The assorted thoughts and ramblings of a somewhat odd person.

Sharing Knife Fic: Arrivals

katyhasclogs — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 13:31:57 GMT

Look! I'm posting! (Please don't all pass out at once, I don't have any first aid training...)

I've been re-reading the series recently, so the characters have been on my mind. This is a spin-off from a throwaway line at the beginning of the fic I've been writing for shimotsuki since 2012 (which will be finished, I promise - I like it too much to abandon it and I think I've done the hardest bits anyway).

Title: Arrivals
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Pairing: Whit/Berry
Summary: “It feels like the first day I saw the river, but twice over.”

As it happened, Whit and the baby arrived at the same time.

Both had been expected “any day now” for weeks: Whit off the Trace; the baby in the usual way. The pack train was within groundsense range as Berry’s labour hit the crucial stage and a blurted, “Tell him to hurry up!” dispatched a messenger up the road. In the final throes, Fawn was sent from the bedside to ruthlessly strip Whit of coat and bags and boots and push him upstairs. He stumbled through the door in time to receive a warm armful of newly swaddled baby.

He gazed, wide-eyed, down at the bundle, and then at his wife. “It feels like the first day I saw the river, but twice over.”

.
Also posted here on AO3.

Radio Programme #3: The Public Philosopher

katyhasclogs — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:31:43 GMT

Programme: The Public Philosopher
Station: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Tues 3rd, 10th & 17th April 2012, 9.00am
Available Until: Forever!
Website: The Public Philosopher, Podcast

Not just a programme this time, but a whole series of three programmes!

Last year I caught several philosophy television programmes by Harvard professor Michael Sandel and subsequently sought out his 2009 Reith lectures, all of which I really enjoyed, so when I heard this programme advertised I was pretty excited. Here he takes three different questions ('Should universities give preference to applicants from poor backgrounds?' 'Should a banker be paid more than a nurse?' and 'Should we bribe people to be healthy?') that crop up a lot in current public debate and provoke strong opinions, and with an audience discusses them in a philosophical manner.

The programmes easily lived up to my expectations. Though the short length of the programmes (30 min) meant that discussion was perhaps unable to go very deeply into these issues, I thought they really benefited from the kind of structured thought that the philosophical approach lent them. Like Sandel says at some point, these problems are so frequently discussed that often we forget to look at the ideas and assumptions behind the various arguments. As a result this was an incredibly interesting and thought provoking series.

If you listen to nothing else, listen to this.

Radio Programme #2: Archive on 4

katyhasclogs — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:52:32 GMT

Programme: Archive on 4 - Hobsbawm: A Life in History
Station: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Saturday 14th April 2012, 8.00pm
Available Until: Saturday 21st April
Website: Archive on 4 14/4/12

I heard this last night while washing up and cooking dinner (yes, in that order) and it's a fine example of one of the big reasons I love Radio 4 - its knack of having you riveted by things you had no idea you were interested in. I've never heard of Eric Hobsbawn, and having heard a few adverts for the programme throughout the day I had no particular desire to listen to it. But it happened to be on while I was doing stuff in the kitchen and within a few minutes I was fascinated.

It turns out that Hobsbawn is a historian, and had a pretty interesting early life moving from Vienna to Berlin as a child, campaigning for the Communist Party as a sixteen-year-old during Hitler's rise to power and then winning a scholarship to Cambridge since which he has had a distinguished academic career. The programme consisted of Hobsbawn in conversation with the historian Simon Sharma interspersed with sound clips of him (Hobsbawn) from the BBC archives.

One thing that I learned that surprised me was that social history is apparently a relatively new discipline - one that just didn't exist before about fifty or sixty years ago. Apparently until then the focus was entirely on leaders, wars and their chronology rather than what people ate and how they lived! Both Sharma and Hobsbawn seemed convinced, based on the bestselling history books, that popular interest is shifting back to the leaders and wars, but I'm not so convinced. I don't know much about the history sections of bookshops, but I'm sure over the last few years I've seen and enjoyed many television programmes exploring how people lived in the past.

