A DIY quiver

It's been a while since I posted any sewing projects, and this is a fun one.

I was having issues with my bows and arrows. The bag I was using was the equivalent of short wide armor, because bows are always longer and more awkward than you expect, and they kept falling out and making a nuisance of themselves. I eventually raided the bag for a car snack bag and stacked the weaponry on top of Kate's kitchen. It was possibly not ideal.

Last week Meg and I picked up a yard of (arrow print!) cotton duck fabric. I already had the wide blue grosgrain ribbon and a selection of giant beads.

The base of the bag is a half-circle, and the body of the the bag is a simple cylinder. I finished the inside seams with more of the blue grosgrain like Hong Kong seams, and added a casing around the upper edge for the drawstring.

The strap is a loop of ribbon. I sewed it vertically the full height of the bag over the seam. One bead is behind the bow, as a kind of slider, and then smaller beads are at the ends of the ribbon to keep them from slipping out.

I feel like I need a Katniss cowl, or possibly Queen Susan's magic horn, OR BOTH, so that I can go dashing through the woods picturesquely shooting things with my newly portable archery supplies. Anyone want to come with me? 

Surprised by unicorns

I keep forgetting we even have a unicorn. It's much less common than dragons, around here. Twice now in the last two days Jonathan has totally boggled me - I was concentrating on other things and suddenly, bam! A unicorn enters the conversation!

Jonathan to Meg: "Go. Go quickly. Without unicorns."

Jonathan: "Gahh. I just tripped on a unicorn."

It's not even a whole unicorn. It's a stick unicorn, like a stick horse. And it has felt leaves in its mane. We got it from Ikea.

All the great stories, part B

So here's the lineup. Vader came first, and he's sitting back there, all caped and Vaderly. Luke is kind of falling over, going, "Awkward!" Hawkeye has his elbows out to maximize personal space. "Not too close, bro." And Frodo's down there at the end, going all, "I'm really happy to be over here far away from Vader. I'd scoot further, but there's a sword in my way."

Shakespeare is standing at the end looking supercilious. I don't know why he won't sit, either. Probably his pantaloons get in the way.

In which my library card opens a door

This afternoon we locked ourselves out of the main bathroom. It's the kind of doorknob where you twist the inside knob and the outer one can't turn. There's a little hole in the middle of the outer one, but don't think you can poke a wire hanger in there and unlock it, because there's nothing to unlock. (Jonathan says, acording to his research, you can use a particular kind of screwdriver and twist the thing around.)

Bedtime arrived. Meg's toothbrush was still in chancery, as were all our spare toothbrushes. And the toothbrushing sticker chart was in there. It was unthinkable to skip brushing teeth for a night, because this night (oh joy of joys!) she was due for a prize. Also, we kind of like having two bathrooms accessible.

So I went and got a credit card. Actually, I got an old library card. I was able to slide it between the door and the frame and persuade the latch to open, and hurray! The door opened!

So there you have it, folks: your library card really can open doors.

Blocks

"The attacking armies are wicked, Mom. That's why I'm keeping them out with this high high castle. Don't you like it? Don't you like the door at the top?" Meg

Then she went and got her catapult out to attack the castle with. "Mama, I can't find the ball. I'll shoot the dragon at it instead."


Meg has some catchphrases which we tend to hear a bit.

"I was wrong and you were right. E-I-E-I-O!" (Or, alternately, "I was right and you were wrong. E-I-E-I-O." I don't encourage this version, though.)

When someone sneezes, she says, "Zoontai!"

Me: "MEG! Oh wait, never mind, you're okay."
Meg, curiously: "What did you think I was doing?"

She also refers to the droid as "RD-2D."

Persephone is put to bed, clean and a little soggy

Tonight we let Meg have a little cup of pomegranate seeds to nibble in the bath.* Of course the bath got everywhere, pomegranate cup, Daddy-splashing cup, ducks, Daddy, and all, and it was time for the Meg to come out of the bath.  Jonathan dealt with the bathwater first, and while his back was turned, Meg slipped out to come leap on me and my laptop and generously drip all over au naturel, to the musical shrieks of "Get down! Watch the computer!"

Jonathan came along with a towel, and when Meg was dry, pajamaed, and put to bed, discovered that the Daddy-splashing cup had maliciously covered the tub drain so the water wouldn't drain.

