I May Regret This

I used to sew a lot. I quilted, I costumed, and I sewed regular clothes for myself. However, sewing takes a lot of time, and isn't cheap, and I resolved somewhere along the way to not sew things that could be easily bought. I made myself a full length wool cloak, for example, because they're not that easy to find and outrageously expensive--it made sense to make my own. I don't make cycling jerseys, on the other hand, because they're fiddly and the materials aren't that easy or cheap to get, and I can often find a nice jersey on sale for less than $30. As the years have gone by, and I'm playing less and less in the SCA, I have found that I have less and less need to sew.

I really haven't missed the sewing. It can be an expensive and frustrating hobby, especially for full-figured people. If clothing manufacturers have their head up their butts about making attractive clothes for larger women (and most of them have), pattern companies are much, much worse. There are very few patterns available in my size from the major pattern companies, and most of them are stupendously bad. They tend toward big shirts and vests, baggy pants, and dresses that fit like a caftan. They do not seem to have gotten past the idea that the way to hide your fat is to wear clothes that are really loose, an idea which I think was tossed out in about 1987 by everyone except the pattern companies. Gathered or drawstring waists seem to be required, as that way it can fit a wider range of circumferences. Too bad gathered waists look terrible on big people. So do clothes that are too loose. Furthermore, they usually don't fit right. You see, the pattern companies make their patterns based on a particular size, and then just scale up or down to get the other sizes. Their formulas are broken, however--full-figured people tend to be much bigger, proportionally, in the chest, for instance, but our backs aren't necessarily that much broader. I had wondered why I always have to take patterns in several inches across the back, and this is why.

It was desperation that drove me into the fabric store this morning. I really need some work clothes for summer, and I've been unable to find any this year. I like dresses--they're easy and comfortable and look nice. There are almost no dresses this year in the stores I've been in. I like skirts, too, but they can't be too short. A skirt that looks fine when you're standing can suddenly become too short when seated, and most of my day is spent seated. I haven't had much luck with skirts, either. A lot of clothing manufacturers who make summer work clothes seem to think that polyester or acetate are excellent materials for wearing in hot weather. I disagree. May of them also seem to have a prejudice against sleeves. I don't really like having my armpits and bra straps hanging out. It is times like these that I start thinking dangerous thoughts, like: maybe I could make myself a couple of cotton dresses.

I usually restrain myself, which isn't hard because of the general lack of suitable patterns. However, Burda have come to the rescue. Burda is a German pattern company, and they have a wide range of patterns for nice-looking clothes that run up into large sizes. I exercised great control and only bought two, but I could happily have taken home many more. For once, I also found fabrics I liked at JoAnn. Usually I am disgusted by their lack of whatever I happen to be looking for, but today I relaxed my standards and compromised with some fabrics with blended materials. Oscar helped me display them, as you can see.

The pale green material on the left is a linen blend with a pinstripe woven into it, and will become a pencil skirt once I buy some lining fabric, which I somehow neglected to buy this morning. The fabric in the center is navy with daisies embroidered on it, and will become a dress. The acqua material on the right has more artificial fiber than I would usually buy, but I think it will make a nice swooshy tulip skirt. I also bought a zipper and interfacing which will enable me to make a yoked skirt with some material and a pattern that I already own.

So, I guess I'm going to be sewing for the next couple of weeks. I sure hope this works out all right.

OK, I'm puzzled

In the last couple of days, a few people have come to my blog via an article on the Wall Street Journal about Tolstoy. I've looked at the WSJ page, and have no idea how they ended up linked from there to my blog. If anyone knows, please enlighten me.

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

I've really been in a reading funk lately--uninterested in fiction, and not making much progress with nonfiction, either. I've abandoned a book about Navy divers who were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack to dive on the wrecks and disarm any unexploded ordinance, and a book about submarine warfare in World War I, and a Tony Hillerman novel, and now I'm trudging slowly through a book about life in the trenches in World War I. It's actually a fairly interesting book, but I'm just not in the mood. I'm really not in the mood for anything. In fact, I'm even having trouble concentrating on the latest issue of Cycle Sport magazine, which is usually prime reading material for me.

So, as I tend to do when I'm in this sort of mood, I decided to reread some Terry Pratchett. I've reread my favorites many times, so I decided to go for one I hadn't read recently--Monstrous Regiment. It was not one of my favorites the first time I read it, so I usually don't pick it when I'm rereading.