Hobsbawn made a number of comments I found particularly interesting. Firstly, that though society today has held onto the conclusions of the Enlightenment, we've forgotten the ideas behind them, particularly the importance of rational thought. Secondly, that not enough worth is now placed on the Humanities, and that this is a mistake because they are what help us understand human beings and why they do things. As you can imagine, the idea of the Humanities as being important is one that I rather like!

That said, I didn't warm to him as a person, particularly in one of the archive clips where he stated that the enormous number of deaths that were the result of Stalin's regime were worth it to foward the cause of communism. It's a pretty horrific thing to say, and when the interviewer on the clip expressed similar horror to mine, Hobsbawn retorted that the second world war had also killed a large number of people, and for a cause. The interviewer made a distinction between war and peacetime, but is war (should it be?) an exception in this way? What makes one seem acceptable and the other not? Hmmm.

Radio Programme #1: Woman's Hour on Grandparents

katyhasclogs — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:11:06 GMT

Programme: Woman's Hour
Station: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Mon 9th April 2012, 10.00am
Available Until: Monday 16th 2012
Website: Woman's Hour 9/4/12

I used to listen to Woman's Hour a lot back when I was a student/unemployed, but alas now that I have to work for a living I rarely catch it due to the time it broadcasts. For those not in the know, it's a fairly intellectual, vaguely feminist magazine show based loosely on things woman-related. It's subtitle "Celebrating, informing and entertaining women" gives you some idea how broad its remit is!

Anyway, since Monday was a bank holiday I managed to catch this episode devoted entirely to the subject of grandparents, and it was lovely. There was this particularly wonderful story from Virginia Ironside:

One day I had one of my grandsons to stay when he was small. At about five in the morning he puttered downstairs saying it was time to wake up.

"Granny, Granny!" he said. "Wake up I've got a great idea! Let's get up and play - you go down to the end of the garden and be a monster, and I'll be a knight with my sword and I'll come and kill you."

A little while later as I stood waiting behind a tree, shivering in my dressing gown in the cool dawn light, at the start of a long, long day, making monster noises, I realised I was very happy. Isn't it great being a granny?

And also this poignant email from one man:

My grandparents have been hugely important to me all my life. Their love and support has been especially important at times when I've felt quite lost and lonley. When I was at boarding school, leave weekends with Granny and Grandpa felt like times of refuge. Their home was a place of sanctuary and security. Little things - electric blankets, apple pie and ice cream, breakfast in bed - told me that I was loved and that the world could be a good place. I would really love to be able to say 'thank you' to my Granny on Easter Monday.

The programme got me thinking about my own paternal grandparents, who have always lived near us and who I have spent a lot of time with my whole life. I have particularly fond memories of days I spent with them as a preschooler when they devoted their time utterly to me. I used to make pastry with Grandma, for cheese flan or chicken pie, and then we'd chase Grandad with the rolling pin! (He was quite a good sport - I also remember we tied him to a dining room chair.) Grandma is quite musical and she taught me lots of songs (or fragments of songs) and taught me to waltz with her singing as the only accompaniment ('Who's taking you home tonight?' by Vera Lynn). When my mum came to pick me up she's often be treated to a performance of 'The Dying Swan' by the two of us, complete with Grandma lala-ing Swan Lake as we danced!

They were both very touchy-feely people, and there's a lovely picture of the two of them from about ten years ago with their arms round each other, squeezing tight and looking so happy. I remember that even when I was quite old we would have huge three way hugs!

Grandad was a man who was really interested in things. Even though he wasn't an educated man (he left school at 14, like most people of his generation) he read voraciously on a huge range of subjects. He's the only person I know to have read A Brief History of Time all the way through, and he read bhuddist philosophy and taught himself to meditate in his 70s! He painted and drew beautifully too, and again that was all self-taught. It wasn't all high minded intellectualism though - tell him a fart joke and he'd laugh til he cried!

It feels good to remember times past with the two of them, especially since Grandad is no longer with us and Grandma (who has advanced Parkinson's) isn't really the person I knew as a child (and much as we love her, caring for her isn't always easy and can cause a fair amount of family friction).

Well done if you read all that! I don't think my future entries will be this long - the subject rather ran away with me.