I tell this story, not just by way of personal encouragement that these things happen to other people, but also because I found it amusing that I was pounced on by a girl literally wet behind the ears. Metaphor strikes again.



*Doesn't that sounds luxurious and Romanesque? We're starting classical education early. Obviously.

The emerald tunic

My sister has the best hand-me-downs. She's got a great eye for clothes and I just love it when she cleans out her closet, because she shares. She dropped by yesterday en route to a wedding, and had a whole bag of happiness for me. There were tunic-dresses in black and emerald green, and a brown patterned shirt and a brown embellished skirt, and a rainbow flowered flowy top. I've been really, really wanting something emerald - a couch, or a dress, or possibly a hat - so the tunic made me ridiculously happy. 

So today I was all excited about the emerald tunic. I wore it over gray tights and a white button-up, but mysteriously, before the end of Bible study I had a brown spot on the sleeve and my feet were cold. This happens. So I came home and swapped the flats and button-up for socks, boots and a gray stripy t-shirt.

Then I noticed I looked exactly like I was setting out to hunt Emperor Zurg. While that's kind of why I like tights and tunics, I prefer not to admit it. Hmm... and I wasn't on the way to Comic Con or anything. I explained to Jonathan the outfit wasn't quite right because I don't have a phaser. I wonder if Zurg is vulnerable to rubber bands?

Bin Laden and marriage - two current events in one post!

I found out about the royal wedding myself, but Jonathan shared the news about Bin Laden's death this morning before I even had my coffee. WOO!

We are delighted. To those who have moral objections about the death penalty: some actions are deserving of death. It's a justice thing. It's not about lashing out in anger or deterrence or closure or various other things it might incidentally do; some crimes are worth dying for. His qualified. I hope he repented, and God will mercifully and justly sort him out. Glad that's not my job.

That being said, the Navy SEALS who did the raid were AWESOME. And I would be totally in favor of an Osama Down Day every May 1st, like a Guy Fawkes day. I'll buy fireworks!

I also think Homeland Security needs to drastically step down airport security, especially if they want to save the airline industry. This demonstrated (like Israel's been doing for years) that the way to prevent terrorism is by good intelligence, not strip-searching four-year-olds. We refuse to fly until they become rational again, and we're not the only ones.

Everybody's been posting their two cents, of course, but I liked this article from Heavenfield. It's a medievalist's take on the importance of proving your enemy's really dead. :-)

As for the wedding, I'm delighted about that too. Heavenfield had another fun post on "peace-weaving" royal marriages. She pointed out that first Prince Charles and now William married British women, strengthening the monarchy's ties to its own people.

Christian websites have all been taking the opportunity to talk about marriage in general. Jonathan pointed me to this post from Touchstone linking an article on David Hume's defense of one-man-one-woman marriage from a rationalist standpoint. He ties it to freedom. Yes, that David Hume.

"David Hume! The guy currently wearing a toga in Edinburgh! Mr. There's-No-Causality himself!" Jonathan

I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about an article I read last week in a Richmond Families magazine. I picked it up expecting storytime schedules, and got three pages on why all tweens need to be vaccinated with Gardasil, the cervical cancer prevention drug. Yes, you read that right. Tweens.

I read the entire article, just in case the author had a good reason. I will assume that their studies are correct and Gardasil really does prevent 85-95% of all cases of the virus/cancer, and further assume that it doesn't have any nasty side effects that surface ten or thirty or fifty years later.

But their assumptions were telling. The only way to know your child's partners are STI-free is if both remain virgins until marriage and 100% monogamous until death. This is said in a "boy are you naive to think that" tone of voice. Teens make poor choices, so parents need to prepare them.

Let's think about that a minute. We have here a risky behavior with numerous health issues. We can spend $360 per person for prior immunizations and untold millions in cleanup costs; or we can change behavior.

Smoking: change behavior! No doctor is shy about ordering you to quit.

Alcoholism: change behavior!

Obesity: change behavior!

Promiscuity: Well, of course your teenager is going to make poor decisions. We couldn't expect them to wait until they're adults, could we? Or wait until marriage? And asking adults to refrain from promiscuity? How ridiculous and backward. Never mind that chastity is 100% effective at preventing all STIs.

Our culture is so weird.

And this post is quite long enough, so I'll leave you with that. Thanks for reading.