Monstrous Regiment takes place in a small, insignificant country far from Ankh Morpork called Borogravia. Their climate isn't very good, their economy is terrible, they have the misfortune to have Nuggan as their god (and we met Nuggan in The Last Hero--he's a rotten god), and their national pastime appears to be going to war against their neighbors. This has had a deleterious effect on the quality of life in the country. Everyone is hungry, most of the young men are gone or have come back badly maimed, and things are just getting worse and worse. Everyone can see that the country is on the verge of collapse except the Borogravians themselves.

Polly, an innkeeper's daughter, cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy to join the army and search for her brother, who joined up and never came back. Borogravians have very firm ideas about what sort of tasks women can perform, and military service definitely isn't one of them. Polly and her fellow recruits, under the leadership of a well-meaning but inexperienced lieutenant and a cynical and very experienced sergeant, set out to join the war, and end up trying to end it before the country is completely destroyed.

There are cameo appearances by some of Pratchett's more familiar characters from Ankh Morpork, who are sent to protect the clacks towers, and pull strings behind the scenes to settle things to their satisfaction.

Monstrous Regiment is a Pratchett novel, and so it's a pretty good read. But it's definitely one of the weaker recent Pratchetts (to me, the definition of recent Pratchetts is the line when I switched from buying paperbacks to buying hardcovers in the 90s). The text flows and the characters are interesting, and you want to know what happens next, but the ending was kind of a mess. I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book much more than the last third, when it gets bogged down by politics and semi-divine intervention. In fact, I was enjoying it quite a bit as I read it, but by the end it left a sour taste and, overall, I didn't like the book. This has been my reaction on the two previous occastions I read it, as well. The end is just a mess. However, Polly does eventually find her brother and return home to live in peace. For a while.

Chicago, part 3

Chicago, part 2

Chicago

I've just gotten back from a weekend trip to Chicago. I was there for a family wedding, and it was just an overnight trip. Travel is really very tedious, and I'm tired and crabby. I won't go into too much detail, but here it is in a nutshell:

Flying is a pain.

Seeing some of my relatives and having a chance to get caught up with them was good.

The hotel was overpriced, run-down, and kind of creepy. Like it was trying too hard to be gracious and exclusive, and just left me feeling turned off and unwelcome.

That part of Chicago (near downtown and the lake) is lovely, and everyone's gardens were beautifully tended. Too bad it was so cool & windy. I will post more pictures of the good parts later.

Based on our random sample, Chicago taxi rides are quite exciting, in an "are we going to make it to our destination safely?" sort of way.

Both the Humphrey Terminal at the Minneapolis airport and Midway Airport in Chicago have improved greatly since the last time I flew through either of them.

The salad course of dinner should not take an hour.

After this weekend, I need some time alone to decompress. I usually like getting together with people, but in small doses. Large groups like that, for hours, with the schedule utterly beyond my control, are just exhausting. That's what it's like to be an introvert--too much face time with people is very draining.

Thank goodness I'm home.

This has not been a good week

This is the hole in my bathroom floor that the plumber cut this morning to fix the pipe that was leaking through the ceiling of the room below. He also fixed the leaky pipes under the kitchen sink that I discovered yesterday.

I have not been having a good week. But I've found that knitting is very soothing when things aren't going well, and I've been making a lot of progress on my knitting this week. It's that or chocolate, and knitting is less fattening. And now that I can again shower and use my kitchen sink, I'm feeling much better.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet on the Western Front is a German novel first published in 1929. Its author, Remarque, served in the trenches in World War I, and this book is a grim and explicit account of what it was like.

I have been interested in World War I for the last few years, but have found it a difficult topic to get my head around. For one thing, all the attention goes to World War II. The Second World War is a very interesting topic, but it seems to overshadow the first war. Also, it was a war set in a very different time than the second world war, and I think that makes it more difficult to relate to. The world, and warfare, changed a lot between 1914 and 1945. I think it is easier for people to relate to WWII because it took place more or less in the modern era, whereas WWI might as well have been on another planet, it's so alien.

