Knitting The Doctor Who Scarf: planning

I have to admit I am a Classic Who fan. I mean I like the new series but I love the classic stuff. My favorite of the Doctors is the Fourth. I adore Tom Baker's style as the Doctor, that slightly crazy, slightly vague all around weird vibe he gives off. Of the Fourth Doctor's run, which is the longest to date, I love the early episodes the best the ones with Sarah Jane, because she is my favorite companion. One of the most iconic features of the Fourth Doctor is his scarf.

I've always wanted a scarf like the Fourth Doctor's but I never really thought about it seriously. Buying replicas of the scarf is extremely expensive and most of the time I struggle to pay my rent. Although I've known how to knit since I was eleven the scarf is about 12 feet long and that just seemed like too daunting a project.

This semester has been really tough for me though. I've taken a bunch of classes from demanding professors who are not in my field and as was to be expected I've struggled. Halfway through writing my finals I desided the time had come to knit the Fourth Doctor's scarf.


Over the course of the Tom Baker's long run as the Doctor the scarf took a lot of wear and changed. At one point a totally new scarf had to be made. So the scarf actually differed from season to season. Since my favorite season of the Fourth Doctor's were the first couple, seasons 12 and 13 technically, I decided to knit the incarnation of the scarf from the first season.

Having decided on the season 12's scarf I did a little research which brought my to the Doctor Who Scarf site. The site provided me with a pattern for knitting an exact (or pretty close) replica of the season 12 Doctor Who scarf.

Originally I assumed I would knit the scarf out of acrylic yarn. The original scarf was knit out of wool but I, being the poor grad student that I am, thought I'd only be able to afford acrylic yarn. Since then my sister has decided enough yarn to make a Doctor Who scarf would be the perfect Holiday gift so I will be knitting it out of wool (and pretending that I'm surprised when I open my present.)

The problem I'm grappling with right now is how to shorten the scarf for me.

The original scarf was 12 feet long. Tom Baker is 6 foot 3 inches and the scarf could loop around him down to the ground twice.  I am 4 foot 11 inches tall and I'm pretty sure I can't physically wear a 12 foot scarf. So I've been trying to figure out how to shorten it without ruining the integrity of the original scarf. If I just stopped knitting two feet before the pattern then it would be a different scarf probably closest to season 14 not the season 12 scarf I want to knit. All of the stripes are different sizes so I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to lessen the strip width evenly through-out the entire scarf. If I was just knitting a scarf to have a scarf that would be one things but this is a replica so it needs to be more exact.

Any ideas about how I could do this?

Plotting and Planning

So I am moving next week and starting a new graduate program in American history. This is another step in my on going quest to gain a Ph.D. in history and I would be lying if I said the entire process hasn't terrified me like nothing else. Mostly the last month or so has been made up of me trying to get all my paperwork in, find an apartment via long distance means and freaking out.

On a brighter note my parents got me a Kindle Fire for an early birthday present (my birthday is at the end of the month). I've been spending the last couple days fooling around with it, uploading the ebooks I already own and getting any free ebooks that look half-way readable.

I got the galley for Heart of Water and Stone and have been reading through that. You can pre-order it for 15% off the normal price by the way. Also going over edits for The Kraken Lord and the Eater of the Sun.

Writing wise I've been working on a vampire story set in the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. The story is the product of me challenging myself to write a vampire romance I'd actually want to read since I'm not a huge fan of the sub-genre.

I also started writing a little porn-y ficlet mostly for my own amusement which halfway through gave me a possible idea for this open call over at Less Than Three Press:

Less Than Three Press is seeking stories about what happens when someone chances upon a message cast adrift and left to be guided by fate or chance. From the classic message in the bottle washed up on a sandy beach to whatever the imagination spins, tell us your tales of what happens when that message is at last found and read …

Seriously I can't wait to see what everyone else does for this. 

I'm Doing Okay ...

I'm visiting my sister who is expecting her first child and it occurred to me while sitting with her and hanging out that I'm actually really happy where I am in my life right now. I'm going to be living on my own again this summer which will be good for me having my own space again. I will be going to graduate school in the field that I love. I am writing everyday now and working through the process of publishing and I love both of those things just as much as I had hoped I would.

It feels like this year a whole bunch of things I really wanted to do with my life and hadn't gotten done have fallen into place. My life is just kind of slotting together into something really wonderful and that I'm really happy in. I'm active in my religious community still but not to an overwhelming level. I'm happy with my appearance more then I've ever been, I think. I find myself more attractive and more just really me every day.

