Elfia

Yvonne and I had been talking about this Fantasy Fair for a few years, and this year we managed to get to go to the one in Haarzuilen, near Utrecht. It was fantastic! So many people dressed up and totally got into the spirit of the thing - very inspiring!

There were lots of Elves (and here I mean Tolkien's kind), steampunks, zombies, maidens fair (but I don't remember seeing any bears), warriors, pirates, vampires, orcs, various types of outfit involving hooped skirts, a good few Meridas and Jack Sparrows, a couple of Mr. Tumnus's, Snow Whites, Pikachu's and Storm Troopers, an awesome Witch King of Angmar, and some fantastic cat warriors, whom we only saw in the line for tickets, and not again, unfortunately. And of course there were loads of fairies, of all types.The surroundings were breathtaking and the whole thing was a lot bigger than I thought it would be, which was only a good thing!

Here's me in front of the castle - Yvonne had done a brilliant job painting my face :) I am of course wearing my blue Elf dress, with the In Dreams shawl.

This is the spiderwoman-fairy. There were many professional photographers taking pictures, presumably of the people who'd signed up for the contests. Many of them clearly had characters to go along with their costume and had spent considerable time and effort on it.

We walked around looking at the many stalls offering an abundance of cool stuff - corsets, swords, dresses, teeth, ears, tiaras, you name it.  There was music, LARP workshops, and an area dedicated to The Hobbit, with various small sets and people dressed up as characters from the story, obviously taking their cue from the movie.

This woman was probably my favourite of all - we stood in line behind her at the loo at one point, so got a good look at her outfit. Really really lovely.

2012 - The Year In Knitting

Tally: 54 projects finished in 2012 + one or two that didn't make it to Ravelry. Out of those 34 ended up in someone else's closet, whether or not that was the intention from the outset. A lot of those projects were really small and quick, like the crochet necklaces I made for Christmas gifts, and there weren't as many big lace shawls on the menu this year compared to last year.

Speaking of shawls, I've made 18, large and small, and 6 of those were for me - that's down from 2011, where I ended up with 8 new shawls out of 27 made, but instead last year I made cowls - 13 cowls in total, 4 of which are mine today. I've done well using up stash, and judging from my WIPs right now, I'm going to do better on that score in 2013. Yay! Yarn diet has not held up so well, but mostly I've only bought stuff needed for presents - although I didn't really need a 1000g cone to do one single Evenstar shawl... *cough cough* It could've been worse - resisting temptation builds character, right?

I've made more sweaters than the previous year, which is closely connected to the knitting-from-stash thing - because sweater projects are what my stash mostly consists of - 3 pullovers and 2 cardigans, where in 2011 it was only the one cardigan. I've had a good mix of simple and complex projects, and I've tried a few new things, and am now totally in love with garter stitch and shortrows....

In keeping with the theme from last year, here are pictures of my 6 lovely new shawls, clockwise from top right (pattern + designer):

Line Break by Veera Välimäki, Color Affection by Veera Välimäki, Diantha by Susanna IC, Stonecrop by Jared Flood, Rockefeller by Stephen West and Hitchhiker by Martina Behm.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie yet, and intend to do one or both, skip this post. There will be spoilers :)

Anyway, went to see the first installment in the The Hobbit trilogy on 16 December. When I got home, I had to check up on parts of the LOTR appendices, and the Tale Of Years, to try and get a handle on the changes in timeline. There are a lot of changes in the movie compared to the book. Some were plainly necessary, given the evolvement of certain characters between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings (that would be Gandalf).

First off, I have to say that casting was spot-on. I loooooved Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and Richard Armitage as Thorin. The dwarves were pretty well cast as well. Purely for his looks, I adored whoever played Thranduil - I so want a copy of that crown, one of the most Elvish things I've ever seen. I don't really understand why the enmity between Thorin and the Elves had to be underscored, because the only reason I can think of has to do with the massive difficulty you'd have explaining the whole business of the Nauglamir in this context. I loved seeing more of Rivendell, and being back at Back End, this time knowing that if I do go back to New Zealand, I can go to Matamata and see the hobbit houses there for real.

Most of the changes I get, and most of them don't have massive impact on the main story as I see it. For example, Gandalf calling the eagles through a bug when caught in the trees, the same way he did when imprisoned on the roof of Orthanc, where in the book, the Lord of Eagles hears the noise of Wargs and Orcs and heads off with his posse to explore, thus discovering the party in distress and carrying them all off.

Two changes continue to annoy me. One is that we see Gollum losing the Ring. This contradicts the scene shown in ROTK where we see Bilbo finding the Ring while alone, which is as written - he puts his hand on it by chance in the dark. That point is entirely lost in this new movie. It annoys me just as much as Aragorn chopping off the head of Sauron's Mouth in ROTK, which is also in direct opposition to what is written, because it is specifically said by Aragorn that Sauron's Mouth cannot be harmed due to his status as emissary.

The second thing comes at the very end, where the party has come to the Carrock and are looking across Mirkwood and seeing a very near-seeming Erebor. That scene is for me too much of an echo of the last scene of FOTR, where Sam and Frodo look across Emyn Muil towards Mordor. It made sense then - it does not now, and I thought it was a very cheap shot.

