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taerowynRecently finished a baby blanket for some friends of mine who are expecting (any day now actually...I'm impatiently awaiting the phone call/email).
The full blanket:
A close-up of the cable pattern
In non-crafty (sorta) news, I took the whole week of Thanksgiving off to go absolutely nowhere and have been loving it. I may have to make the non-travel vacation a yearly tradition cause it sure is relaxing. And I get enough time off that I could easily do a non-travel vacation, a travel vacation AND make it to CO for the holidays. I'll have to keep that in mind.
Basically spent the week doing as much nothing as I possibly could. This involved a lot of reading, crafting, TV/movie watching (mostly Dr. Who DVDs...fun!). I've crafted several Christmas presents thus far and worked on a few projects for me.
I also have started on the window shrink-wrapping. I'm sort of dreading out first heat bill since this is the first winter in the new apartment and I haven't a clue what to expect.
Basically, I've been a bit of a homebody, it's been grand. Though I did do some Christmas shopping (not today, thank you very much, I'm not that insane) and some book buying (to help with the reading).
Speaking of books, I'm on track to do a book a week this year. Finished book 47 today and it's the end of week 47 so I'm pretty much spot on. I'm in the middle of three right now that I hope to wrap up next week. A non-fiction on math that's been kicking my ass, but I want to finish it, my bedside reading...short stories by Neil Gaiman, and, when the math gets too much, I've started the Susan Cooper, "Dark is Rising" series again for another re-read.
The re-reading of Cooper was inspired by this talk.
The video should be up soon, but I did take some notes:
In no particular order, since I was taking notes on the flyer from the evening so they're fairly all over the place...
On myth and fantasy
She talked about the importance of myth and religion and how both try to answer the five great questions: Life. Death. Time. Good. Evil.
She talked about how in our education we learn about myths: the Greeks, the Romans, the Norse, etc. and we're taught that the word mythical means "unreal." And she says, "the myth, like its grandchild fantasy, may not be real, but it's *true*"
She talked about how childhood is a recent invention (Victorian-era or so) and that was around the time that fantasy as a genre began to develop as well...the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, etc. And she said it's because of the link between myth a fantasy and that the creation of a real childhood separated us from myth. And while there was religion, religion is more rigid and exclusionary with an Us/Them premise. While myth and fantasy is more open and available to all. She talked about how religion often leads to extremism whereas fantasy doesn't and while fantasy can deal with extremism in its pages, the only way extremism can deal with fantasy is to try to ban it.
Youth and fantasy
She talked of how young readers reading a fantasy book are entirely different than an adult coming to the same book. As an adult, you've already got a set of beliefs on good and evil etc. and are simply observing the hero's quest as he/she goes through the journey and makes choices etc. Whereas a child is, in a way, ON the same quest...learning how to make the same choices, learning what constitutes good and what constitutes evil. She said that much of her writing is shaped by what happened in the years between 5 and 11 and how those really are the formative years of a person's character because during that time you're on a quest to grow...until adolescence when it all becomes hormones and a quest for sex.
The movie
I had initially been excited about the movie til I saw the book was fairly butchered. She said the movie "caused [her] some pain." One of the things being about the above...Will Stanton was an 11-year-old for a reason, casting him as a teenager loses sight of that completely (much less an American teenager, but details...). But this was one of the main issues she cited as why "The Seeker" bears so little resemblance to her creation.
Apparently she and Philip Pullman (who, from the trailers at least, seems to have been luckier) often discussed the trials and tribulations of finally agreeing to have their work translated into film. He apparently compared it to handing your fine Ming vase to an orangutan and hoping for the best.
She said one of the most heartening things about the whole experience was the response from, as she put it "the 26-year-olds on the internet." She told an anecdote of a headmaster who had made some sweeping changes at a school and had been interviewed about how they went and he said that there was no way to know until the children had grown up and were able to say what had happened. She said that was the best part of being a senior citizen was that now the children have grown up and are telling what happened. She read from one of the internet postings about how, in reducing her epic tale to a simple, stereotypical battle of good vs. evil, the film-makers managed to contradict the very spirit of the books where, the black rider's counter part, the white rider, in the end turns out to be just as evil, thus showing that extremism, in any form, is the true cause of evil.
All around, an amazing way to spend an evening, however, my notes are fairly garbled so I highly recommend a viewing of the lecture as soon as the video does become available.
