Meta
Sometimes I feel like I should write about writing more often: drop hints about what I'm working on, offer advice for aspiring fiction writers, be honest with you about my insecurities and the potholes along the road to, through, and beyond publication.* That's what other authors blog about.But I don't want to tell you about what I'm writing. I don't want to spoil the surprise. I like to leave the man behind the curtain, where he belongs.**I do, however, enjoy writing about the process. I'm always inspired by Nova's blog posts, and when I saw her on Friday night I told her that my blog wants to be just like hers when it grows up. She pointed out that my posts on The Practice Novel and finding an agent were interesting and useful (yay!), so right now I'm feeling fired up to be more consistently so. I sometimes feel like I'm blogging just to amuse two people--my sister and myself--but I guess I can't really say "oh, hardly anybody reads my blog" when what I'm putting up is often the cyberliterary equivalent of dancing a jig on a subway platform at four o'clock in the morning. It's not a waste of time because I get to laugh at myself, but it isn't much good to anybody else. (Is it?)So if you are reading this, tell me: what do you find interesting? What would you like me to write about? I'm going to keep blogging about my travels and my knitting and vegan recipes and whatever else makes me happy, but I still want to know what else would be interesting and useful to you. I'm aiming for one writing post per week from now on...but what specifically, and what else?* Actually, a post on this general topic is forthcoming at the end of the month--another guest blog for Nova!** Funny thing--Sarah sent me a link to this NYT article, and in it a reader says the same thing in explaining why she doesn't follow authors on Twitter.
King of the World
Patara.It actually turned out to be a pretty horrible day, but this is how we'd prefer to remember it.
Knitting for little men
BABY-SWOON!!!! This is Cóilín, Ailbhe and Christian's little man. I knit the Pembroke vest from Petite Purls for his first birthday (March 2011), and here he is wearing it. I knit the 2T, but I guess the cables contract to fit, so it doesn't look like he's swimming in it. (Or he might just be a baby-Hulk.)
I also knit one for Lindsay and Trev's adorable little man, Eamonn, born in July 2010. I love how Lindsay found a shirt to match!I recently knit a third Pembroke for my nephew for Christmas:
Look! He's wearing his Petty Magic t-shirt!
I was working on Cóilín's vest back in February, during my sojourn in Edinburgh. One night I stumbled upon this little pattern booklet for 50p in a charity shop at the foot of Victoria Street:
That little boy on the bottom left is so dapper!Of course I snapped it up. Not only am I a total sucker for vintage patterns, but these are some of the cutest children's sweaters I've seen.
That bit about the "Red Indian design" kinda makes me cringe. Oh, before there was such a thing as "PC"...
"Please Clown, DON'T!"I'm always hazy on when it's okay to scan and distribute vintage patterns, and when it's not; a quick Ravelry forum search reminded me that one is not supposed to share vintage patterns unless they're over 75 years old. (I'm pretty sure this booklet is from the '50s.) Fortunately, it's not as rare as I thought at first--Google turned up a bunch of hits (~$1.50) on eBay and vintage pattern sites. (Just search for "Patons" and "jackets for small boys".)
This pattern is my favorite of the three—love the textures!
A Perfect Day, Part 2
At breakfast, before paragliding:
Kate: I don't know why you guys are drinking so much tea. You're going to have to tinkle.
Elliot: I'll tinkle from the air!
A Perfect Day, Part 1
We're at the "public beach" at Faralya, warm clear azure-blue water in a rocky cove, sunshine and pine trees and cicadas and a white smudge of a moon in the blue sky and an old woman pulling worms out of a white plastic bucket. I don't think she's caught anything yet. We walked down from the road (Mehmet dropped us off) on a sandy rocky path through the trees, and just before the beach we found a Lycian tomb with a marvelous carving of a head in the archway. Magical. Rugged hills dotted with green across the water. Elliot and Jill reading, Kate writing in the Pooh journal I gave her in 1997.
The Lycian Way
Fresh figs!!!We spent a happy few days along the south-west coast of Turkey, taking in pretty beaches lined in pine trees and cliff tombs situated on the 316-mile Lycian Way.