Found

"Next, and with deep humility, [my apologies] to Balliol College - not only for having saddled it with so wayward an alumnus as Peter Wimsey, but also for my monstrous impertinence in having erected Shrewsbury College upon its spacious and sacred cricket-ground."


"There was a new porter at the St. Cross lodge, who heard Harriet's name unmoved and checked it off upon a list. She handed him her bag, took her car round to a garage in Mansfield Lane*... *For the purposes of this book, Mansfield Lane is deemed to run from Mansfield Road to St. Cross Road, behind Shrewsbury College and somewhere about the junction between the Balliol and Merton Cricket grounds as they stand at present."

Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night, from the "Author's Note" and page 5.


View Larger Map

Dorothy Sayers would put in a footnote about her changes to the Oxford map. I have always rather wondered about Mansfield Road and St. Cross Road, so for all you readers who have also wondered, Google Maps knew.

To think that I should live to see this day!

"A Christian endeavor of almost 2,000 years could be substantially completed by 2025. Protestant translators expect to have the Bible - or at least some of it - written in every one of the world's 6,909 living languages." Read the full Denver Post article here.

Talk about high adventure. Talk about projects worth doing. Talk about prophecies being fulfilled. Come soon, Lord Jesus.


Hat tip to Brandywine Books. They find the coolest news, seriously.

A snow day with a dwarvish breakfast

"'Hey, brothers! A visitor for breakfast.'

"And immediately, mixed with a sizzling sound, there came to Shasta a simply delightful smell. It was one he had never smelled in his life before, but I hope you have. It was, in fact, the smell of bacon and eggs and mushrooms all frying in a pan."

--The Horse and His Boy, Chapter 12, C.S. Lewis

We had a simply delightful smell of that sort this morning: sausage and eggs and mushrooms and tomatoes all frying together in a pan, with apricot-jammed toast. And eggnog lattes.

Jonathan finished his finals last night (yippee!), so naturally we went to the library. The first flakes were just starting. When we came out, it was snowing hard, so we called in our pizza order, stopped at the grocery store for bread and mushrooms and eggnog, and then retrieved our pizza and returned home. By this point it was sticking to the roads and they were quite slippery.

It has been snowing all night, and we woke up to nearly a foot of good fluffy white stuff, just right for packing. The roads are thoroughly cloggy, and it's still coming down. What could be nicer than a dwarvish breakfast to start off a snow day?

As long as we don't have to dig Olwen out for a trip to the hospital, we are all set. :-)

Watch out for dragons

Dr. Veith had up this story about an Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard just discovered in a field in Staffordshire.

And -- to my very great excitement -- the scholars in charge of the hoard have started a website and apparently mean to put up their research - photos, catalog, x-rays, discussions, the works. So far there's not a whole lot.

They're dating the contents to the mid-600s, which is about 200 years before King Alfred. Staffordshire, come to find out, was the middle of the old kingdom of Mercia, which I don't know much about. They say Mercia was busy expanding about that time under kings Wulfhere and Penda. I think I need to go do more research.

My medievalist bloggers are all pleased as Punch. This link has several nice embedded news stories.

Apparently the treasure was found in July, but it went on display September 25th (yesterday). Not surprisingly, long lines of people want to see it. I sure would!

Good instructions

This is a poem from Neil Gaiman, the author (I learn) of the book Stardust, and it's full of good advice if you should happen to find yourself in a fairy tale.

Hat tip: Semicolon.

A real mermaid

I loved this story about Weta Workshop (that Weta Workshop!) turning a a lady with amputated legs into a mermaid. :-) She got a functional prosthetic tail made to be used in water, and she even got the makeover to go with it. It's beautiful.

Apparently kids see her in the water and go, "Oh, right, there's a mermaid," but adults think it's really awesome.

Hat tip: Brandywine books.

"No stars so lovely"

A post about Scotland.

Jonathan and I were married June 28th, and for our wedding trip went to Scotland. :-) This was partly because we're both partly Scottish, partly to see a castle or two of Macbeth's, and partly because we'd never been and wanted to. We liked Scotland, for the record.

We stayed in Edinburgh most of the time, but took three days in the middle to go up to Inverness. Edinburgh is very much a city; very international, lots of ethnic restaurants, and I'm sure I saw Cyrillic-character graffiti. But it's a lovely city.