I'm worried about money, I'm worried about finding a job and that school will be overwhelmingly difficult. I also feel like though that the last couple years have been a process of getting myself to this point of being exactly where I want to be.

Hopefully from here things will only continue to get better.

One of the Greatest Art Forms

So something very few people know about me is that I am a huge, huge opera fan. As far as I'm concerned opera, when done well, combines some of the best parts of music, singing, story telling and acting. It is just so amazing to watch a talented opera company perform one of the great operas.  It is a truly emotional, mesmerizing incredible experience. I like listening to operas too although for me the music and the vocals are only half of what a great opera production is all about. I like watching videos of great productions as well but nothing equals actually being there in person.

Thus it's always been a dream of mine to see at least one opera performed by the Metropolitan Opera company in person. My sister who is just as big an opera fan as I am had been plotting with me for years to one day go to New York and see a production. Since tickets run several hundred dollars or more though we always framed it as sometime in the distance future.  

Of course the Met's latest production of the Wagner's The Ring Cycle is the talk of the opera world right now and when I started reading about it and then going online to look at the next season at the Met I saw that they actually have some opportunities for students to see productions on the cheap (well somewhat cheap). I began to think the time when I would see a production at the Met in person might be coming.

So yes, I have no production in particular picked out or dates set but one of my goals for the next opera season is to see if I can swing going to see at least one.

The God of Chaos and Other Things

So ironically enough going to see the Avengers in theaters with my brothers yesterday (the movie was excellent we all enjoyed it) reminded me how much love Loki in Norse mythology.

I say ironically because I just spent the better part of a year obsessively studying Norse mythology and Viking age Iceland (I've written a number of novella stories related to this) yet it was a comic book movie that reminded me of my love for the God of chaos. Loki though is really an amazingly complex character. He can be good, or evil, God and Jötunn, truth teller, liar, shape-shifter, God of fire and all around plotter and schemer. He is my favorite kind of character.

This lovely illustration by Arthur Rackham for a scene from Wagner's Ring Cycle where Loki taunts the distraught Rhine maidens has hung over my writing desk pinned to by bulletin board since  I was about sixteen. It is one of my favorite Arthur Rackham illustrations and one of my favorite portrayals of Loki. I love the fact that steam rises from the water where his foot touches it as if his body is made of fire.

Another of my favorite illustrators, John Bauer, did an rendering of one of my favorite myths involving Loki all be it a rather strange and confusing one.

In this story which is told in a short stanza within the Hyndluljóð 

Loki ate some of the heart, the thought-stone of a woman,

roasted on a linden-wood fire, he found it half-cooked;

Lopt was impregnated by a wicked woman,

from whom every ogress on earth is descended.

In this story Loki eats a human heart. We aren't quite sure why or who's heart it is although it does seem to be the heart of someone who practiced very powerful magic because eating the heart impregnates Loki. Loki ends up giving birth to an "ogre." Now "ogre" itself is a French word and although very similar creatures appear in many mythologies ogres as large, viscous, people-eating creatures is a central European folktale creation and doesn't actually appear in Norse mythology that I am aware of.

The passage can also be translated thus:

A heart ate Loki,-- | in the embers it lay,

And half-cooked found he | the woman's heart;--

With child from the woman | Lopt soon was,

And thence among men | came the monsters all.

Now between "ogre" and "monsters" I like to think, and other have also put this forward, that Loki gave birth to the first troll-mother, and that is where the Norse trolls come from. 

It makes sense within the realm of Norse mythology and even more sense given the way I have re-imagined trolls in my own work. I can very easily see them as being the children of chaos, fire and very powerful magic. It would still probably horrify Girin though. 

I am excited to announce that my fiction will be published

So a couple months ago I sent off a story as a submission to Less Than Three Press for their upcoming private detective anthology. To my complete surprise and happiness they accepted the story for publication in Private Dicks:Undercovers Anthology.

Right now the release date for  Private Dicks: Undercovers Anthology is October 24th 2012

My story is, as of now, titled  Regarding the Detective's Companion and is a steampunk detective story. My rather awkward little story blurb for it is as follows.


