvious the cool-making no longer worked, b/c neither were turned on high.

Fortunately this was patently Not Our Fault, and the engineer confirmed on Monday that replacement was the only way to go. Will be sorted ASAP, mainly by someone else doing the hard work. Halellujah.

The recycling scheme in this borough is shameful: 'apartments' and other shared buildings don't yet have food waste recycling (which is available in our last borough, has been for years), and the rest of the recycling seems rudimentary.

There are 3 lonely bins that would normally serve one house, available for the whole complex of 37 flats, which seems mad. Someone is slacking on providing this service.

And: the recycling service doesn't take cardboard. Hello? what century is this?

Guess what we have lots of right now??

Today I investigated the housing association which owns our complex, and left a message for the housing manager. Now waiting for a reply.

The most alarming part of this move: no intawebs.

Phone and broadband transfer was supposed to happen on Monday. We have phone, but no intawebs.

I feel like a smoker trying to quit, who is cadging smokes off strangers (hey buddy, can I read my email on your tablet? can you spare me some surf minutes?).

I keep going in mental circles with my to-do list, because almost every task involves checking something online: when the garbage is collected, how to register to vote, sorting council tax, even just browsing for new shelves.

There's no longer handy Argos or IKEA catalogues left lying around, not even a phone book, the way there were when we last moved. It was a near-invisible change (no longer getting catalogues) but man, I feel helpless without a connection!

Next steps

Sorting intawebs, and the dreaded Trip to IKEA for shelving...

Author has a book deal to run to 8 books!

Hurrrah!

As a regular library user, I've gone so far to even buy these, so I can reread them.

Yay for Ben Aaronovitch!

This weekend I fought the sloth - well, once I'd gotten out of bed, I did.

Saturday we went to see Elizabeth I and her people, exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Very worthwhile, even if you're not a 16th c mavin. Attended with Kat, who was a PS4 widow for the weekend.

I was very excited to find a portrait and works of a woman 'caligraphist' - a professional woman calligrapher, who lived in Edinburgh at end of 16th c. How cool.

Had a drink in the Coal Hole afterward, and then vietnamese for dinner with my sweetie. While we had a pleasant time, our frugal souls felt a bit hard done by.

exhibit: £12.50 x 2 = £25
drinks: £4 x 3 = £12
dinner: £35 (won't go there again, not worth it)
giftshop: £16

Total: £88 for an afternoon in London, and we haven't travelled 5 miles. I didn't count travel because we already have travelcards. I'll point this out next time someone moans about cost of events...

On Sunday I wrestled with my usual weekend blahs: have loads to do, can't settle on a task, sit and have a cup of tea til I figure it out, half the day disappears while I argue with myself. I sometimes wonder if anyone else loses days this way.

In the end, I settled for hauling out my perfumery supplies and looking at soapmaking again for Christmas. It's a slightly fiddly process, but an engaging one, and I now have the supplies for at least 2 batches of soap.

Ordered some supplies from Baldwins to this end.

I may try 'Spanish leather' this year, as described by S Pointer in her book about historic cosmetics, though I suspect it will be a very heavily scented process.

I did have a go at making scented bath bombs, but managed mostly to make a mess. Will double check the method for getting them to 'set' into a shape that is a little less chaotic - it worked well at the Make Lounge a couple of years ago, but I may have missed a step.

Late afternoon (took that long to pry myself out of the house) walked to Bangla City on Brick Lane, for more supplies - they're a good source for food-grade oils for creams and scrubs. Was reminded how much I hate crowds, especially oblivious ones. However, they also stock lye on the shelf, very cheaply.

Anyway: the upshot is, if you're on my giftlist, you're getting smellies.

Haggis entertained us on Sunday chasing her tail: apparently this tail is still giving her grief, and needs chasing, well into adulthood.

For added annoyance, her tail appears to send out 'I need chasing' signals in the most awkward of places: while she's perched on a windowsill, or on the top of the bedstead rail, or while she's exploring inside my large backpack, that was sitting on the landing. She only escaped her tail's clutches when the backpack started sliding down the stairs.

On the knitting front, am now experimenting with a TARDIS scarf to use up the 3/4 of a skein of TARDIS blue yarn leftover from the shawl. Am debating whether to add Daleks for variety.

I just finished the third book of Manda Scott's series about Boudica. I found the author in a Big Book of Historical Whodunnits recently, and was really impressed, and the series is just as good. 4th is on order at the library.

It's rare to find an author who incorporates a meaningful spiritual experience into the story - a bit like Pullman creating the daemons for his alternate world, the characters in this Britain have a vivid spiritual life, full of ghosts, gods and results from prayers,and they fully expect their actions affect their souls directly. These ghosts and gods are real, just as real as the physical, living people. Most (non-believing) authors can't set aside their modern selves enough to 'speak' as a believer from another period would.

Where her characters are speaking to ghosts of ancestors, friends and family, we as modern people would say, 'my mother's voice in my head says...' or 'that's my grandmother talking'.

