Halloween Trick or Treat Blog Hop

 Boo! It's time for Jo's annual Halloween blog hop, and I'm here to give you the letter 

 

I didn't actually get a whole lot of cross stitching done this October (you can see what I finished in previous posts), because I decided to do the talented A.J. Pritchett's Stitchtober challenge on Instagram. I did mine as all one piece, with a fairy tale theme:

Some close-ups: 

"Summoning"

"Cursed"

"Astray"

"Overgrown" and "Concealed" (a twofer!)

"Lore"

"Influence"

"Creeping"

"Sorcery"

"Foresight"

"Brewing"

"Crowned"

"A Dark Power"

This was a fun exercise in creativity, and it was nice to do a little embroidery for a change.

On to the next stop! Which is An Arizona Stitcher. Happy Halloween!

13 Days of Halloween

 Is finally done!

That tiny one-over-one lettering took forever. I'm not crazy about those clay buttons popular for some projects, so I stitched all the motifs (with a few beads for good measure. One can never have enough beads). I also had to omit the surrounding lettering because a needle minder from a company that shall go nameless left a giant rust spot on the fabric. I tried all sorts of removers and home remedies, to no avail. Oh well, less stitching to do.

The design is by Praiseworthy Stitches, as you may recognize from the idiosyncratic lettering; I actually ended up modifying the As, Ns, and Rs to make them a bit more legible. 

Love it.

A Cross-Stitch Witch

 Third in the Prairie Schooler Halloween series:

 

I say "series," but really it's my own little series that I've created from the designs in the Just Cross Stitch Halloween issues; the first one (the owl) had a checkered border around it, so I added that to the subsequent designs and made some thread changes to match.

 Only, now that I see the three together, apparently I used the wrong orange for the witch. Aaaargh!

Primitive Pumpkin!

 

This little guy is from a design by the Primitive Hare, in the Just Cross Stitch 2016 Halloween special issue.  The entire design wasn't my style, but this face kept catching my eye, so finally I stitched him. And he fits perfectly in a 3-inch hoop!

Pumpkin Bracelet!

 It's fall, and the weather is fallish! Time to gussy up.

I had fun collecting all the different charms; I even made a beaded pumpkin, following this video. (The other beaded pumpkin is handmade but not by me, from a pair of earrings I got ages ago and rarely wore.)

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox

 

 

The Absolute Book is unlike any other fantasy I've read, incorporating murder, revenge, libraries, portals to other worlds, mysterious objects, demons, fae folk, Norse gods, actors, and ancient curses. When author and library expert Taryn makes a rash decision regarding the death of her beloved sister, she opens herself up both to great evil and the presence of worlds and peoples she never knew existed.

Knox's narrative is rich and engaging, filled with details that humanize the characters and make the world and its inhabitants seem grounded in reality, even the fae folk -- who, in the tradition of the oldest folk tales, are completely alien in their behavior and outlook. Which leads to another through line in the story: the moral evil of the Tithe, where the fairies sacrifice the souls of thousands of humans to prolong their own lives. I greatly appreciated that Knox never shied away from how abhorrent this literal deal with the devil is, and how it casts an ugly pallor on the otherwise paradisiacal world of the fairies. 

Which is why the ending fell so flat for me. The resolution of the Tithe problem was abrupt and uncertain, and because of a hard left turn at the end to address a completely different issue (not raised in the novel beforehand), the fate of all past (and potentially future) human souls became an afterthought. 

It's not the only misstep, from my point of view at least. A portion of the story takes place in Purgatory, portrayed here (as in almost every mainstream depiction) as a place of unending waiting; perhaps not as bad as Hell but not a good place (ha) to end up in. Which is in complete contrast to the actual theological concept, almost exclusively Catholic, where Purgatory is simply a way station of sorts where souls are purified before they enter Heaven. 

Given this and the offhand way the Judeo-Christian God is mentioned in the narrative (albeit with the evocative phrase "The Great God of the Desert"), I suspect Knox comes from a fairly secular background and did not focus much on the theological, as opposed to folkloric, underpinnings of her novel.  

But these are minor complaints, and on the whole I greatly enjoyed the novel. It was refreshing to read a fantasy concerned as much with morality as with world-building.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

I've been fascinated by Arthurian Legends since I was a girl, so much so that I took a class in the literature in college, covering everything from Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-history to modern versions by T.H. White and Marion Zimmer Bradley. I especially loved the stories surrounding the Holy Grail, and I wrote my final paper about the Grail elements in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (my professor's initial response: "You're very brave to tackle Eliot.").  But somehow, I never read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The release of the movie The Green Knight forced me to correct that; as always, I prefer to read the book first. So I picked up Tolkien's translation of the poem, in an edition that includes Tolkien's lecture on it and his translations of two other poems likely by the same poet.

It's an excellent translation. The original was written in a dialect of Middle English different enough from both Chaucer's English (the poet probably knew him) and modern that a translation is necessary, but Tolkien kept to the poetic style the author used: alliterative verse, where each line is divided in two but linked by the initial sounds of stressed words. As I read the story, I often found myself reading some of it aloud.

The story itself is about the contest the mysterious Green Knight challenges Gawain to: Gawain is to wield the strongest blow he can with the Knight's axe, but in return he much allow the Knight to do the same a year later. Gawain chops his head off, but the Knight just picks it up and goes on his way, reminding Gawain of his agreement. After spending most of the year ignoring it, he finally sets out to meet his obligation before eventually stopping at the castle of a lord near the meeting place. Paradoxically, this part is the most dangerous, as both the lord and his lady play games with Gawain to test him.

It also forms the heart of the story, as Tolkien explains in his lecture. Gawain is being tested on three levels -- the game (with its rules) he plays with the lord, the obligations of courtly love the lady demands, and Christian morality. Watching Gawain navigate the three until he finally must choose one to honor above the others is fascinating.

From what I've read, the movie is not a typical action/adventure-type fantasy; I'm hopeful, then, that it will reflect the moral and philosophical struggles of the text.