The year is 1843 and in London Jamie Griffith is trying to secure a name for himself as a private  investigator or at least scrape together enough money to make the rent. His luck seems to be taking a turn for the better when he is visited by a man offering him the opportunity to work for an unseen client. The mysterious client wants Jamie to travel to College of Natural and Computative Science at Cambridge and investigate a one Professor Robert Daniel Hallingsworth’s involvement in the untimely death of the college’s dean. Eager to prove himself Jamie takes the case and heads to Cambridge to go undercover posing as a research assistant for the extremely eccentric Professor Hallingsworth.  Jamie soon finds himself drawn into Hallingsworth’s world and that of the genius inventors and mathematicians Hallingsworth surrounds himself with. It might be due more to his budding feelings towards the professor then anything else, but the longer Jamie stays at the College the less like a cold blooded killer Hallingsworth seems.  As the evidence begins to pile up Jamie begins to wonder if anything he had been originally told about the case was in fact the truth.    

They've also accepted yet another of my stories, this time as a stand alone ebook. So stay tuned and I'll be writing about that one shortly.

I am extremely excited about this, the first piece of fiction I've ever published and ecstatic about working with the lovely folks at Less Than Three.


Thanks to everyone for giving me encouragement through this process.  

Anime I Have Watched And Enjoyed (the more thought provoking collection)

Mostly I watch anime for the same thing I watch all television: escapism. However some anime series made me think a little more deeply then you average fun and fluffy show. These are my favorites thus far:


Death Note:

Love it or hate it, people who watch the show generally come away with some sort of strong reaction to it. In fact anime fans are so divided over whether the series is genius or simply unwatchable that some review sites post two completely different reviews from either stand point.

I have to say I love Death Note. I think it's a fantastic anime for many reasons but most of all because it made me think while I watched it. Death Note tells the story of a young man (Light) who, through chance, ends up getting the power to kill anyone in the world and the brilliant young detective (L) who is hell bent on stopping him. The series delves into such questions as: what is justice, is killing ever justified, who decides what is moral-an individual, society, the government, does power always corrupt, and does the ends always justify the means?


 It is available on Netflix watch instantly.

Mushi-shi

 Mushi-shi was the first anime I ever watched were I said to myself 'this is art.' The animation style is beautiful; soft and dreamlike while still being highly detailed. The sound track is so lovely that, for the first time ever, I went out and got it. The story itself weaves science with mythology together to create an organism that exists both in our world and outside of it called 'mushi'.

 The anime is set sometime between the Edo and Meiji periods and follows Ginko-a mushi master-who travels, studying mushi and helping out when the mushi's world and out world don't intact as harmoniously as they could.

There is a lot in Mushi-shi about how we choose to interact with our surroundings, and how even things we can't see or outwardly detect can change our environments and lives.

Mushi-shi is available to watch on both Netflix watch instantly and Hulu.

Durarara!!

Durarara!! tells the story of several small groups of people-sometimes connected and sometimes not-living in Ikebukuro,Tokyo. The anime uses magical realism to look at the phenomenon of urban legend; how legends start and how information travels and changes.

In the series some urban legends that seem incredible are true. For instance the legend of the headless motorcyclists is true, she is in fact headless and sharing an apartment in the city with a med student. While some legends, like the Dollars Gang, start out as false and end up taking on a life of their own.

I have to admit I haven't finished the show yet but I love the art style and how it make me think about how and why we tell stories and the kind of power these stories have over us.

Available to watch on Crunchyroll

No.6

No. 6 is the only anime on this list which is still on going. As of today only 8 out of 10 episodes have been aired in Japan and the entire series won't be officially available in the US for another year. However you can watch the show so far subbed online.

No. 6 is a dystopian story that follows one, rather quiet and geeky young man living in an utopian-like city-'No. 6'- completely cut off from what seems to be a post-apocalyptic world.

I am not a huge fan of dystopia in general but I have fallen in love with No. 6 because it emphasizes human kindness. Sion the main character shows kindness to a hurt and scared boy his own age (Nezumi) when he's twelve an act that changes both their lives forever.

In No. 6 the fear, hatred and oppressive government regime that has separated the city from the destroyed wasteland outside is broken down when Sion acts in kindness towards someone he has been taught to fear. When Nezumi returns that kindness four years later the two create not only a deep personal bond but also a knew way of being totally foreign to life both inside the city and outside.

A few days ago I wrote a post about kindness in post-apocalyptic literature. So I'm thrilled to find a dystopian/apocalyptic sci-fi show that portrays kindness as being our greatest strength against oppression and out greatest tool for survival.

The show has also generated a lot of controversy because the relationship between the two main (male) characters seems to be making its way from friendship towards a romantic relationship. I think it's a little too soon to say if these characters will be portrayed as gay but if so it would definitely be one of the best portrayals of a gay relationship in anime and probably grounds for me to write totally separate review.