A Lycian tomb overlooking an idyllic little beach in Butterfly Valley. See that tiny sliver of moon?
We found a great waterside restaurant in Dalyan, Beyaz Gül, and kept going back. (This was the only time I ever ordered Turkish coffee though.) From the restaurant veranda we had a view of these Lycian rock tombs set into the cliff across the water:
Boatloads of tourists motored by as we ate, and in the evening the tombs were illuminated by floodlights. There's something sort of Indiana Jones-ish about them, isn't there? (Or maybe I'm just thinking of The Last Crusade.)
Chameleon Love
Kate: I think I'm in love. I'm sorry, Elliot.
We all fell in love with this adorable little chameleon! Some friendly Turkish guys we met on the beach at Iztuzu (near Dalyan) had found her on the road, and were now keeping her as a pet. "We are four traveling together, but now we are five!"I could have watched her crawl up and down our arms all day. We took lots of photos, but this one was my favorite since she seems to be affectionately brushing her cheek against Kate's shoulder.Happy New Year!!!
Ephesus
They say no trip to Turkey would be complete without a visit to Ephesus, one of the great cities of ancient Greece and Rome. The ruins were amazing, but the site (like Hieropolis the day before) was ridiculously crowded. Afrodisias may not have ruins quite so dramatic as the Celsus Library (above), but it was a much more enjoyable excursion overall.
The terrace houses were the highlight of our visit. The gorgeous frescoes and floor mosaics are well worth the additional 15-lira entrance fee, and because most tour groups don't budget enough time for it, the excavation site is relatively quiet too.
Many of the decisions made by the restoration team were puzzling at best. "Cubist architectural collage"?! WTF!
I feel like I should submit this one to LOLcats once I think up a funny tagline.
Afterward we went to the museum in town and checked out the Artemis statue, once housed in one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I think I counted twenty-nine boobs.Happy New Year, everybody!
Turning Five
Last month my niece turned five. I promised to bake her a rainbow cake, and it almost gave me a nervous breakdown. (HA HA. You think I'm kidding?)
The rainbow layers had to be red, yellow, pink, and purple. It became a chant. Red, yellow, pink, and purple. Red, yellow, pink, and purple. IN THAT ORDER, or the unicorns would gouge out my eyes.(I'm kidding. I think.)Anyway, since she loves to play with my yarn whenever she comes to visit...
...I thought I would put together a little learn-to-knit kit for her, complete with Pony needles, a crochet hook, plenty of Knit Picks yarn and Lucinda Guy's Kids Learn to Knit, all in a project bag I sewed myself.
The pattern is Kate Davies' "Two Kates" project bag. I finished it in a couple of hours (if that).
I mucked up part of the seaming (so there are 'dimples' on either side of the handles, at the side seams), but I'm trying not to be such a perfectionist. It still looks good.More sewing is one of my resolutions for 2012!
You Always Hurt the One You Love
From the museum at Afrodisias:Achilles supports the slumping figure of the Amazon queen Penthesilea, whom he has mortally wounded. Her double-headed axe slips from her hand. The queen had come to fight in the Trojan War against the invading Greeks. Between her being wounded and dying in his arms--the time represented here--Achilles fell in love with her.
A Christmas Jumper
Of all the pattern books in my library, I've gotten the most use out of Rowan Vintage Knits. My dad asked for a Beau out of green tweed (it's from Donegal, of course), and here it is.
He has hardly taken it off in the four days since I gave it to him. At Christmas dinner there was much oohing and ahhing over it.
(I was working on this while I was on the farm in Vermont.)
The buttons were a gift from Deirdre (I used the rest of them for Elliot's neckwarmer last year). My dad made sure to tell everyone at dinner that the yarn and the buttons were from Ireland.
I have to say, this is one of my most successful FOs: perfect marriage of yarn and pattern, satisfactory craftsmanship, flattering color and perfect fit--not to mention a great deal of gratitude from the recipient!