But, I am looking forward to the next movie, and to more background stuff - White Council and Dol Guldur and all that - but not the journey through Mirkwood, for obvious reasons...... 

Ready Set Spin!

Omani Adventures

Such an amazing place.... A week was far too short to spend in Oman, next time I'll stay for longer. The occasion to go was the fact that one of my friends and her family had moved there last year.

My first impression of Muscat was elegance and luminosity. The sultan has decreed a particular colour palette for all buildings in the city, and so everywhere is white or cream or peach or sand. It was very hot and humid which I had to get used to as well as the air-conditioning when inside.

The trip down was fairly uneventful. I got a good laugh, when what I thought were my flight socks (to prevent deep vein thrombosis on long-haul flights) turned out to be my Marlies Dekkers knee-highs. Oh well. So great to see Viki again - 3 years since last time, but that ceases to matter when we get together.

Next morning we went for a looong brunch with lots of food and talking, at a very nice hotel complex near Muscat called Shangri-La. The afternoon was spent in the pool with the rest of the family (she has a boy 2 years and a girl 4 years, the latter came very sweetly to wake me up on Friday morning, because she just couldn't wait anymore for me to get up). They live in a compound with a residents' pool, which was great, given the heat. The Saturday was spent relaxing, doing a bit of shopping and just hanging out - I was enjoying getting to spend some time with the wee ones as well.

On Sunday, which counts as Tuesday in Oman, we went first to visit the Grand Mosque, which was a truly great experience. I could've happily spent a few hours just absorbing all the colours and patterns and carvings and mosaics, but we had to leave to pick up kids. We had to cover up with headscarves, long sleeves and long trousers, and were invited to join a group of women on their guided tour - otherwise we would've just wandered about on our own. They were lovely and asked us back to the visitor's center after the tour for coffee and dates.

The mens' hall has the second-largest chandelier in the world, meant to resemble a gathering of minarets. It reminded me of a city in the clouds alright and the dome surrounding it was just mesmerising. There are pictures on Facebook, but here is a close-up of the dome and part of the chandelier.

In the afternoon we went off again, to go see Nakhal Fort, which is about an hour from Muscat. There are forts like this all over Oman, but the location for Nakhal Fort is just stunning, right by the Hajar Mountains, and with palm plantations all around. Most of the rooms are left as they would've been when the fort was in active use - the kitchen, the jail, the womens', mens' and children's rooms. There were no other visitors but us, so we were really enjoying having the whole place to ourselves - the advantage to going on a weekday, I guess. Afterwards we went to see a nearby hot spring, taking small windy roads through village and palm plantations, sometimes passing ruins old and new by the side of the road. By the river, where the spring joins it, you could sit down and let little fishies get at the dead skin on your feet. I didn't do that, because I was jittery about creepy-crawlies, and didn't want to get caught with my feet in water and so not be able to make a quick getaway. Viki did soak her feet for a while though (I later submitted to the same type of fish at the Sink Hole, but I didn't like them nibbling at me). We had a lovely dinner on our return to Muscat - walking around in a zillion degrees heat and seeing impressive stuff does take it out of you.

The next day, Viki was working in the morning, and I spent a very leisurely morning by the pool with a stack of magazines. I had never really spent that much time just laying by a pool before, so it felt like a very luxurious thing to do. On Tuesday we had appointments at Viki's favourite spa for massages, which I had been looking forward to nearly from the time I booked my flights. Afterwards I felt like cooked spaghetti - just pour me into bed now please.....

On Wednesday we went to have a look at the old part of Muscat, which includes the city landmark at the mouth a the harbour, a giant white incense burner. We saw the sultan's wee yacht. And a heron. Love herons :) Then we went to the souk (local market) for some shopping - pashminas and lanterns for my balcony. They had so many pretty ones with coloured glass and stuff, and thankfully they all made it home in one piece.

On Thursday Viki, her husband Rune and me went to Wadi Shab, which is about an-hour-and-a-half from Muscat. A wadi is a riverbed, which is dry some of the time, but which is prone to sudden flooding, when rain water comes down from the mountains. There are a great many wadis in Oman, and we'd crossed a good few in all sizes on our travels up until that point. But none as beautiful as Wadi Shab, I am so happy I got to see it :)

As luck would have it, Wadi Shab on this day was playing host to the Red Bull World Championships in cliff-diving, where brave men were plunging 27m to a deep turquoise pool. There were a lot of people, who found places to sit both high and low. It was very hot, and soon moved from our first location to somewhere on the other side of the water, so that we'd get more shade later on. Turned out to be a good move. You really get to appreciate shade and water in this place, and respect the heat. The diving itself was interesting, the amount of control and courage it must've taken. We left before it was finished - we'd spent at least 2 hours there, before it even got started, and we were getting enough of the heat. On our way back we stopped at the Sink Hole for a quick swim, which was just divine after getting so hot and sticky in Wadi Shab. The lake is said to be bottomless, and the water is the most divine jewel-like green colour. We had a change of clothes in the car (we went into the water fully dressed), and then made our way back to Muscat for my last dinner. I was leaving at 4.30 in the morning, so said goodbye to everyone before heading to bed - Viki had sorted out transportation for me.

The week had it all - I got to see some amazing things, I got to spend lots of time with Viki, and have fun with her and her family and then there were times when we just chilled out watching movies or something. Perfect :) I'll be back!