MOVED

BLOG MOVED TO http://www.senseanddisability.wordpress.com

I finished something!

I have been working on the freaking cabled tote from Interweave for six months. It doesn’t want to be finished. It is felted. The cables have been needle-felt outlined.

But it still needs to be lined. And I have to order the handles.

So it’s not finished.

But these are

Um hai

Hello all!

I picked up the needles for the first time in about three months today. This does not count a failed attempt at a scarf while travelling in Glasgow, because all that yarn really did was get tangled in iPod headphones.

I am officially about five-eights through my Cabled Tote now; I finished the front today. I am trying to catch up on knitting while I catch up on my life.

So, what’s new?

Oh, and stories of my adventures can be found at http://www.carlyandchelsey.wordpress.com

Secrets.

Um…. Hi.

So I haven’t updated this in a long while.

See…. It’s not good.

I haven’t been knitting. I haven’t knit a stitch in weeks, actually. I went to stitch and bitch three times and then– then Oxford ate me.

No really.

Somehow in the past seven weeks i have written thirteen and a half papers, been to London three times, Dublin once and drank many coffees.

Most of my adventures are up at www.carlyandchelsey.wordpress.com and there will be knitting once term is over. Promise. And maybe some book reviews and other fun.

I am still alive though!

So This is the New Year

Hi all,

I am going to try to be better at blogging here this year. I’m going to be abroad at Oxford, so the content may be less knitting and more life, but there will be osme knititng. I’m working on the Hermione’s Magic Knitting bag from CHarmed Knits, so there will be pictures up of that when it is done. And, of course, much room in my suitcase/carryon (too much maybe) will be taken up by yarn. It’s how I roll.

Hoping that you all had fantabulous holidays!

Book Review: History a History

Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon

 

I was going to ask for this book for Christmas, but saw it in a Target on vacation and decided to go ahead and get it and read it over the break. I’m grateful that I did. This book took me back to my childhood of Harry Potter reading and playing Harry Potter in my backyard, my young teenage years of obsessive fanfiction writing and my late teens reading the final books as I surpassed Harry’s age and embarked on my own journies. Mellissa writes about movements and events that are recognizable only to the fandom, but which I remember clearly. Switchblade Kitten’s Ode to Harry Potter is on my iPod, and more importantly, on all my old mix CDs.

The only thing I can criticize is the lack of attention to the elements of fandom that are lacking in the novel, and happen to be the ones in which I immersed myself. I spent my fifteenth summer on Fiction Alley, and spent the time before that reading Fanfiction which was not Cassandra Claire’s. I came in through MenaRaisin’s Hermione’s World newsletter and I feel like that is where many, many fans started. I also mourned the lack of mention of JK Rowling’s interaction with LOOK UP the young girl with cancer who wanted to know the end of the books, and the girl who came home from camp to find Harry Potter in her car—early. But those two things happened before Melissa came into the fandom and are, thus, excusable.

All in all, this book receives many accolades from this fan. I was never a BNF, I shipped Harry/Ginny but Fire and Ice was my guilty pleasure. I hung on to the potential of Mark Evans and remember the day JK Rowling’s website went live. Melissa’s book brought all of that back to me, and for this I am extremely grateful. 

News and Notions

We’re spending Thanksgiving in Delaware, where my other grandparents live. I’m up in the hotel room messing about online whist Dad’s at there house and Mom and Little Brother are eating downstairs. I’ve been busy with school. I’m writing my thesis on fairy tale retellings so I have some book reviews to come up in the near future.

But my biggest news is this: I’m studying at Oxford in the spring! Two tutorials, Jane Austen and Victor Hugo. I’m really excited, although I have to have read Notre Dame de Paris and Les Miserables by the 7th of January when I leave which is slightly ridiculous, but also terribly exciting.

I’ve kept up with hat knitting; I’ve done Gretel and Rose Red by Ysolda. I have yarn now for the Dickensian Pullover from Interweave a while back as well as the Hermione bag from Charmed Knits so I’ll be taking those two large projects with me to work on. 

There’s not much else in my life, just preparing for that and doing school, but I’m excited!!

Novels…

NaNoWriMo is not happening this year. Just not. But I don’t want to give up a writing expedition in November. So I’m planning on doing serious rewrites on one of my novels written previously. But I can’t pick which, so that’s where you all come in. 

Here are the choices:

Song of the Lark– In a society where class gaps have grown significantly three teenagers and one little boy escape from the house where they are enslaved. The mastermind, Caileigh, leaves behind her lover and his jealous fiancée Elaine. In a race to stay hidden they have to put aside differences and band together. Unfortunately Elaine intercepts a missive Caieigh sends to her lover, Aiden, leaving all four in danger.

Broadway Lullaby– Casey Marlow got sent to live with her mom and stepfamily after her first film “Moonlight” was filmed. Her parents want her to finish high school normally, but what is normal in her family? It’s definitely not when her eleven-year-old brother Dylan, who has Autism, disappears. She, her evil stepbrother and their friends try to circumvent the police to find him–after all Casey knows Dylan better than anyone, but is that enough? 

untitled– Tessa’s kingdom has a tradition. One eligible maiden is sent to the neighboring kingdom every year under the guise of keeping up communication, but really in the hopes of a marriage. WHen her sister runs away upon being chosen, Tessa must go. But what kingdom will accept a could-be-queen whose legs don’t even work properly? 

The Ella Trilogy– Ella’s parents died. In fact, most of the adults in her world died of a Pandemic (secretly designed by the government) that only affects adults. In children it causes odd side effects, side effects such as time travel. It was Ella’s father who discovered that this talent could be used to find the cure. Now, years later, his daughter is part of the resistance. Gallivanting across time, however, does not spare her the emotional hardship of being a teenager.

 

Election 2008

Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States of America, and I voted for him. I have a paper due Monday that I have been working on tonight. But I’m not going to remember that. I’ll remember sitting with my little sister in my sorority watching McCain concede to the man that I knew I wanted as president when I saw him on TV four years ago.

 

We’ve lived through 9/11, the War in Iraq, the invention of the iPod, hanging chads and now BARACK AS THE 44TH US PRESIDENT.

Eyes. On. The. Prize

I’m kniting Rose Red, by Ysolda. It’s my first pattern that requires you to really pay attention every round, do YOs and has 180 stitches. I want it done so I can cast on socks for going to NYC weekend after this. I’m about halfway in with very little time to knit. Today was going to be great, a movie to watch for French and two hours at work, at which I do little but knit because only one or two people per shift come into the Writing Center.

 

And I left my knitting in my dorm.