Lark Rise to Candleford

In response to my previous plea for books taking place in a rural/pastoral setting in which nothing happens to give to my mother for Christmas, fuchsoid recommended Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford. It was available on PaperBackSwap.com, and now I've got a copy of it in my hot little hands. Naturally, I'm reading it before I give it to her. :)

Lark Rise is an omnibus of three books, Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green, published between 1939 and 1943. They're autobiographical novels of rural English life in the 1880s and 1890s, right before modernization really set in; the dying days of the pastoral life that Tolkien celebrated with his hobbits.

I'm partway through the first book, and it reads as ethnography rather than autobiography, albeit with a constant refrain of "We were poor but we were happier than in these modern times!" (The other two books are more autobiographical, going by a quick poke through them.) I'm liking it quite a lot - Thompson has the trick of describing daily life but making it fascinating at the same time. So far, a few of the hamlet's residents have been described but none of them have been characterized deeply enough to stick in my mind, but that contributes to the sense of timelessness and a centuries-old lifestyle. They were written 40 years later, and the details can't really be trusted so it's not a true ethnography, but instead her years growing up as seen through memory and nostalgia.

(I'm really going to have to find a website somewhere that compares rough costs of living between then and now to get a handle on the money and the poverty level. I know it's really impossible to convert because so many factors of life are different, but I have no clue how much ten shillings or one penny meant to someone in the 1880s, much less a pound.)

Irony of ironies...

From the DeepDiscountDVD listing of this DVD celebrating British female comedians:

* Title: FUNNY LADIES OF BRITISH COMEDY, TH
* Actor/Actress: Barrie, Chris , Briers, Richard , Cleese, John



(OK, I know that Barrie, Briers, and Cleese are likely three of many presenters/narrators on it, but I found it too ironic to pass up.)

Torchwood ep 7

Wow. Seven episodes in and finally a good one.

Tatty cat

I have picked up tatting again, thanks to the cat. She got in a fight with a fluffy orange cat that wanders around at twilight, albeit through the window screen, so neither participant could actually sink claws into each other, so they were both frustrated. And I noticed, after I ran screaming over to the window and scared both of them enough to break up the fight, that there was now a nice large foul-smelling puddle on the carpet next to the window. Oh, cat. Fight or flight indeed.

So I had to leave my nice cozy cocoon of a home and venture unto the wilds of WalMart to pick up some cat odor neutralizer stuff because the pet store close to me just moved farter away and I didn't want to get onto the highway. And I didn't want to go to WalMart for just one thing - if I'm going to be forced to brave that parking lot and the checkout lines, I'm going to buy more than one thing.

I've been jonesing to do some sort of fiber arts, thanks to my visit home. Mom's a weaver, and has ... at least 4 floor looms, an inkle loom, and a couple of other small looms cluttering up the house, and many projects in various stages of completion. At the moment she's into chenille scarves, and I have profited by two in the past year. :) And because I'd read a mention of bobbin lace in Lark Rise to Candleford, my old desire to learn bobbin lace had come back, although having to track down all that damn equipment put me off (I couldn't find any kits for sale online).

I'd learned to needle tat back in grad school when I was doing an internship at a museum in Wyoming, and that pretty much suits my budget at the moment - tapestry needles and crochet thred = less than $5 - so I picked those up at WalMart along with the odor neutralizer and that, my dears, is how the cat piddling all over the carpet led me back into tatting.

Anyway, it still has the same problem that I have with knitting, crocheting, cross-stitch, bobbin lace, etc, in that there is absolutely nothing tatted that I need or want, so it's mostly something to do with my hands while I watch TV. I have no use - nor indeed much liking - for random tatted motifs, I don't like the earrings they show, I have no use for doilies, and I'm not doing any costuming that calls for lace details. (I'd have the same problem with bobbin lace, but the art piece possibilities inherent in that I like much better than the art possibilities in tatting.)