Available to watch with subtitles as it is air in Japan on Crunchyroll

Crafty Me

So I'm starting school again in a week, and I've also been moving into my new room. The bad thing about moving is for me it's super stressful. The good thing about it though is that it's a great time to get rid of stuff you don't need, orginizing stuff you've been putting off, and fix up things you've just had hanging around so they work again.

One of the things I fixed up for the move was one of my lampshades which had been peeling apart. I used an old book that wasn't any good any more and mod podge to make a new, much more attractive lampshade. It took me a couple hours one morning, drinking my coffee and gluing squares of paper onto the lampshade. I then gave the whole thing about three coats of mod podge to finish it. I think it came out nice.

I am also commuting back and forth to school so I need to pack my lunch. I have a very small Wonder Woman lunch box I've used to pack lunch in before put I decided it was too small especially if I want to bring a thermos of soup with me or something. My mom found this super cute lunch bag pattern  so we decided to try making it. 

I'm not super good with the sewing machine but I did do a fair amount of the sewing for this which I am proud of myself for. I used cotton canvas for both the outside and the inside so I can throw it in the wash if it gets something spilled on it. There wasn't a huge selection of cute or whimsical cloth in cotton canvas which was sad but I think the cloth I picked out looks good anyway. We added a flap and button to the top to keep it closed better. We also recycled an old sweater as the insolation instead of buying cotton batting especially for the bag. 

It might not look it but the bag ended up being big enough that I will definitely be able to fit a thermos or water bottle plus a lunch box. My old Wonder Woman lunch box is really too small for me to carry a whole meal in so I've been thinking about buying a bento box. I really like Edge bento boxes. 

They're both big and very sleek looking. You can also just use two out of the three layers if you want a smaller box. Kokeshi bento boxes are some of the cutest things I've ever seen. 

They are a little too small for my needs though I think. Mostly because I'm planning to use my bento box as predominantly a lunch box not actually pack things as compact as bento in it. 

Wether or not I'll get a bento box will depend largely on whether or not I get money for my birthday though.  

Little Vegan Cupcakes

Hey all,
I made vegan cupcakes for my sister's wedding earlier this summer. I made apricot and lemon ones since the wedding cake was apricot and lemon.

I am still alive and on this journey

sooo, after about six months of silence I am back and going to try to update this blog.

-First off I am moving from the place I've been living for two years.

-And I am going back to school for a very shiny and hopefully useful paralegal degree.

-Since I last posted I was accepted into the masters program in history at The New School of Social Research in New York City! Yeah! However the down side was that I ended up not being able to afford it. Still it was a huge ego boost to get in since it's a very, very good program. And there is always next year. I'm not giving up on history anytime soon.

- I am also getting more serious about my fiction writing. That's very exciting because I've written primarily for my self since I was in my early teens but never thought seriously about . . . well doing it more seriously until now. You can check out what's been going on with that at my original fiction writing journal  Be warned though I tend to write predominantly queer romance/erotic fiction within different genres so if queer people falling for each other and getting it on isn't your thing I might not be writer for you.

-Also I've been keeping myself from getting too stressed by listening to 2CELLO and being soothed by their awesomeness. Seriously people these two are made of awesome:




-also trolls! I love mythology and folk lore. A lot. I just forget that when I don't read any for a while. Lately I've been reading a lot about scandinavian trolls, which is incredibly interesting and awesome and is making my want to write fantasy. Not to mention the pretty, pretty art people have done of these trolls over the years.

2010 places on the net that were (and I hope will continue to be) important to me: Here are some of the high lights.

* I added a Not Safe For Work warning next to a few of these. But really guys, if you work in a place where you have to be careful what you look at what are you doing reading my blog at the workplace? Use your heads.

Genderfork NSFW

Genderfork is just a beautiful place to be. It’s created to be a positive place to embrace and celebrate the gender diversity in our world. It always makes me smile because I know there will always be something cool/beautiful/uplifting posted there. I’m used to being different for so many different reasons but sometimes I get tired when there is no one around me who is even a little bit similar to me. When I go to Genderfork I can remind myself that I’m not the only one who doesn’t fit the norms and that isn’t always a bad thing.  

Dicebox NSFW

Dicebox is the only online comic I have consistently read since it started in 2002.  It’s just one of those things in my life that never changes. No matter what I’m going through or how my life is changing Jenn Manley Lee’s art will always be breathtakingly beautiful, the storyline of Dicebox nicely complex and the relationship between Molly and Griffen amusing. Besides this comic was where I learned about gender-neutral pronouns in more then a strictly theoretical way.

