The Lord of the Rings

(I'm going to apologize ahead of time to those of you who are unfamiliar with the epic story of The Lord of the Rings. Not only will you have a hard time appreciating this blog post, but you are seriously missing out.)

You only need to talk with me for a short time to understand my passion for The Lord of the Rings. Actually, it's one of the few subjects I can actually go on and on (and on!) about. I'm not usually a talkative person, but ha! If you start a conversation about The Lord of the Rings you would never guess that. I do try to be courteous to those poor people who aren't as fanatical as myself, though. Which is why I gave you that warning at the beginning. So you can leave now if you don't want to read a whole long post about The Lord of the Rings.

Now, a few of the things I love about this story: First of all, the story itself. As a story-lover, I think I kind of look at The Lord of the Rings as the ultimate story. Yes, it is long, and Tolkien uses a lot of description, but honestly, the story is set in a fantasy world--it needs to be described. The Lord of the Rings has all the elements of a good story: well-developed and lovable characters, a clear goal and a hard time getting there, and unexpected twists along the way. It also has a positive theme, a very clear good vs. evil set-up. Many people have called it an allegory, but I don't think that is what it is meant to be, although it does still contain many elements of 'The Great Story'. I think all good stories do. I would analyze the theme more for you, but I don't particularly enjoy that sort of thing and prefer to just enjoy the story. :)

As I mentioned before, the characters are excellent. All the ones that need to be well-rounded are so. The good guys have faults (except for maybe Sam...) but they are still endearing and intriguing and I always want to get to know them better and learn about their history and how that has maybe impacted who they are.

Which leads me to another point. I think one of the biggest things I love about Tolkien's work is how extensive it is. His real passion was language and mythology, and that played in hugely to his development of Middle-Earth and its history. The best part is that all that history is written down! There is such a wealth of details in The Silmarillion and the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. I am a researcher at heart, so I love being able to have a question about some character or event or something and then go look it up to find out the answer! It's awesome! :D And I usually end up discovering (or rediscovering) things I wasn't even looking for in the first place. I'm going to go back and reread The Silmarillion sometime soon. And The Lord of the Rings. Yes. That too.

I could go on about this for quite a bit longer, but I said what I really wanted to say, so I won't keep you. If you love The Lord of the Rings as much as I do and feel like talking about it for extensive amounts of time, please comment or email or whatever! If you haven't read The Lord of the Rings, you have my pity, and please get to it as soon as possible. It's well worth your time! Thanks for bearing with me either way! ;)

Thoughts on Easter

I'm not entirely sure what all I'm going to post yet, but I'm hoping to focus it mainly on Easter. Since it's two days away! I'm just not sure I can say what I mean. Easter is such an amazing day and an amazing thing to remember. I'll try.

This whole week I've been reading the chapters in all four gospels that coincide with what happened on those days  of the week before the first Easter. So I read about the triumphant entry last Sunday, the last supper yesterday, and the crucifixion today (Good Friday). It's been really interesting to think about these events and to read them in all four gospels, because they each tell the story a little differently. For example, John doesn't say much about the last supper, but he records several chapters worth of what Jesus told the disciples that night, which the other three don't include much of.

So this morning, reading about Jesus' trial before Pilate, his crucifixion, and his burial, I was struck again with how incredible it all is. The story is familiar, yes, but looking for different details in the different gospels helped me focus on the story again. All four tell the same story, but they do include different details which makes it so interesting and you get the full story. I also like to think about why they included the details they chose.

But again I was struck that he endured all that for me. He loves me so much that he would have died if I were the only sinner, the only person in the world. I think the best part was knowing the end of the story. I can't imagine being there and seeing Jesus die and not knowing it wasn't final! No wonder the disciples were dejected! Can you imagine what an awful Sabbath day that would have been for Jesus' friends?

The women had prepared burial spices for him Friday evening, but because of the Sabbath, they had to wait. That's why they were coming to the tomb early Sunday morning. On the way, they realized that the stone was in front of the tomb. Not only was it heavy, but it was sealed with Pilate's seal and guarded by Roman soldiers. Now what? When they get there, all of a sudden there's a violent earthquake, the guards collapse, and an angel, dressed in clothes that gleam like lightning, rolls away the stone in front of the tomb. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" The angel asks the women. I love that question. "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen!" What a triumphant cry that must have been! And how startling! How confusing! I know it would have been for me. Yet there could be no doubt, especially when Jesus actually appeared to not only the women but his disciples too!

