bookage and bright colors, etc.

[anotheranon]

Ever since I got back from Seattle, I've been like a magpie in my attraction to bright colors: vivid and so saturated that if you put it in the washer it will turn your socks [insert color here]. I fed it a bit this week by playing with peacock blue sari fabric but what's satisfying it now is my long-backordered copy of Moda a Firenze 1540-1580. I don't know whether it's the lush artwork within or imagining the original red of Eleanora of Toledo's surviving burial dress, but ... I want to make something with that kind of intense color. I keep flipping back to a blue green dress with gold sleeves (a color combo I've never seen described in Northern Europe for the same time period).....

Am also reading the first Pern book. I want desperately to like this book - it's been recommended to me by many and after whinging about the lack of Strong Female Characters in my fiction stack it's fair to argue that Lessa fits the SFC bill, but....maybe I'm just being too cynical, but the psychic link with dragons (dragons!) just reeks of new-age-huggy-cuddly fantasy cliches (dragons!) to me. Should I stick with it or not?

And it's amazing the things one learns on Teh Interwebs: cat hair does, indeed, felt. I've been threatening to take all of Spice's shedding and knit a "Spice sweater" for Kisia, but beads dyed with Kool Aid sound so much easier (because I can't knit) :P

Comments

[ragdoll.livejournal.com]

Ooh the book on Florentine fashion sounds awesome. As for Pern -- meh. I read the books when I was a teenager and loved them but in retrospect, I think they just reek of bad romance novels set in space. I don't really see Lessa (or any of the other heroines in the story) as particularly strong esp when they have to rely on a) their dragons and b) the men who rape love them to get by. I think the whole falling in love with rapist thing irks me too (yeah yeah, it's not REALLY rape because they're going at it due to their psychic links with dragons but it's not exactly voluntary) plus Pernish society is alot more sexist than some would like to think. Considering when they were first written (the late 60s??), they are feminist (i.e. the women do more than just cook and clean and wait for their men to save the day) but...meh.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I got all excited that Lessa was going to get to go flying on a dragon(! a dragon, but still - flying! Perhaps with a sword!) But then it turns out that the queen dragon doesn't fly (except to make babies) [sigh]

[ragdoll.livejournal.com]

The only female dragons that fly are the greens. And they, of course, are sexually insatiable. And sterile, IIRC.

[kat1392.livejournal.com]

Keep reading. She does get to fly.