Feel free to comment with anything that this post sparks off in your mind - you don't have to have heard the programme. Oh, and I should probably say - BBC radio (unlike the TV) can be listened to even if you aren't in the UK. :)

100 Things Challenge

katyhasclogs — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:26:23 GMT

Greetings all, long time no post. It seems that even though I still check my f-list daily, I've rather fallen out of the habit of LJing, and it also seems that I'm not alone since my f-list has been getting steadily quieter.

Ever the person with the fantastic ideas, jdbracknell has come up with a solution:

{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

My theme for the challenge will be '100 things what Katy read and heard', to be split into '50 children's books that may or may not be awesome' and '50 interesting radio programmes'.

Anyone else up for it?

Hello world!

katyhasclogs — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:07:12 GMT

I have the internet again! Will post more when I'm less knackered and it's not a Monday night.

In the meantime, what have I missed in the last month?

A Quick Pimp

katyhasclogs — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:22:22 GMT

A proper post will follow later this evening, but first I wanted to do a bit of advertising for a challenge I'm taking part in atm:

Click to join!

I dare say the majority of my f-list already know about this, but for those of you who don't, pulped_fictions is a comm for original fic and art, and Winterval is an event which takes place from Dec 1st to Feb 29th. Over those three months there's a range of individual challenges both big and small from which you can pick and choose those that you fancy, and though it's a team event, there's no pressure and you can do as much or as little as you like.

Last year was loads of fun, as well as being really flexible, so come and join in!

o_O

katyhasclogs — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 18:31:30 GMT

At a large village fete today I saw a sign that read 'LIVE MUSIC | BEER TENT | FROTTAGE'. Apparently it was the name of the band...

Technical questions

katyhasclogs — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:01:05 GMT

For a while now I've been considering changing my web browser from Internet Explorer to Firefox, but can't quite make up my mind to make the switch. Can anyone tell me about the particular advantages of Firefox? And will I be able to import my favourites easily?

On a related subject, I've been having trouble with the internet lately, but I can't work out the reasons why or how to improve the situation.

The issue is that Twitter in particular is working very very slowly. Like, I click a link or scroll and 30 seconds later it responds. I sometimes have similar problems with facebook, but less frequently, and facebook has never worked brilliantly for me. I don't think it's my net connection being slow, because other sites seem to work very well, including image/gif heavy LJ sites and streaming on BBC iPlayer and other places. I'd kind of assumed it was Twitter itself, except that it worked brilliantly when I was on a uni computer the other day (and to make the matter even more confusing, I'm pretty sure the net connection at home and on campus is the same, since it's all on the university network).

These problems are a very recent development (as in, the last two weeks or so), which is adding to my confusion because nothing has really changed. I have a lot of tabs open at once, but the number has been consistent for a year and closing them doesn't seem to help. Memory use hasn't increased dramatically, and I still have lots left. And I used Twitter with relative ease about a month ago...

Switching betweeen tabs and windows is very slow, tabs often disappear from the IE icon on my (Windows 7) Start bar, and the program often stops responding altogether and has to be restarted. These last two have always happened occasionally, but were usually an indication that it was time to let the computer Shut Down rather than just Hibernate. Re-booting seems to have no effect in this case.

These things, combined with the high number of 'page loaded with errors' icons I seem to be getting makes me wonder whether it's a browser issue. Is that feasible? If so, would Firefox be better?

I honestly haven't a clue though, so an help would be great.

Electoral Reform is Sexy. Honest

katyhasclogs — Wed, 04 May 2011 22:35:53 GMT

I'm breaking my usual posting schedule of silence and memes to talk politics, specifically, tomorrow's referendum about the voting system. Apologies to non-Brits, who this will be irrelevent to, and also to anyone else who prefers not to have politics shoved down their throats via LJ.

So how does AV work?

It's actually pretty simple:

1. On your voting slip, you rank the candidates in order of preference. You can rank all of them if you wish, or just a few of them. If you really want, you can still just pick one candidate.

2. All the first preference votes are counted. If one candidate has 50% or more of the vote (i.e. a majority), then they've won. If not, then...

3. ...The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the second preferences of the people who voted for that candidate are added to the remaining first preferences. It's a bit like saying to those people "Oh, you can't have that candidate, so who's your second choice?" except that they've decided in advance.