The full blanket:
A close-up of the cable pattern
In non-crafty (sorta) news, I took the whole week of Thanksgiving off to go absolutely nowhere and have been loving it. I may have to make the non-travel vacation a yearly tradition cause it sure is relaxing. And I get enough time off that I could easily do a non-travel vacation, a travel vacation AND make it to CO for the holidays. I'll have to keep that in mind.
Basically spent the week doing as much nothing as I possibly could. This involved a lot of reading, crafting, TV/movie watching (mostly Dr. Who DVDs...fun!). I've crafted several Christmas presents thus far and worked on a few projects for me.
I also have started on the window shrink-wrapping. I'm sort of dreading out first heat bill since this is the first winter in the new apartment and I haven't a clue what to expect.
Basically, I've been a bit of a homebody, it's been grand. Though I did do some Christmas shopping (not today, thank you very much, I'm not that insane) and some book buying (to help with the reading).
Speaking of books, I'm on track to do a book a week this year. Finished book 47 today and it's the end of week 47 so I'm pretty much spot on. I'm in the middle of three right now that I hope to wrap up next week. A non-fiction on math that's been kicking my ass, but I want to finish it, my bedside reading...short stories by Neil Gaiman, and, when the math gets too much, I've started the Susan Cooper, "Dark is Rising" series again for another re-read.
The re-reading of Cooper was inspired by this talk.
The video should be up soon, but I did take some notes:
In no particular order, since I was taking notes on the flyer from the evening so they're fairly all over the place...
On myth and fantasy
She talked about the importance of myth and religion and how both try to answer the five great questions: Life. Death. Time. Good. Evil.
She talked about how in our education we learn about myths: the Greeks, the Romans, the Norse, etc. and we're taught that the word mythical means "unreal." And she says, "the myth, like its grandchild fantasy, may not be real, but it's *true*"
She talked about how childhood is a recent invention (Victorian-era or so) and that was around the time that fantasy as a genre began to develop as well...the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, etc. And she said it's because of the link between myth a fantasy and that the creation of a real childhood separated us from myth. And while there was religion, religion is more rigid and exclusionary with an Us/Them premise. While myth and fantasy is more open and available to all. She talked about how religion often leads to extremism whereas fantasy doesn't and while fantasy can deal with extremism in its pages, the only way extremism can deal with fantasy is to try to ban it.
Youth and fantasy
She talked of how young readers reading a fantasy book are entirely different than an adult coming to the same book. As an adult, you've already got a set of beliefs on good and evil etc. and are simply observing the hero's quest as he/she goes through the journey and makes choices etc. Whereas a child is, in a way, ON the same quest...learning how to make the same choices, learning what constitutes good and what constitutes evil. She said that much of her writing is shaped by what happened in the years between 5 and 11 and how those really are the formative years of a person's character because during that time you're on a quest to grow...until adolescence when it all becomes hormones and a quest for sex.
The movie
I had initially been excited about the movie til I saw the book was fairly butchered. She said the movie "caused [her] some pain." One of the things being about the above...Will Stanton was an 11-year-old for a reason, casting him as a teenager loses sight of that completely (much less an American teenager, but details...). But this was one of the main issues she cited as why "The Seeker" bears so little resemblance to her creation.
Apparently she and Philip Pullman (who, from the trailers at least, seems to have been luckier) often discussed the trials and tribulations of finally agreeing to have their work translated into film. He apparently compared it to handing your fine Ming vase to an orangutan and hoping for the best.
She said one of the most heartening things about the whole experience was the response from, as she put it "the 26-year-olds on the internet." She told an anecdote of a headmaster who had made some sweeping changes at a school and had been interviewed about how they went and he said that there was no way to know until the children had grown up and were able to say what had happened. She said that was the best part of being a senior citizen was that now the children have grown up and are telling what happened. She read from one of the internet postings about how, in reducing her epic tale to a simple, stereotypical battle of good vs. evil, the film-makers managed to contradict the very spirit of the books where, the black rider's counter part, the white rider, in the end turns out to be just as evil, thus showing that extremism, in any form, is the true cause of evil.
All around, an amazing way to spend an evening, however, my notes are fairly garbled so I highly recommend a viewing of the lecture as soon as the video does become available.
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Date: 2007-11-24 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-24 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-02 07:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-03 05:07 am (UTC)