Craftingrovingrambler - Thoughts Like Forests

Dressmaking in Paris, 1907.

Dovekie aka Little Auk (Alle alle), family Alcidae, order Charadriiformes, Iceland

Photograph by Christophe Moning

Lightbringer is all packed up and shall be heading off to it's new owner next week!

The itching to be back in forests and mountains

2 more months

Hiking is the best way to spend your time, seriously.

Things two hungarian poets from the 1840s said to each other in their letters that make me crazy:

If my soul touches you and it happens to burn you I'm not to blame... it was you who lit it on fire

I swear to you on cottage cheese and tobacco

If the people rule in poetry, so will they rule in politics and that's the goal of the century! To hell with the aristocracy!

My dear buddy,

My soul, my bastard,

My golden mouthed saintly friend,

My rowdy brother,

My lovable dummy,

If you want to see a dead Pegasus, look no further than me

I am trying to learn to smile nicely ( he did not succeed)

My dear friend, you better side of my soul

I will never forgive you for NOT writing the address on the envelope yourself. A woman's handwriting... and a black seal... dear god, the devil took him! he worked himself to death writing poems, he died! ... and then i opened your letter... Never do this again. Only use black seal vax on your death, and even then, still write the address yourself!

I'm reading (your work) for the sixth time. It's really a horrible thing. I'll need to read it again to understand just how awful it is!

Sincerely, your friend whose balls are itching

It's really good that your sore throat is gone, I can finally strangle you

Leave the dedication! Veselényi is a great man but he's still a Lord, and a poet should never dedicate ANYTHING to a Lord

I'm hugging you a 1000000000000 times!

Fun ADHD hack is that you're allowed to just go to the library and reserve a study room for a couple of hours and make all your phone calls or whatever adult shit you need to do but can't because your house is for House Stuff and for some reason your brain has designated "phone calls for doctors and other such things" as School Adjacent and therefore refuses to do it in an insufficently academic environment. Like it's free. You can just do that.

I love everything about this. Hick up and Astrid are one of my favourite couples ever. But please, also historical viking essays! 🙏😊

my old How to Train your Dragon obsession suddenly re-emerging now, after I've spent years learning about Historical Viking Clothing and Crafts is great actually cause I get to apply the Fun History Knowledge to my favorite blorbos, and now I have some very specific scenarios.

in Viking culture, gift giving was a big complicated very significant thing. And one gift that was Especially Significant was that of a New Shirt. Women would propose to the guy they wanted to marry by making him a brand new linen shirt. I could go on for several pages about what that tells us about viking culture, gender roles, and also the extremely fun ways viking age stories used "gifting a shirt" as a symbol in romantic stories, but I'll restrain myself. This post is about How to Train your Dragon.

Astrid Hofferson can't sew. There's no way. Girl spent her whole life training to be a warrior, she has not had the time or patience to sit down and learn to sew (even though it involves a whole lot of stabbing things with a sharp object). I mean even her own clothes are made with minimal amounts of sewing (a needlebound tank top and some furs wrapped around her arms instead of sleeves).

Hiccup Haddock Horrendus III, on the other hand, knows how to sew. Sure he mostly works with metal and leather, but leatherwork requires sewing. I'm pretty sure I can find actual footage of him using a needle. Also his clothes are nicely sewn, and since he grew up without a mum, and his dad is a very busy man, he must have made at least parts of his outfit himself.

So my question is: how did they ever get engaged. How did that proposal go? Did Astrid suffer through learning a new skill so she could spend months of her life painstakingly stitching together the Worst Shirt Ever Made? I imagine her rage quitting after she has to undo that one seam for a fourth time, and in true Astrid fashion, just chucking it at Hiccup with full force when he walks into the room.

or! would Hiccup defy Viking Gender Norms because he gets that Astrid has no interest in sewing? and then he gets it into his head that it has to be the most elaborate shirt on the whole island cause it's for his girlfriend and he can't even remember ever seeing her in a nice shirt before? and that's a shame cause she deserves to have nice things! And he overthinks every choice along the way because what if she hates it???? But ofc it turns out really nice and she adores it.

To simply enjoy warm summer days. Enjoying the shimmering of the sun on a lake. Laying in the moss. The smell of blueberries in afternoon shade.

Pulling on a warm sweater at the campfire when the night finally cools down. Millions of stars above. The rustling of an owl.

Just be, just exist. Romance with myself. Magic in books and warmth all around.

Motherfucking peace and magic. Someday I'll find my way back to it

I want motherfucking magic in life. I want romance. I want peace. I want beauty and softness. I want love and warmth.

From Stardust to Stardust

Smilodon

Was thinking of that Homotherium latidens cub they found recently...;-;

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