We didn't rent a car, so we became well acquainted with the air, train, bus, and even taxi systems. Public transportation in Scotland is a beautiful thing, and the bus drivers are even helpful. "Did ye want to go to Cawdor village or the castle? The castle? Verra well, I'll set ye doon there." But when the buses fail you, you can walk. The cities are actually pedestrian-friendly. And there are lots of little gates with honeysuckle or fuschia dangling over, and random historical plaques in corners, so the walker is well rewarded.

Scottish food is most unjustly maligned, incidentally. We thought it was amazing--except for coffee, hamburgers, and Chinese food. They cannot make those to save their lives. But if you confine yourself to tea and toffee sticky pudding and interesting little soups and salads and breads, and chicken, and fish-and-chips, and risotto, and Italian food, and paninis, and pasties... you get the picture. They use real ingredients, I do believe, and the waitresses are extremely nice. And even the burger place behaved like a real restaurant. We also learned that you will weird out the keepers of pubs if you try to order lemonade with your dinner. Eating in Scotland is downright fun. :-) We fell in love with the proper Scottish breakfast, consisting of tea, juice, toast, eggs, bacon or sausage, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, and yogurt and cereal and black pudding if you liked. (I didn't.)

When we weren't hanging out at bed-and-breakfasts, we indulged our favorite pastime of castle-hunting. Cawdor came first, being just a ways outside Inverness. Do you remember that line of Scott's about the birds, the funny one that was very long and embarrassing? "No jutty frieze, buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle. Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air is delicate." This is of interest because it's true. The air at Cawdor is sweet, sweeter than any I've known, sweet like the waters at the Utter East. Shakespeare must have known.

And as it happens, the air of Cawdor was one of its better parts. It's the Lady Cawdor's house and is quite modern inside: at least, it was redone in the seventies, which is unfortunate. That wallpaper... There are many hideous treasures inside which I suppose they couldn't bear to get rid of. I can't blame them; I'm terrible at getting rid of things, myself; but it was a shame to see the castle so...uncastley. It was, as Bunter put it, a period piece, my lady, but of an inferior period. Jonathan was sorely disappointed at the gatehouse's indefensibility.

The next day we bought a picnic and took the bus to Urquhart Castle. We arrived just as they were ending some sort of historical even, apparently involving jousting and costumes and (oddly) the last yowling electric-guitar strains of Queen. It felt like something out of "Knight's Tale," which would discombobulate anyone. But eventually the historical people all went away and left us to explore the castle properly.

Urquhart traces its history back to the 900s when St. Columba converted the chieftain Emchath there on his deathbed. At some point it got built as a proper castle, and later someone else added additional living quarters off to the side. Then Jacobites deserted it during their rebellion, and blew it up with gunpowder so the royalists couldn't get it. Or maybe I'm getting that backwards. But now it's this dramatic gray stone ruin jutting into Loch Ness, and we saw it on a perfect evening. It was cloudy--the tourists filtered away--the loch slapped coldly against the water-gate landing--the museum and shop closed--and we betook ourselves to a little stair, to eat our bread and cheese and strawberries and wait for the bus.

Jonathan decided he could probably hold the castle against any force of the size that would be likely to come and try to take it. The clouds drifted down the loch. Soon the far mountains were obscured...then the nearer hills and the village...and soon it was just us and the castle. And the rain. The bus was half an hour late. But we had an umbrella and a picnic, and there are worse places to sit and wait than at a ruined castle in Scotland with one's new-wedded husband.

The third castle we hunted was Stirling. For this, we took a train up from Edinburgh. It dropped us right at the town, and the town is the sort that grew up around the castle like in David Macauley's Castle. So up to the castle we went. It's another amazing building. I quite see why the Scots and English kept wanting it. It's built on top of a rocky hill that overlooks the country in all directions, with a gorgeous thick wall or double wall, and then the building inside. We saw them weaving replacement "Unicorn" tapestries for Her Ladyship's chamber, and the newly restored Great Hall with thrones very much like the celebrant's chairs we used for Macbeth, and muddled about in the chapel and the somethingth regimental museum (I still don't know why it was in Stirling Castle, but oh well) and garden named after somebody because his body was thrown there after he got murdered, and had tea in the castle cafe, and then we left to go see Bannockburn before it closed.

