Grey Socks

Since my first knitting lesson at the hands of my younger sister, most of my projects have been really simple. To be honest, it's been scarves up until last year when I decided that I was going to buckle down and learn how to knit other things. I was just sick of making scarves. I couldn't give them away fast enough and I'm not a big scarf wearer.

So I started knitting berets for said younger sister and fingerless gloves, which are a bit tricky when you are first starting out. Then I moved on to learning to cable which I had heard was difficult, but my mother had managed to learn it, so I figured it wasn't all that bad.

Guess what I made with that new skill? More scarves.





'Okay,' I thought to myself this year at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire as I stood in my favourite booth ever (The Merry Little Lamb). 'I am going to make a pair of socks.'

Well, I was actually going to try and make a pair of kilt hose to wear under my pirate boots for Halloween, but I didn't have enough yarn and I wouldn't have finished them in time anyway. But I was determined to make something to wear on my feet.

So I found this Soldier's Sock pattern on the Free Knitting Pattern Directory. It looked simple and adaptable and, if I was going to be making more socks after this first pair, I needed an easy, basic pattern.

I feel like I've hit a milestone. I've made a pair of socks. It's like I'm really a knitter now.

The Waters of Mars

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars


Instead of a full season this year, the revival of Doctor Who has been showing a spread out series of specials before the Doctor’s tenth regeneration. This series started with the 2008 Christmas Special The Next Doctor and proceeded to the 2009 Easter Special The Planet of the Dead. This past Sunday was the first airing of the third in this series of specials, The Waters of Mars.

As I’ve never reviewed anything Doctor Who on this blog before, let me give you some information on my Who background. Like my knowledge of Star Trek, most of what I knew before the revival of Who came from being around the show. It was one of those shows that would occasionally run on PBS during weird hours of the day, and my dad has been a fan of Tom Baker’s Doctor for as long as I can remember. So I knew what the TARDIS was and I knew who at least one of the Doctors was, and a couple of years ago I heard that there had been new episodes, which really boomed in popularity with the casting choice of David Tennant for the Tenth Doctor. I decided to give it a go.

I watched through all four seasons of New Who in one week, just in time for the airing of the series four finale, and I was hooked. I re-watched the episodes I was particularly attached to and sought out The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood to feed my Who addiction. When I ran out of New Who shows, I went back and started watching The Classics. It’s taken me almost a year and a half to watch through the first four Doctors (nearly finished with Tom Baker’s run), and I’ve loved every single one of them.

So when I say that The Waters of Mars was an awful piece of nihilistic drivel, you won’t write me off as simply one of the Torchwood Hysterical Nine on an anti-RTD rampage. The story line was hopeless from the very start of the episode. Within the first fifteen minutes, you knew that everyone aboard the Mars station was going to die; they showed the newspaper headlines to prove it.

That wasn’t even the part that really bothered me. I just felt that it had already been done with the Pompeii episode in series four and the other ‘trapped on a space station’ episodes. The part that bothered me was the senseless hubris that the Doctor adopted during this episode. He’s always been a bit arrogant (being the only alien among humans would do that to anyone, I think), but it’s never been at the expense of his own morality. In this episode, the Doctor decides that he is God and his actions cause a woman to kill herself.

I do not know what this episode was trying to achieve, but it left me with a very bitter taste in my mouth. There was no hope. There was no redemption. There was nothing in this episode that even resembled the things that I love about Doctor Who.

The Coming of the Fairies

The Coming of the Fairies



After a number of deaths in his family, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, turned his attention to Spiritualism. I’m not very good at briefly defining the many different belief systems, but spiritualists believe that there is another plane of existence where spirits dwell and that our planes are capable of crossing and communication.

Spiritualism originally developed in the United States, but its membership was widely spread in most English speaking countries from 1840 to 1920. During this time, there was an increase in the reports of paranormal activity and attendance to mediums and séances. One of the most famous events during the height of the Spiritualist movement was the reveal of the Cottingley faerie photographs.

In 1917, two young in girls in Cottingley, a borough in West Yorkshire, England, caught their play with faeries on film. Two initial photographs were released to the press and, like any claim to seeing the Fair Folk, they were met with much skepticism. Conan Doyle, however, believed in their validity enough to write a book - - The Coming of the Fairies.

This book was a fascinating read. I’ve already made be belief in the realm of the Fae clear in past reviews, but I’d never really done much reading on the Cottingley photos. I knew the story and the circumstances and the press reaction, but I never thought to look any more into it. The Coming of the Fairies is, more or less, a collection of information about the Cottingley faerie phenomenon.

Conan Doyle provides a very sound argument for the validity of the photographs and the existence of faeries. He includes letters he exchanged with the people directly involved in the photography, photography experts that analyzed the photos, and other spiritualists. He includes eye witness statements to other faerie sightings and addresses many of the major claims made by those who believed they were fakes.

Even if you don’t believe in faeries, I’d recommend taking a look at this fascinating bit of myth history. While I enjoyed the fact that it was about faeries and providing good arguments for their existence, I also enjoyed the fact that Conan Doyle presented his argument s in such a calm logical way that even nay-sayers would be capable of enjoying the book.

Trail Mix

It's no secret that I love food. I love trying new things and attempting new recipes. College has been good for that, even if the recipes and foods are simple and easy to make.

But college is also good for rediscovering foods from your childhood and making them for yourself or sharing them with your friends. My parents recently mailed me a box full of goodies for Halloween and in that box were two bags of fancy trail mix from Target.

Trail mix is one of those snacks that I lived on as a child. I grew up near the Litchfield hills. Every fall my family and friends and I would go camping or hiking. We would visit the local forest ranger and have a chat about the leaves and tapping maples for sap. We'd take day trips out to the local orchards and pick apples and make cider.

There was always some kind of trail mix put out or carried along, and it rarely ever came in a bag. Everyone had their own blend. Some were just different kinds of nuts and seeds, some had dried fruit, and some had candy, but everyone had some. That was just how it is.

Now, the fancy bagged kind is fine and I snacked through it rather quickly, but I wanted to make my own like we used to at home. So I did.







Ingredients:
Raisins
Craisins
Peanuts
Sunflower Seeds
Pumpkin Seed
M&Ms
Chocolate Chips

Simply toss those into a plastic bag and mix. Voila. Brilliant trail mix.