Raveled here.I hope you had a very merry Christmas!
Nero and Agrippina
(Also from the museum at Afrodisias.)Did you know Nero killed his own mother?
The Three Graces
Above: Afrodisias. Below: the so-teeny-it's-just-the-one-floor-mosaic museum at Narlikuyu, near "wonderful Kizkalesi."
Faces
These faces, on fragmentary friezes stacked on display outside, were my favorite part of Afrodisias. Apparently there was a school for sculpture here in ancient times. (Check out more faces on this page.)
I like this fellow. He's very jolly.There were more cool effigies inside the museum:
Doesn't this guy (Flavius Palmatus, governor of the province of Asia) look just like House??
I love a pretty ruin
The double tetrapylon at Afrodisias.After the Phrygian Valley came the ancient-cities portion of our trip. Afrodisias was far and away my favorite; there certainly were highlights at Hieropolis and Ephesus, but they were also really, really crowded. Lots more photos from Afrodisias in days to follow.(I really have to pick it up with the Turkey blogging. We're going to Colombia in January!)
Yarn 'n Ammo
This storefront in Afyon was, without a doubt, the most bizarre thing I saw on our month-long trip.
The Phrygian Valley
The Phrygian Valley is full of rugged mountain scenery and wonderfully obscure monuments like this one, a rock-carved chamber tomb. Just don't trust the guy who wrote this chapter in Lonely Planet when he says there are Afyon-based tour companies willing to take you here. You're on your own! (We hired a taxi two days in a row, once from Eskişehir and then from Afyon--that seems to be the only feasible way to sightsee in this region.)We don't know a whole heck of a lot about the Phrygians, but we do know they were Thracian seafarers who ventured into Anatolia (between 1200 and 800 B.C.) and conquered the Hittites, who inhabited the region at the time. What's left of their stonecarving (see third photo here) is pretty darned amazing. (You might say they had a thing for lions, but then so did the Hittites.)
The yazilikaya ("written rock") at Midas Sehri, associated with the king of legend. (The carvings date between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C.)Below, photos from the circular walking route at the same site.
Next Turkey post: YARN 'N AMMO!
Midwest '11
I seem to be making a habit of visiting Minnesota and Wisconsin in the autumn. This trip was even better than last year--not only did I get to spend QT with Jill, Sarah, and Maggie and her family, but I also got to meet my cousin, Brother John, who teaches Spanish at a Catholic boys' school, St. Lawrence.
Brother John's colleagues invited me to speak to the English and creative writing classes, which was TONS of fun. You would not believe how nice and friendly and polite these kids are. I may be a grown woman, but I'm still afraid of teenage boys--every time I pass a group of them on the street my inner 14-year-old whimpers oh no, they're going to make fun of me!--so you can imagine how surprised and delighted I was when boys kept coming up to me to shake my hand. "You must be the author! I'm so-and-so. Welcome to St. Lawrence! I'm looking forward to hearing your talk tomorrow."Yup. Seriously.
The students came prepared with questions, so once I'd gotten the preliminaries out of the way (and shown them the engagement portrait that inspired Mary Modern, mentioning that Anna and Paul are Brother John's ancestors too) we spent the rest of each class period doing a Q&A. I think I'll answer some of them again here on the blog, since they're questions I get asked a lot. (How long does it take you to write a novel? How do you choose a point of view? Do you outline?)I got to chat with several of the boys after class too, and they kept asking me for autographs (haha)—even on their jack-o-lantern!
Then I came home, and this was in the mail:
I opened the card, and literally gasped. I'm amazed they could fit this many signatures.
My experience at St. Lawrence really cemented my desire to teach. I don't know that I'll necessarily end up teaching creative writing at the high school level, but I can say for sure that I can't think of anything more rewarding than helping people discover and appreciate great literature while nurturing their own voices.(You hear that, universe? I WANT TO TEACH!)
Things To Do When You're Dead
The South Bridge Vaults, Edinburgh.Read my list over on Nova's blog! It's part of her really fun Halloween guest series, "What Scares You?"