Ravelry

If you’re a knitter or crochet-er Ravelry is the place to be. I’m not a die hard knitter like my Mom but I have been known to knit a hat or two during long committee meetings. Ravelry is a little like Facebook in that you have a profile and you can join groups and talk to other knitters or crochet-doers (I’m not sure what to call you guys). They also have a huge search engine full of patterns, yarn stores, books, and supplies. If you want to know what other people are making out of that yarn you just got go on Ravelry. If you want to see if you can find a hat patter with ear flats that’s also free go on Ravelry. If you want to see pictures of what this patter is going to look like once you’re done and you don’t want to rely on the tiny black and white picture at the bottom of the patter go on Revelry. It’s just that cool.

Rooster Tails  NSWF

This is an incredibly adorable comic-blog by a transman and his genderqueer partner in New Zealand. I’ve loved every single entry so far and can empathize with it a lot. It’s not just how gender issues are talked about, but also the strips on anxiety, the X-Men, butch mice and sweater-vests make me glad I’m not the only one who thinks about these things.

Vegan Dad

I have to admit it I’m a little bit of a snob when it comes to cooking. I love to cook and part of my job these days is to cook. Which means that I just can’t turn off the at little voice in the back of my head that say “I could do better.” Vegan blog’s I’m particularly hard on. I’m always reading them and thinking, they could use less expensive ingredients or there is an easier way to do this, or but I can’t eat this and buy local at the same time. Vegan Dad’s blog isn’t like that though. It’s become one of my two go-to places for vegan cooking. Why because the recipe’s are easy, fast, cheep-er and delicious. I haven’t made a bad thing off of this site.

Male Submission Art NSFW

When I am an professional academic I study race, gender, sexuality as these concepts have changed over time. I’ve found that one of the best ways to do this is to study images that reflect societal ideas and ideals regarding any or all of these concepts. However, while there as been lots of brilliant work done on gender and race both in theory and in American society, there is not that kind of body of work on sexuality. When I say I study sexuality I mean not just sexual orientation but sexuality more broadly. My perception of academia is this is not widely encouraged. More over historical theory tends to look at sexualized images as strictly who is being oppressed by whom and how does this image support larger systems of procession. There is no or very little acknowledgement that an image might mean different things to different people and a sexual one doubly so. Male Submission Art has meant so much to me because for the first time I am presented with thoughtful commentary on what makes pictures sexual and to whom. I appreciate and respect the work being done by maymay, the site maintainer, immensely. I also find many of these images sexy or attractive myself which is rare when it comes to visual erotica.  

The lightning-powered airship "Golden Colander": The Art of Ursula Vernon (NSFW)

Hello all you fabulous beings!

Well through a post on a blog that I read which mentioned something about her I recently ran across the art of Ursula Vernon. I fell in love with it right away. When I was a undergrad in college, in the not so distant passed, her graphic novels Digger was quite popular among the geeks of which, lets face it, I am one. However I hadn't read any of her stuff at the time, being overcome with school work and all that. My loss it turns out. I love the whimsy of her work. I love how so much of it is at once so fantastical and so down to earth. Ursula is obviously one of those people who has figured out that the weird can be fun and that's ok. It doesn't have to have a deeper meaning but if it does that's ok too. Truthfully there isn't anything of hers, that I've seen, that I dislike but my two favorite art series by her are Weird Fruit and Phalloi.

 Weird Fruit is a series of painting of different anthropomorphized fruit and vegetables. I've never seen anyone who antrhopomorphized fruit to look like different kinds of animals but I love the idea of pears with teeth, or lemons with horns, eggplant with chicken legs and squash with bat wings. Weird Fruit indeed because let's face it the only thing weirder then a fruit or vegetable is an animal. These are definitely the prints I want in my kitchen.

Another series of paintings by Ursula Vernon is the series Phalloi. This was actually how I found Ursula's art in the first place when this series came up in a conversation between a bunch of people who wear, use and love packers. We were having a conversation about how they can be cute and someone mentioned Ursula's Phalloi paintings. The series was inspired by the Ancient Roman's who wore pendants of phalluses with wings or little feet for good luck. These good luck charms were worn by both men and women, old and young.

Penises are not often portrayed as cute or cuddly in our culture. Yet that's how Phalloi portrays them and I like that*.





*more of my thoughts on portrayals of masculinity later.