4. This process continues, eliminating the least popular candidate and distributing the next preferences of their voters, until someone gets 50%.

There are some great You Tube vids that explain all this much better than I have, using

Post-its:

Dan Snow and Pubs:

And, because this is the internet, cats:

So why is AV better?

In my opinion, AV's biggest strength is the requirement that an MP must have 50% of the votes in their constituency in order to be elected. This is much fairer than the current system, where MPs can be (and many are) elected on about 30% of the vote and therefore represent a constituency where more people didn't vote for them than did.

I also think it better represents real life. Lots of people feel strongly about keeping one party out, lots like some elements of one party's manifesto but also like bits of another, some prefer the ideology of one party but think their local, rival party MP does a lot of good work for the constituency. Under AV you can use your preferences to express all this.

Ultimately though, under AV, more people's votes will count. And that's fairer.

So who are the teams?

On the Yes side:
- Lib Dems
- Half the Labour Party
- Greens
- UKIP
- Electoral Reform Society
- Lots of grassroots campaigners

On the No Side:
- Conservatives (with a few exceptions)
- The other half of the Labour party
- BNP
- Lots of Conservative Special Advisors

The myths of the No campaign debunked

1. People get more than one vote! How can that be fair?

No, people's second preferences only count if their first choice is eliminated. It's like going into a cafe, asking for an egg sandwich but finding out they've run out and choosing cheese instead. You haven't had two sandwiches. AV is still one person, one vote.

2. Hardly anyone uses AV.

Well no, actually. As well being the voting system used for national elections in Australia and other places it's used up and down the country for elections in unions, student unions, mayoral elections (including London), in some kinds of Scottish Parliament elections and in clubs and societies.

It's also used loads in Parliament. The Speaker, Select Committee chairs, remaining hereditary Lords and the Labour and Conservative party leaders are elected by AV (interesting fact, if the Conservative party elected their leader by FPTP, David Davis would be our Prime Minister). If it's good enough for them, then why not for us?

3. It'll be expensive because you need electronic voting machines.

Voting machines aren't necessary and there are no plans to use them.

4. It'll let the BNP in.

Actually, under AV extremist parties are unlikely to be elected because they would need 50% of the vote, rather than the small majority that would suffice under FPTP. That's why the BNP are in the No camp.

Some wonderful soul has debunked the No leaflet through the power of close reading. You can see it here.

TL;DR Please vote yes, it's fairer and it will make me happy. ;)

Icons and Pimpage

katyhasclogs — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:18:00 GMT

Yes, it's that time of year again, and I've made a shed load of Strictly icons.

Sample:

01. 02. 03. 04.

05. 06. 07. 08.

09. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68.

On a completely different subject, one of my favourite writing communities, pulped_fictions, is having a winter challenge:

What? A challenge for original writing and art.
When? 1st December - 7th March
Why? Our modlady-in-charge has loads of exciting activities planned, some are short and some are long so you can spend as much time on it as you want, and if it's half as much fun as the similar challenge we had in February, it's going to be an absolute blast!

A small announcement

katyhasclogs — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:18:13 GMT

Good morning f-list!

katyscarlett76 and I have been busy bees over the last couple of weeks. What have we been doing? We've been setting up a new LJ community, that's what.

We plan to hold weekly discussions as well as regular challenges for fic and art and will be kicking things off with a group read-through of The Curse of Chalion.

Come on over and introduce yourselves!

(Also, if you could pimp this out on your own journals, that would be great!)

Chalion Drabble

katyhasclogs — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:21:39 GMT

Title: Slumber
Fandom: Curse of Chalion
Wordcount: 163
Rating/Warnings: G
Characters/Pairing: Betriz/Cazaril
Summary: Betriz knows her husband all too well...

Cazaril pauses at the threshold of his wife’s bedchamber. The room is dark but for the glow of a lone rushlight in the corner, but he can still make out her figure on the bed, the gentle rise and fall of her chest indicating her deep slumber.

They have yet to spend a night apart since their marriage, and though he knows the chambermaids giggle about the unslept-in nature of the Chancellor’s bed, he cherishes waking to Betriz’s dark head on the pillow next to him too much to mind the gossip. But she looks so peaceful now. It wouldn’t do to wake her with his fidgeting, and a night in his own room will not kill him.