Death is not the end with Jesus. He has overcome! He is alive!

Cape Tutorial!

Alright, here we go!

So, you're going to start out with a square or rectangle of fabric. (Note that my sizes and such will be suited to the doll-sized cape I'm making. Most of the time I'll tell you what you need, but still keep that in mind.) The size of your rectangle will be dependent on how long you want your cape to be. A yard of fabric makes a good short cape (about half-length on an adult), and a yard and a half will turn out to be decently long. If you're planning on adding a hood, start out with extra fabric. Also, fabric with the typical 45" width works great, but the also common 60" should be fine too. If your fabric has any serious wrinkles or big creases, I would suggest pressing it before you begin.

My fabric - with that one little spot that looks like Australia

Now, at this point it doesn't really matter if the edges of the fabric aren't perfect, because your next step is to hem them ALL. Yes. All four edges. Start with the what will be the sides of the cape (aka not the top and bottom). If you're making a short cape (about a yard of fabric), use the edge that gets cut for the top and bottom instead of the selvage. It'll fit around you better.

A note on the hems: in case you're using a fabric that frays a lot, it's good to fold the edge over twice. Plus it just looks neater.

Fold it up...

Then fold it up again.

See the nice finished edge?

Half an inch is a good width for the hem. Of course, just folding it over isn't going to work well, so pinning it would be a good idea (as you saw above).

Now, sew the hems along the edge.

Now you need to hem the top and bottom edges. Be especially careful to line the corners up nicely.

See? Nice little straight corner. Makes me happy.

Ok, so, pin the edges and sew them just like the other two. You should end up with a nicely edged almost blanket sort of thing.

At this point, it would probably be a good idea to press the edges so they lay flat. It helps it just look good over all before you go on to the next part.

Now you're going to turn that hemmed rectangle into a cape! So, the way this works is you're going to make a few pleats in the top. I only did three, but in a larger cape I would do more like five. I like doing an odd number because you can use the middle of the fabric. To start, fold your fabric in half with the right sides together and the top hem on top.

Next you stick a pin a little bit in from the fold (I did about 3/4 of an inch for this cape, but I would suggest more like 1 and 1/2 inches for a human-sized cape.) To make the next pleat, pinch up about the same amount of fabric in another place. (Since I was only doing three, I tried to make it an equal distance from both the middle pleat and the edge. If you're doing five, try to make them all an equal distance apart.)

For the other side, try to pinch about the same amount as the pleat above it in about the same place so they line up and have basically the same distance from any other pleats and/or the edge. (see below)

Now, sew about two inches (I only did one) straight down where the pin was stuck. If you want, you can sew farther down, but I like it short.

Do that for all of your pleats. At this point, your cape should be starting to take shape. It's more gathered at the top and hangs nicely when you hold it up. However, the pleats are really just bumps at this point.

To fix that, you simply need to sew the pleats down. You could do it in several ways: push all the loops in the same direction, push them all flat down (see the middle one below), or you could push just the middle one flat and the others in opposite directions on each side (which is what I did). Pinning isn't necessary at this point, but it always helps.

Now sew them down, and try to follow the seam that's already there, if you can. If it doesn't match up exactly, don't panic, it's not that big of a deal ;). 

Now it should lay much nicer and prettier.

At this point, you could be finished IF you don't want a hood. It looks great either way, but if you don't want a hood, skip to the part where I talk about closures (ties, buttons, etc.) If you are making a hood, please bear with me as I figure this out without a pattern. I'll let you know when something besides what's in the picture might work better. To start the hood, put two pieces of fabric right sides together and cut out a piece (from both at the same time) that's about this shape.

It should be several inches (3-5) wider and taller than your head (or whoever's head is going to wear it). Looking back, having the top even less rounded would have been fine as well. Next you need to hem the straighter edge. Just one nice, short, straight seam. Same as you did before. Press them when you're done.

Now lay the two pieces one on top of the other right sides together. 

At this point, I decided to round the top more. It wasn't a particularly helpful idea.

Anyway, you will now pin the edges...

...And sew the pieces together. (Note: a normal seam allowance of 1/2 inch would be fine on something larger. Because my hood was so small, I did 1/4 inch.) As this seam is around a curve, it is a little more challenging, but certainly not impossible.

To help it lay right, it's a good idea to either press the seam apart (if your hood is large enough ;) ) or trim the edge short like I did. It probably also depends on if your fabric frays a lot or not.

