This is relevant to my interests

From Free Vintage Crochet

I've been re-reading the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I loved the books as a child, picked them up again a year or two ago, and have found they make superb comfort reading.

Last night I noticed that Laura was knitting a "nubia" for her sister, Mary. Given my past interest and work in Nubian studies, that stuck out a bit.

As near as I can seem to find in very brief Google and Ravelry browse, a "nubia" or "nubian" is a long scarf or shawl, wide enough to drape gently over the head and around the neck. This PDF from Ragged Soldier gives a modern example along with an historic illustration. They seem to have come into fashion in the late 19th Century and lasted through the early 20th.  There are vintage/historic crochet and knitting patterns available as well for free and on eBay and as Kindle "books" on Amazon. (I strongly recommend searching the internet for patterns found for sale on Amazon, as they may simple be free patterns converted (or not) to Kindle file format.

Image by mek22 via Flickr

Not sure this is a Nubian goat, but photo kicks ass.

The term  seems to have no connection to Nubia the place or Nubians the people, despite both terms being used. I thought maybe it referred to Nubian goats, but they don't look much like fiber animals. Then I thought maybe the droopy ears and the scarf over the head looked sort of alike.

But, no, I finally found this:

Nubia. [From Latin nubes, a cloud] A knitted or crocheted scarf of Soft, fleecy material, worn about the head and neck. (Source)

So, no telling people their hand-knit or hand-crocheted scarves make them look like goats. Probably for the best.

In other news, the weather has cooled of here and my head and hands are making it felt. Hopefully will level out soon.
Also, the idiotic Personhood Amendment failed. So I will have no reason to use the phrase "pry my IUD out of my cold, dead uterus."

So, Laura Ingalls Wilder was even more hardcore than I thought

Image via Wikipedia

What it looks like outside

We are having a blizzard.

I had to work today.  From 2pm to 10 pm.

At 9pm, the shuttle buses that the powers that be had claimed would run their normal schedule despite the blizzard, stopped running.

Oh yeah.  Awesome.  Lobby full of angry people.  My crippled ass wondering how the hell I'm supposed to get home.  (I didn't call in today because, silly me, I believed the whole "we have no plans to cancel the shuttle service")  The University of Chicago - it's about life of the mind, not life of the extremities.

Tom came to get me.  In the car.  The Saturn sedan.   Did I mention the blizzard?

I was literally whimpering by the time we got from the library to the car across the street.

Tom had to dig me out of the car when we got home.  He is my hero.

The wind is blowing so hard it's being driven through the screens on our windows.

Also, they weren't kidding about the thunder and lightening.  Do you know how weird that is?

Laura freaking Ingalls walked through this kind of shit.  In a skirt.  That my friends, is hardcore.

Review of Little Bodice Ripper on the Prairie

I finished it late last night.  Blah.
There wasn't a great deal of information that isn't already available (obviously that probably wasn't the case in the late 1970s).  Pretty much re-summarizes the events of the books while adding in a few tidbits of outside information from contemporary newspapers or diaries.  Still not as interesting as one might hope.
Zochert seems to take for granted how Laura must have felt in certain circumstances, which I found annoying.  And my lord did he hammer home the "holy crap their lives were harsh!" in the first years after Laura and Almanzo were married.  But not by actual description or relation of events, just by saying "OMG it was soooo hard" over and over again.
There is very little at all about Rose.  Next to nothing about life after the books in general, really. 

Definitely no bodice ripping.

Little Bodice Ripper on the Prairie?

I have a deep and abiding fondness for the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Read them as a child and adored them, then picked them up again a couple years ago as comfort reading and discovered they were still wonderful. As an archaeologist and historian and general nerd, I was also interested in more information about Laura and her family. So, there's this book - Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Donald Zochert.  I scored it from Paperback Swap.  The cover is tripping me out.

The front cover isn't so bad.  They were clearly trying to capitalize on the Little House on the Prairie TV show without getting too far into potential lawsuit territory, which explains the Michael Landon looking dude on the left there.

Then there's the back cover:

Yeah.  I have many questions.
I'm assuming that's Laura over there on the left.
What isn't clear is why she has her blouse unbuttoned halfway to her navel.  Or why she has short, Brady Bunch hair.
On the right, I'm guessing Almanzo Wilder.  I was unaware until now that his family  had Neanderthal ancestry of sufficient recentness to give him a really distinctive brow-ridge.   Or that he apparently highlighted his hair.

Seriously - WTF?

The author, Zochert, writes in a weird, simplistic kind of folksy way that is sort of like Laura's.  I can't decide if this is annoying yet.

I definitely have not hit any bodice ripping yet.