Weekend's almost over

Heh. One of the women at church, who also teaches but in a different department, remarked, "So, are you ready for a three-day week this week?"

Oh, am I ever. (We get Independence Day off. And even better, that would have been my excruciatingly-long lab day....)

***

The quilt show was small but nice. Venue was not the best (not well enough lit, and in place of air conditioning, there was a giant industrial fan, like the kinds they use to dry houses out after they flood). There was one hexagon quilt, which gives me inspiration to keep going on my hexie quilt - finished, it was pretty impressive. (The tag said "machine/machine," meaning it was machine pieced and quilted, but it sure looked hand-done to me, and it's awfully easier, IMHO, to hand-piece those odd angles like hexagons have (60 degree angles, to be precise).

Not many vendors - the local quilt shop had a booth, and another quilt shop up in Allen, I think it is? And a dealer of vintage sewing machines (all Singers - and yes, they had a couple of the coveted Featherweights, and yes, they were priced accordingly). They also had one that was much like an older Singer my mom has, that was originally my paternal grandmother's. (My mom owns three machines- the Kenmore she uses for most stuff, the electric Singer from Grandma C's that she uses mainly for things like machine quilting, and then her mother's treadle, which she doesn't use. (it needs a new drive-belt). And yes, I've told her many times that when she is ready to dispose of the treadle machine I want it - I am going to refurbish it and use it.)

***

I did go antiquing but it was really hot, so I didn't stay long. I bought a few old books (at 2 and 3 dollars, they are worth the price, especially if it's something you suspect is out of print). I am not a book-collector in the traditional sense, who reveres first-editions and scorns anything that says "Book Club Edition" on it -  I mainly want books to read, and it seems that there's a lot of fiction out there that's almost unknown today. The books I bought were:

"The Sterile Cuckoo" (I saw the movie of this ages ago on TCM. I think I looked at the book in the very story I bought it from once before and put it back, thinking, "I might find this depressing," but this time I bought it).

"The Bishop's Mantle" - I don't know much about this one, apparently it is a story of a young Episcopalian priest adjusting to his life in the priory and dealing with family issues.

"The Far Country" - probably the best known of all of these (It's by Neville Shute). Set in Australia after the Second World War.

"Splint Road" - a "picturesque" story of people who are shingle-makers in rural Louisiana. It's partly written in dialect, which normally annoys me, but the story seemed interesting enough and it's about a time and place that I know little of.

I didn't start reading any of these right away. Instead, I pulled down a book bought under similar circumstances that I never really started on - The Unsuitable Englishman. (This is the book I bought in McKinney, which apparently was originally bought, years ago, from a British ex-pat bookstore in Baghdad...) It's a fairly fascinating story and there's a lot more political commentary to it than I thought it would have, and it suggests some of the roots of the "hatred of the West" might include the way the (predominantly British) oil companies treated the natives....And anyway, the upper-echelon Brits don't come off very well, by and large, in the book (The women - wives of diplomats and oil-company execs, are largely shallow and bigoted and addicted to gossip). The "unsuitable Englishman" of the title is a young man who has come to "Media" (a fictional country, but it could be pre-Gadafi Libya) because he can't stand Britain and wants to learn about the culture...he falls in with a native taxi-driver who is helping him to find work. (I will say this story may yet "break bad" - the young man is in love with a "showgirl" (and high-class call girl) who is the girlfriend of his employer*). I get the feeling that the person who wrote the book had lived in the Middle East; some of the things he talks about fit in with the stories of some of my dad's colleagues who had been oil-company employees before they become geology professors....

(*And yes, there is a strange, almost bipolar treatment of women in Media. Wives, daughters, and sisters are by and large guarded carefully....they live in seclusion in the back of the house, if they go out it is only heavily veiled and with a chaperone, and for a man outside the family to enquire after a man's sister's health is tantamount to a massive insult to her....and yet, there are districts where many women live together and work essentially as prostitutes - there are the "cheaper" sort for workingmen, and a "higher class" set for richer men and also foreigners. To have anything of what we would call "freedom" as a woman, you would have to be a high-class prostitute, like Kareema is.

I'll just observe that I'm glad I live in the US, and leave it at that.)

***

I also finally got around to watching "Sense and Sensibility" (and knit more on Hitchhiker while watching). I liked it; I thought Mrs. Jennings was particularly well-cast (and what a fun role that would be to play! A bit gossipy and vulgar and busybodyish, but at the same, good-hearted and with more humor in her than most women of the era).  I also liked Hugh Laurie taking a turn as the sour-tempered Mr. Palmer.

The screenwriter eliminated the Middletons and the second Miss Steele (Miss Lucy Steele being essential to the plot, she was left in). Margaret got a larger role than she had in the book and was portrayed as a sort of spirited proto-tomboy who wanted to lead expeditions and such. I have no idea if that would be in keeping with the times (surely there were high-spirited outdoorsish girls, even in the early 1800s?) but I think it added a lot to the movie.

There were a number of lines or scenes that made me laugh, but then again, there were quite a few things in the novel that made me laugh. I know Jane Austen's humor leaves some people cold but I like it. 

I will say, I'd pick Colonel Brandon over Edward Ferrars. (And MOST DEFINITELY over Willoughby). Part of that is probably Alan Rickman vs. Hugh Grant (for some reason, I've never particularly *liked* Grant, whereas I could happily listen to Rickman read the phone book) but also, Brandon seems a more interesting figure. And of course, given the age I am now, he'd be more appropriate for me... Also, Alan Rickman looks quite well in the military uniform he wore at the end, for the wedding scene....

But I will observe: I'm glad I live in the 21st century, where being a "spinster" is not the condemnation to poverty that it usually was in the 19th. As nice as it would be to find my "Colonel Brandon," it's also nice to know I don't HAVE to.