He creeps over to blow out the rushlight (there’s no sense in wasting even cheap candles) and spies an elegantly penned note lying in the watery pool of light.

C,

Stop fretting and come to bed.

B x

Cazaril smiles. She knows him too well.

Fic: Photographic Memory

katyhasclogs — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:42:27 GMT

Title: Photographic Memory
Rating/Warnings: G
Word Count: 1024
Summary: Remus receives a letter.
Author’s Notes: A belated birthday fic for shimotsuki, who gave me the prompt 'photo album' enabling me to finally tackle a plot bunny I've had since I began writing fanfic. I'm afraid it's not very cheerful for a present, lol.

Photographic Memory

The owl arrived on a sunny morning in late May, just as Remus was preparing to leave for the library. It was one of his more prosperous periods, and he had been able to afford the rent on a tiny flat near the centre of Cardiff, a mere twenty minutes walk from the archives of the Welsh Association of Niffler and Dragon Studies.

Sighing at the inconvenience of the bird’s timing, he put down the bag he was filling with books and parchment and opened the window. It was a Hogwarts owl, unless he was very much mistaken, and therefore unusual – he almost never received post from there anymore.

Dear Remus, [said the note, in letters an inch high]

Hope you’ve been keeping well. I’m not too bad, and those baby Thestrels you helped me with a few years ago are breeding now!

Anyway, I’m writing because I’ve got a bit of a favour to ask. Little Harry Potter started here this year, and I’ve had him round for tea a few times, with his friends. He’s his mother’s knack for knowing more than he ought, and James’s talent on a broom. The poor mite don’t remember his parents at all though, and I thought maybe if I could get some photos together and put them in an album for him that might be a nice present.

I only have a couple of pictures though, so if you could send me copies of some of yours that would be handy. I’m contacting a few other people who were in the Order and at school with you lot, but I reckon you must have more photos than anyone else.

Ta very much,

Hagrid

Gosh, Remus thought, letting the note fall to the kitchen table, that made him feel old. Harry must be nearly twelve now, and yet it seemed hardly any time at all since he’d nervously cradled the tiny bundle that Lily had handed him, marvelling at its miniature fingernails and eyelashes and wondering when they had all become grown-ups. Life had felt so full of hope that day. Everything might have been falling apart around them, but here was something really worth fighting for, a new life that deserved a better world to live in than the one he’d been born into.

Remus supposed that had been achieved, to a certain extent. There was no Voldemort, certainly, and a significantly slimmer chance of being murdered every time you left the house, but the wizarding world was still riddled with corruption and prejudice. It was hardly the glittering outcome they’d all envisioned, and often the price seemed rather too high, all considered.

It was Harry, he thought, that had paid, was still paying, the most. However sorry for himself Remus felt about the death of his friends (when he allowed himself to think about them), the loss must be many times worse for Harry, growing up without the love and support of his parents, far away from anyone who would tell him much about who he was or where he came from. Remus, at least, had the dubious comfort of his memories. What did Harry have?

The planned excursion to the library now entirely forgotten, Remus drifted across to the bookshelves and pulled down a cardboard box marked ‘misc.’ in fading ink. Pushing aside assorted correspondence, school reports and complimentary copies of scholarly journals, he fished out a large envelope stuffed with photographs and labelled ‘1972-1981’.

The contents were at once familiar and unfamiliar. There were moments he could remember as if they happened yesterday, with or without the photographic evidence: James looking slightly queasy before his first Quidditch match; Peter gleefully setting fire to his History of Magic notes at the end of O.W.Ls; himself smiling tipsily for the camera on his seventeenth birthday, a pumpkin pasty in one hand and a drink in the other. Others he had had no specific memory of until finding the picture in question: a thirteen-year-old Sirius doing handstands on a low wall near the Hogwarts vegetable patch; the four of them, red-cheeked and windswept on a Hogsmeade weekend, striking ludicrous poses outside the Three Broomsticks; Lily, heavily pregnant and gesturing enthusiastically with a wooden spoon in the kitchen at Godric’s Hollow.