Trimmed edge

You have both pieces completed, so you simply need to sew them together. Start by laying the hood on the cape right sides together.

You might notice that my hood is not as wide as my cape. This is not a problem at all, and is probably normal and perfectly fine for a human-size cape.

Pin the two together and stitch them up. 

Yay! All attached and everything. It wouldn't hurt to press that seam. Now all you have left to do is decide on some way to attach your cape when you're wearing it. If your sewing machine is able to sew a button hole, by all means figure out how to use it. There are also many other types of closures out there. Some of them look really cool! However, if you pick one of those, you'll have to figure it out on your own. For this cape, I decided to do a simple ribbon tie. You could use any width ribbon, I just used what I had on hand. Cut two pieces of ribbon at the same length (long is better than too short!) Pin them on to the edges like this:

Sew along the seam that's already there, if you can. If not, don't worry about it.

I backstitched over the whole end of the ribbon a few time just to make it stronger. Do that for both sides and you're finished! Congratulations! Here are a few pictures of my finished product.

Length

From the front

With the hood up

You can't tell very well in this picture, but the hood didn't end up laying very well on top. It kind of had a point. Part of that was that my hood was a little small, but I think it was also just a bit too rounded. If it was slightly flatter on top, or even a more gradual curve, I think it would have turned out better. A little wider would've been good too.

Well, enjoy your cape! Please let me know if you have any questions, or if you tried following these directions and they worked!

Capes

Yesterday a few of my friends and I got together to make costumes. It was a blast! Anyway, I made myself a new cape and I absolutely love it! I was thinking it would be fun to post a tutorial on how to make something like it, but I didn't take any pictures while I was working on it so... yeah. However, I might have time sometime this weekend to whip up a doll-sized one that I can take pictures of. It's a really easy way to make a cape and it looks good! It can be adjusted for pretty much any length of cape, should work with just about any fabric, AND you can decide whether or not you want a hood. In short, it's easy to personalize.

On that note, I'll get back to you when I have the real tutorial to share. :)

Poem...

Ok, I'm usually not a poet, but I've actually been enjoying the poetry unit we're doing in English. My favorite was definitely the narrative poem (imagine that!) but I also enjoyed writing the English sonnet. Which is surprising, since I was certainly not expecting to. For a little background, the sonnet is pretty much the most precise and strict poem we're learning about. It must have 14 lines, each with 10 syllables that alternate unstressed-stressed. It also has a specific rhyme scheme--ABABCDCDEFEFGG. So a lot of guidelines. Basically what I experienced is just an example of making even the hard stuff fun. That seems to be easier to do in areas I already generally enjoy, but all the same, I had fun with something I expected to be horribly dull. Well, yes, my subject did add to my enjoyment of this poem. I was trying to think of something to write about and put on some music to help stimulate my brain. To be specific, I listened to The Hobbit soundtrack (which I got for my birthday--epic! :D). Which gave me my idea. Yes, the poem is from the perspective of one of the characters in The Hobbit :). And here is the poem:

King Under the Mountain

I am a king without a place to stay

My home and kingdom removed from my hands

Through desperate odds I will contrive a way

To win my father’s treasure and his lands

The gold belongs to me and to my kin

But now our halls are guarded by that beast

Under the mountain in our halls within

Revenge is mine; we go into the east

My company, my friends and I will go

To Erebor, the kingdom rightly mine

The dragon shall be ousted, overthrown

The Arkenstone again I shall see shine

That precious prize so treasured for its glow

It shall be mine alone. Be warned, O foe!

:D I like it. But I like pretty much anything having to do with The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. No, I'm not going to tell you the character's name, but I'll give you an opportunity to guess, for those of you familiar with the story. In fact, the first one to tell me this character's full name AND the first names of his father and grandfather, will get some sort of prize, which is yet to be determined ;). But it will be a decent prize, I assure you.

Have fun guessing! ↓

Chopped!

Sunday evening we had our friends the Salts family over for dinner. It was a blast! That evening, instead of making dessert ahead of time, we planned an activity similar to the cooking show Chopped! except it was more about the design, not necessarily the originality. Basically, we had four teams and we all had the same three ingredients we had to use in our dessert. We could make it into anything, but those three ingredients had to be recognizable in the finished product. Our three ingredients were yellow cake batter, Oreos, and peanut butter puff cereal. Avery and Brynley were the judges and Mom was the Kitchen Supervisor/announcer. We had around 45 minutes to think up and create our 'masterpieces'. Chloe and I were a team, and we came up with an idea quickly and nabbed the griddle before anyone else could (not that they would've). I started turning our cake batter into chocolate chip pancakes while she whipped up some peanut butter frosting (YUM!). The pancakes worked, but the batter was obviously not meant to be flipped on a griddle. I wish I had a picture to show you! ;) But thankfully we had plenty of batter to end up with as many decent-looking pancakes as we needed.