Naturally, I was already aware of the horrors of trench warfare, but Remarque really made it come alive. From the bombardments to the rats to the poison gas, his clear, simple narrative is frank and accessible. He details the realities of hand-to-hand combat, the starvation, the horrors of the military surgeons, and the sense of alienation the young men feel.

An observation from the narrator:
"But the bayonet has practically lost its importance. It is usually the fashion now to charge with bombs and spades only. The sharpened spade is a more handy and many-sided weapon; not only can it be used for jabbing a man under the chin, but it is much better for striking with because of its greater weight: and if one hits between the neck and shoulder it easily cleaves as far down as the chest. The bayonet frequently jams on the thrust and then a man has to kick hard on the other fellow's belly to pull it out again; and in the interval he may easily get one himself. And what's more, the blade often gets broken off."

All Quite on the Western Front has been hailed, apparently, as the greatest war novel ever written. I haven't read all other war novels to be able to compare, but it is an extraordinary and powerful work. It is still very fresh and readable today, and I thought it was fascinating. Highly recommended.

All Roads Leadeth by Peter Turnbull

I haven't been blogging much about books recently because I haven't been finishing much. I completed only three books in April, and I didn't bother to blog about Knitting Without Tears, because what can one really say about a knitting book? Over the last month or so I've been knitting more than reading, and reading magazines more than books. And now that the weather is warmer, I'll be spending an average of an hour a day on my bike, which also cuts into my reading time.

I like to read a good mystery once in a while. To me they are candy--fun, fast reading that doesn't require too much from me. My favorite mysteries are police procedurals, and I particularly like a certain sort of British police procedural. Peter Turnbull writes that sort of book, and he is one of my favorite mystery writers.

In All Roads Leadeth, a man buys a house which has been sitting empty for fifteen years, and finds a skeleton under a pile of rubble in the garden. It is quickly established that she was a former resident of the house, who had disappeared eighteen years previously. Her husband was suspected of killing her, but nothing was ever proven. The police begin investigating, and the trail leads to another missing woman, an old murder, a current murder, and a very nasty career criminal from London.

I like Turnbull's novels. The police are competent and professional. No one is a closet alcoholic who's slipping up on the job. No one's marriage is about to dissolve due to the stress of the job. The detectives are not at war with their superior officer. Things seems to be working pretty well in their department--people know their jobs and do them with a minimum of fuss and bother, and we can focus on the crime and the solution. I like that.

Nevertheless, there are a few things that I have noticed, and find mildly annoying. One thing is that the characters often do not speak so much as lecture. The pathologist, in particular, has a bad habit of explaining things too much, such as the difficulty of estimating time of death (she explains that it happens on TV, but not in real life) or about how decomposition works, or all sorts of other things that the police would already know, and so would any regular reader of these books, as she seems to do it in every volume. (In SF fandom, this tendency is called "As You Know, Bob" and seems to originate with television shows in which the characters tell each other things they should already know in order to bring the audience up to speed) We also regularly get a lecture about the city of York. It's nice that Turnbull takes the time to make sure his details are correct, but they are clumsily inserted.

There is also a lot of repetition in explaining the personal lives of the main characters. I don't need to hear in every volume about Dr. D'Acre's classic car and the arrangement she has with her mechanic. I don't need to be told in every volume that Hennessy's wife suddenly dropped dead when he was younger, and he raised their son alone and she designed their garden; or about his older brother who died in a motorcycle crash in his childhood. I don't need to be told in every volume that Yellich's son is retarded and that it's a lot of work for the family, but he and his wife love their son very much. These explanations often seem to be inserted awkwardly (such as when Hennessy had a dream that reminded him of the day his brother died) and for no good reason.

The worst of Turnbull's writing offenses, though, is when he gets coy about people's identities. There usually seems to be a scene written about "the man" and "the woman", who are, in fact, Inspector Hennessy and Dr. D'Acre, who have a relationship on the side. The man and the woman go for a walk, or go out to dinner, or meet up at a hotel, and it is eventually revealed that they are two characters we already know. Blech. It's always awkward and pointless. Turnbull branched out with the tacic in All Roads Leadeth, in which the fellow who finds the first body is described only as "the man" for the first six pages, until someone asks his name. Why? It's very contrived and awkward.

However, those complaints aside, I actually do enjoy these stories very much. I hope that it was enough to get me started again on my reading, and that more book reviews will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.