Remus sifted through the photos, taking time to look at them each in turn, letting memories he generally tried to avoid wash over him and finding to his surprise that they were nowhere near as painful as he expected. Yes, he still felt an uncomfortable clench somewhere in his stomach at every sighting of a youthful Sirius, still felt an emptiness in his chest as he gazed at smiling images of James and Lily, but these feelings were accompanied by pleasanter ones. Not only the inevitable nostalgia that came with memories of the past, but also something of the original emotions recorded by the photographs, comforting ghosts of the joy and pleasure depicted there.

But which pictures should he select for Harry? Many of the scenes would mean little to him without someone to tell the stories behind them – something else he had missed out on as a result of the war. Hagrid had said he didn’t remember anything of James and Lily, which was, Remus supposed, fairly unsurprising given how young he had been orphaned. In which case Harry would simply be eager to know what his parents were like, and photographs of significant events and pictures that showed off their personalities would probably be best. Spreading the photos out on the table in front of him, he picked out several from the Potters’ wedding, a few of James in his Quidditch gear and a serendipitously arty shot of Lily reading in a corner of the common room, as well as a picture of James holding a tiny newborn Harry and wearing a slightly dazed expression, and a host others of the pair of them together with and without Harry himself. Sliding the photographs into a fresh envelope, Remus headed back to the kitchen to send off the owl. If he was quick it would arrive in time for the morning post.

Out of practice fanfic writer is out of practice

katyhasclogs — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:31:40 GMT

I've been getting back to some fanfic writing this week, which has been both lovely and like pulling teeth. Safe to say I have got very rusty, a situation demonstrated by the fact that just now I had to look up how to spell Quidditch, something that previously I would have just known.

Shocking Katy, just shocking. ;)

katyhasclogs — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:09:26 GMT

Just popping by to wish jdbracknell a massive Happy Birthday!

The more I get to know you and your amazing talents, kindness, generosity and sheer ability to get stuff done, the more I am convinced you are not actually human, but some sort of amazing supernatural being with all the attendant superpowers. ~~Like a unicorn with opposable thumbs, maybe.~~

I hope you've had a lovely day. Thank you for everything you do. :)

Confuzzled

katyhasclogs — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:08:09 GMT

Can anyone help me out with a definition of pathetic fallacy?

I always thought it was (among other things) when the weather reflected the mood of a person or story, and I'm sure that was what I was taught at school, but the Wikipedia entry seems to indicate it's more like what I would refer to as personification...

katyhasclogs — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:21:29 GMT

Just realised I haven't updated in ages. Oops. Sorry about that...

My free time has mostly been taken up with the Pulpympic Games at pulped_fictions, which is turning out to be enormous fun. I've written two drabbles, which I'll probably post here at some point, and reading everyone's contributions has been really great (if rather time consuming, lol).

I saw the cutest thing at university the other day - the entire campus duck population was waddling up the hill towards the main lecture hall, for all the world as if they were just heading off to a ducky lecture. It was adorable.

Ooh, and I went to my first ever conference yesterday. It was a student conference run by the Viking Society for Nothern Research and it was about skaldic poetry. I had only the vaguest idea what skaldic poetry is, since we're not really covering it in my Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse module, but I went along just to see what a conference was like. It was interesting, even if parts of in went right over my head. The final lecture, ‘Verse as sex act: chiefly in Kormaks saga‘, was particularly memorable. The phrase 'Viking circle-jerk' was used at one point. I kid you not.

Finally, I've just started another re-read of Curse of Chalion. I'd forgotten how much I love Cazaril and it's delightful to be inside his head again, listening to him sending himself up. There's one thing about chapter one that always bothers me though:

It's clearly stated that the clothes he gets off the dead merchant are woolen, and that they're washed and ready to wear by the end of the afternoon.

Now, in one of my favourite TV series of all time, Tales form the Green Valley, several historians spend a year living on and running a farm as if it was 1609, and in the episode for November one of the historians explains that they have to do inside jobs when it rains because if their woolen clothing got wet, "at this time of year it would take weeks for them to dry out, even in front of the fire".

So how the hell does the laundress get Caz's clothes washed and dry in less than an afternoon?