It's akin to the different 'strains' of voices in your head; the ones that nag, the ones that tell you you're doing it wrong, you 'should' be doiong X, why aren't you doing Y, you're letting Z down. The gods, consistently, are neutral, avoid answering questions, but do ask a lot of probing, reflective questions of their believers.

I quite enjoyed this dimension in the story, but I know not everyone would.

Also interesting is that Scott is a reenactor, someone who has fought in battles, worn the clothes, eaten the food, camped under canvas.

Her characters still seem almost supernaturally physically fit and active (surviving swimming in winter streams), though perhaps I just don't expect anyone to be physically resilient, when I am so unfit. Only 100 years ago people living such an active life would not be so unusual.

I should have posted this in August, when we went, but I was too disappointed, and exhausted.

But someone I know has said they're headed to see it, so I thought it was time to post.

At the end of August, after Raglan, Robert and I had a random day in the city, and we passed the theatre showing War Horse. I'd wanted to attend since last Christmas but at that time found tickets were booked through til February, so it got put off.

Now, walking in, I could get tickets for the same week, and a selection of seats. WTH, I thought, it'll round out our summer holiday.

I'd watched the documentary about the War Horse production avidly before it opened in London - the intricacy of the 'puppets' amazed me, and I was intrigued by the mechanics of it, and the learning to make these devices turn into creatures on stage.

So ;ater that week, we had dinner at our favourite Chinese restaurant and headed to the theatre.

And we walked out at intermission, something I've never done before.

But I was so unhappy, and so irritated, that it overcame my inner frugalness that was bitching about the 'wasted' cost of the tickets.

Some of the issues were with the production. The lead actor was an utterly unconvincing teenager; I realise we have to suspend disbelief, but I guess I need help to do so.

The production overall was very 'shouty': it sounded like the actors weren't confident that their voices would reach everyone in the theatre and they had to raise the volume, but didn't have the skill to do it without shouting. So everyone's lines seemed over-loud, even those that were supposed to be low.

To confuse matters the lead singer of the musical pieces between acts was mic'ed, so his voice carried loudly over the audience. After getting accustomed to the shoutiness, hearing a lead singer clearly was a shock. It felt like they were trapped between two approaches - to mic or not to mic - and had decided to do both.

BUT...then the chorus was not mic'ed. Go figure.

The pacing was poor: it felt like the whole production was rushing to meet a deadline that everyone felt late for. There were no pauses, no moments of silence to let a line sink in.

But what broke it for me, and the reason I walked out, was the plot: that it was the story of a teenager from an alcoholic home who tries to care for a horse, that becomes a pawn in a dysfunctional family.

Now, lots of people come from dysfunctional families, and lots of people have experience with alcoholic families, and the kinds of abusive, manipulative, and enabling behaviour that happen in those families aren't unusual.

But I could not stomach having it feature as the fulcrum around which the family turned: that the father was a drunk, the mother an enabler ('he doesn't mean it; you don't know what he's been through; he was the one who stayed home to keep the farm going'), the father's brother and family prone to taking advantage of the father's weaknesses ('we'll just offer him a drink or two before bargaining'), the son and the horse suffering the consequences of these manipulations ('you'll do it or I'll shoot him now').

There was nothing glorious, heartwarming, or encouraging about it. It was a methodical exposure of what a broken family looks like, when you live in a culture that doesn't divorce, or worse, when a family 'chooses' to put up with the abuse 'for the sake of the family'.

What was weirdest to me was that I felt like I was the only one who noticed it.

The theatre was full of kids, ranging from young-ish to early teens, I think. There was a tween or teen next to me, with a younger sister further down. And as the lights went up for intermission I heard her say 'it's magical, it's just amazing'.

And I felt like screaming, 'Can't you see he should get out? Get the fuck out, now, now NOW! Don't play these fucking games with an animal's life. LEAVE. There's no fixing this family, no way at all. ANYTHING is better than becoming a pawn. Just GO. GET OUT.'

But I didn't.

When the lights went up, I could see from Robert's posture he wasn't enjoying it much, but was resigned. And I thought, why put up with this? paying money isn't enough reason to be subjected to a show that is upsetting and bothering you.

One usher said goodbye, as we walked out against the flow of attendees hurrying back into the theatre at the end of intermission. He didn't look surprised. 'Not enjoying it?' It must happen.

It's possibly my own fault, for not finding out more about the plot. But I had about as much information I usually have before deciding to watch a movie, probably more - I'd seen the ads, read the highlights of the reviews (uniformly glowing), and seen the documentary.

What struck me is that nowhere in any review, in any personal observation (one of my colleagues at work went, and said it was brilliant, though it was a weepie), in any promotion, was there any discussion of the alcoholic brokenness at the core of the story. Not a whisper, not a hint.

So either lots of people just don't notice it - it's a fairly conventional literary device for introducing conflict and drama - or it doesn't bother them.

I honestly cannot tell you how it ends (though historically, I can tell you the horses don't win the First World War), because I walked out.

I can tell you that I would not recommend it, as a way to see amazing theatrical effects.

Watch the documentary about the making of War Horse. There's loads of it on YouTube, and you get to see the mechanics of it up close, and it's very informative.

But it's poor entertainment.