When that was all ready, we stacked up all the stuff in layers: pancake, broken Oreos, pancake, peanut butter frosting, peanut butter puffs, pancake. We drizzled the stack with chocolate syrup and sprinkled on a little powdered sugar. I have to say, they looked amazing!

Our delicious creation

When the time was up and everyone was ready, we all gathered in the dining room to present our desserts to the judges. Mr. Salts and Noah went first, then Dad, Sam, and Gabe.

Dad, Sam, and Gabe presenting

Mrs. Salts, Olivia, and Layney went next, and lastly Chloe and me. The judges took note of the presentation (they all looked incredible!) and then tasted a piece of the dessert. When they had tried all four, the ran off to another room to discuss. And left the rest of us waiting in suspense. When they got back, they stood up on the couch to make the announcement.

Avery reminding Brynley who won

The winners were..... Dad, Sam, and Gabe, with their little bumblebee cupcakes!

Keep in mind this was an extra, the originals were even cuter!

To celebrate we all tried all of the desserts (just little bites, not whole plates!) They were all so yummy and the whole evening was so much fun! 

Our crazy kitchen in the last few minutes before the judging

The judges tasting one of the desserts

Chloe and me getting ready to present

All four contestants (again, these are extras)

One of the coolest parts of this activity was that everything we made was dairy-free. Since Sam and Dad are not eating dairy until further notice, we had to find a way for them to eat the desserts too! So the ingredients we picked were all dairy-free, we used dairy-free chocolate chips, almond milk, etc. so they could still enjoy them. It was fun to see how much variety could come from just three ingredients and to see how many possibilities there are even with dietary restrictions. Maybe sometime we can try gluten-free! Maybe. ;)

In which I say nothing of great importance

I'll warn you ahead of time, this will probably be random. I rarely have a plan of what I want to blog about, so it'll be the random things my mind happens to wander to. Which will still probably have a main point by the time I'm finished. (Funny how that works...)

Anyway, writing update: I haven't gotten much farther, but I have answered a few more questions in the Map and I've been thinking about parts of the story I need to develop more. As I get farther along, I might need some help brainstorming, so I'll let you know if you want to help. Usually my mom's pretty good at talking things through, but most of the suggestions I get from the rest of my family are something along the lines of 'aliens driving ice cream trucks'. Which is funny the first time, but not super helpful.

I've also been thinking about my novel from last year, which, as I believe I've mentioned before, was being revised until I took a 'break' (a.k.a. stopped). I read through some of my 'revised' chapters this morning just for fun (some of you have read/heard them... chapters 3-5, when Aubrinn finds out Tynon's behind the whole capture, then the days in the woods with Drey, and arriving at Britta's house... if that rings any bells). Revised? Ha! Well, the basic idea and plot is decent, and they're better than they used to be, but there are still a lot of lumps to work out. Ok, more like hills. Mountain ranges. But I'll stop now.

Yesterday I wrote the narrative poem we were supposed to do this week for English homework. It was so fun! I knew narrative poems would be my favorite kind... Anyway, it's not a ballad, and it might be long enough to be an epic... a full page, two columns. Mrs. Mann, would it be OK for me to post it here sometime? :) Along with this, it gives me a little hope that I might possibly be able to write songs and/or poems for stories in the future. We'll see. But the same time, I think I need to write poetry in spurts, at least rhyming/rhythmic poetry. After I finished yesterday, I was still thinking in rhythm. For a few hours at least.

The last random thing I want to mention (unless I think of more to say) is the stop-motion video I made last weekend. That was also tons of fun! In case you're wondering, no, I don't randomly come up with huge, ambitious projects to give me something to do on weekends. (usually) No, OYAN is having a video contest again this year, so that's what my video is for. I would put it here and let you all see it, but I'm not allowed to put it anywhere else online until they announce the contest winners. So after that I will either post it here or post the link to it elsewhere.

Oh, I did think of something else! Today it is exactly one week until my birthday :D. It's getting closer, and I'm getting excited! But I don't have anything else to say about it.

Well, I don't have a main point after all. Oh well, maybe next time.