Now, I'm willing to accept that Valenda on the cusp of spring is a little warmer than the Welsh borders in November, and that it is mentioned that the seams of Caz's clothes are still a little damp, but the weather in the book at that point seems to be pretty chilly, and the seamsbeing a bit damp is not very wet at all. All in all, the timescale seems extremely optimistic to me.

I can only conclude that the laundress is in possession of an anachronistic tumble-dryer. Or a spin-dryer at the very least.

And yes, I know I am over-thinking this, lol. ;)

Roses are red...

katyhasclogs — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:26:40 GMT

In honour of my fellow Red Team members at the pulped_fictions Winter Pulpympics, I present...

arty farty red icons!

Preview:

01. 02. 03. 04.

05. 06. 07. 08.

09. 10. 11. 12.

13.

As always, comments and credit would be lovely. :)

katyhasclogs — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:01:34 GMT

My laptop is in the throes of death. :(

It's been turning itself off randomly for weeks (I suspect overheating, and even the external fan isn't managing to keep it very cool) and now every so often the screen flickers majorly and I can't see what I'm doing. Tried connecting one of our spare monitors, but it didn't work, the computer and it just didn't recognise each other.

Add to that the fact that it's five years old, my hard drive is nearly full, the battery lasts five minutes and the whole thing is rather bruised and battered (and makes funny noises from time to time), I think it's time for a new one.

Good bye laptop, you have served me well. :,(

An Update and a Poll

katyhasclogs — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:17:16 GMT

Hello all! I hope you all had good Christmasses - I certainly did. As always it was pleasantly quiet and lazy. We had my grandmother to stay, and while she can be rather high-maintenance, it is in the nicest possible way and it was good to have her around.

I had some great presents: lots of lovely books (thanks to everyone who recommended stuff, especially if I never got round to replying to you), DVDs, bath stuff, chocolate, all the usual things! My mum surprised me with a 'Forgotten English' calendar, with a different word for each day - appropriately, the word for Novenber 24th means 'dance'!

Now, for those on my f-list who like the Chalion books, I have some questions. For a while I've fancied setting up a Chalion community, since there's not anything specifically for those books around, and now I think I might actually do it. So really I want to know how interested you'd all be, and what sort of thing you'd enjoy.

View Poll: Chalion Community

(Don't feel too obliged by the last question - I've just never set up an LJ community before, so it would be nice to have someone to do it with.)

Birthdays and Books

katyhasclogs — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:20:32 GMT

First of all, a belated Happy Birthday to duck_or_rabbit, and and up-to-date Happy Birthday to vnfan. Hope you had/have lovely days. :)

And now I wish to ask for your help, o f-list. I'm trying to think of books that people can give me for Christmas, but I'm drawing a bit of a blank. I've done very well with books you've recommended in the past - last Christmas I had a lovely time with The Time Traveller's Wife and Harry, A History and then had great fun in the spring with the Chalion books, so I have great faith in your literary tastes.

So if you have any book recommendations, they would be very gratefully received. I don't have any particular preference for fiction or non-fiction, but would prefer things that are out in paperback.

Thanks in advance!

Strictly Icons Batch 2 - Latin

katyhasclogs — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:11:23 GMT

So I've made some more icons, if anyone's interested, and this time it's the latin.

Preview:

01. 02. 03.

04. 05. 06.

07. 08. 09.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

Comments and credit would be cha cha charming, hotlinking's worse than an illegal lift. ;)

katyhasclogs — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:15:12 GMT

I'm dropping in (only a few minutes late) to wish the wonderful gilpin25 many happy returns of the day.

Thank you for being such a kind, supportive, funny, talented and plain delightful f-lister, and such a patient and insightful beta. If you'd care to give me some prompts, I'd be happy to see what I can do writing-wise. (Hopefully before next September!) :)

25 Strictly Icons

katyhasclogs — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:36:17 GMT

Right, I promised Strictly icons, and here's the first batch. For now it's just the ballroom and some more general ones, but latin is next on my list.

Preview:

01. 02. 03. 04.

05. 06. 07. 08.

09. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

Comments and credit get you a perfect score. Hotlinking gets on Len's wick. ;)

And if you want some text added, just ask.