It looked much closer on the map, in my defense. Also, I think the nice lady gave us directions to Bannockburn Village instead of Bannockburn Battlefield. I didn't know there WAS a Bannockburn Village. But by the time we figured this out, it was late. We were footsore. We wanted our dinner. The battlefield was closed by then anyhow. So we stood under our umbrella because it was raining again, and waited for a bus, which came and took us to our train.

It was a fun honeymoon. God was good, and always did send us a bus or hold up the train or locate an eatery for us, or whatever was necessary. And, furthermore: we're happily married. :-)

Wedding-ey

To my loyal readers,

I'm still here. Really. The best word for the time since I last posted would have to be "wedding-ey."

I've been rounding up helpers, buying sheet cakes, finding suitable shoes for tromping about during the honeymoon, measuring the church, watching Mom sew banners, requesting my friends to rent a car when they fly out, figuring out what to do for my hair and makeup, working on the program, and doing many other such essential tasks. So my time online has been somewhat erratic. I hope to resume regular posting...eventually!

In the meantime, I leave you with some relevant quotes.

"Hundreds of clerks sat at ivory desks all day, writing out invitations with gold ink on parchment. Hundreds of pages heated gold sealing wax to seal the envelopes, and hundreds of the King's messengers put spurs to their horses and rode away east and west and north and south to deliver them to the invited guests. The list of invitations was so long that it took the Lord High Chamberlain from before breakfast until after suppertime to read it, while the roll it made was so large that it took six men-at-arms to carry it."

"But in spite of all the preparations, and the ordering of a most magnificent trousseau, the Ordinary Princess thought that the winter passed slower than any winter had ever done before. ...When she was not looking out of the window, she was being fitted for new dresses, or sitting at a desk writing hundreds of 'thank you' letters for all the wedding presents that kept arriving at the palace."

"The Ordinary Princess wore a wedding dress with a train that was seventeen yards long and took twenty pages to carry it."

"In the royal kitchens two hundred and twenty cooks, four hundred scullions, as many servingmen, and five hundred kitchen maids worked like mad, baking cakes and pies and pastries. They stuffed swans and peacocks and boars' heads and wonderful sweets--marzipan trees hung with crystalized cherries, and castles and dragons and great ships of sugar candy."

"So Peregrine and his Queen drove away from the palace in a crystal coach, and everyone threw rice and rose petals and satin slippers and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and cried good wishes."

Lavendar's blue
Rosemary's green
When you are King
I shall be Queen!

Lurgy

I'd always wondered about "the lurgy," ever since Luna mentioned it. It sounds made-up. It is made up. There you go.

Oh, and apparently it rhymes with "Fergie" rather than "clergy." Another fond thought dashed.

Heavenfield is just a font of knowledge... or links thereunto. :-)

St. Mungo

Heavenfield, my favorite living medievalist, had a post up about St. Mungo--whom the hospital in Harry Potter is named after, you know. I'd always wondered if that could possibly be a real name or if Rowling just made it up, but apparently she didn't. She generally doesn't.

And, appropriately enough, St. Mungo is associated in legend with Merlin!

Church graveyards

Russell Moore asks if our churches have lost something by not having graveyards anymore.

To which I reply, we certainly have.

I'd much rather be buried with the people I knew in this life, and will know in the next, than with some random people in a random corner of town I never saw before. I remember some of the saints I grew up with: I don't even know where their graves are.

The church is more than a building: it's a collection of people, living, dead, and not yet born. But our dead will live again, soul and body both. That's why Christians historically frowned on cremation: why burn that? You're going to need it again!

We've got hope. We hate death, but don't fear it. I suspect Moore is right, and a graveyard might show people we're serious in a way that snazzy playgrounds won't. If we didn't hide from our dead the way unbelievers do, they might witness for us. The tongues of the dead are ringed with fire beyond the language of the living.

The Opera and its phantoms

"Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. All that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persian's documents precisely; and a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion. It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at once able to prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost."

--Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, "Prologue."

Did you notice the phrase "before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice"? In 1907, a room of that Paris Opera House was filled with phonographic records of the greatest stars of the day, and sealed, not to be opened for a hundred years. But the hundred years are over.

And here is the New York Times reporting of the burial of the records. Yes: the NY Times has archives from 1907 online. (!!)

Here's another article from CBC news; another from the Smithsonian; and, last but not least, one from ABC that mentions EMI's plan to issue the recordings on CD. I was unable to verify that last from the EMI website, though.

Hat tip: Brandywine Books.