How exciting it is to report that 1000 people put in their names for “Death of a Dyer”. Goodreads selected the winners and the books have all gone out. Happy Reading.
Tag Archives: writers
Iceland
Iceland is a beautiful country. Very dramatic with steep mountains, volcanoes and then lakes and streams with waterfalls.
Iceland is a geothermal country and is growing – slowly. Volcanoes are a big part of the landscape. We saw the volcano that erupted in 2010 (I can neither pronounce nor spell the name) and stopped air traffic over Europe. The lava formations do indeed look like trolls, which are huge in the mythology.
The scale of the image does not show how enormous this outcropping is.
Because of the this activity, all the energy is geothermal. And signs of the geothermal activity are everywhere.
This one is at geysir – yes, folks, geyser is an Icelandic name. Another feature is the boiling water and mud that one can see everywhere
Iceland was very green, with snow on the higher peaks. But it is too cold to grow many things so most of the produce – that is not imported – is grown in greenhouses. Here, even a degree or two can make a huge difference.
We bought more sweaters.
One interesting feature: the livestock. Almost feral horses that are thickly covered with hair. Cattle that are a very old breed (Iceland has strict laws on importing livestock since they want to keep their breeds pure). The cattle look very different from our modern cows. They are horned with long pointed horns, for one thing, and instead of a barrel shape their bodies hang from their prominent hips as though the flesh was on a coat hanger.
And there are more sheep than people: sheep everywhere.
I loved Iceland but I don’t think I could take the cold climate. And, in the north, we had almost 24 hours of day. I cannot imagine coping with 24 hours of night.
Talks
During these past few weeks, since I’ve gotten home from Scandinavia, I have had a number of talks at various places. This past Monday night, I spoke at the Woods Hole Library in Cape Cog. As usual, I enjoyed myself greatly and had a lot of wonderful questions.
Next up: the Wilkes Barre Library in Pa.
Norway 2
One of my favorite parts of this trips was seeing an Iron Age farm. Man, times were hard. The people lived in longhouses with sod roofs.
Peopel lived in the south, animals in the north, so the heat from the animals came down, Also the smells and other less nice things. I’ve read about the custom of keeping the animals in the house. Diseases that began in animals then jumped to humans.
But I digress.
I was very interested in the loom. The weaving was done top to bottom. The warp threads at the bottom were hung with weights. Weaving, which for me is a fairly quiet operation, must have been noisy.
One of the things I found interesting was the green tape and the interpreter’s green shirt. I knew from my research for “Death of a Dyer” that there was no green dye in Europe. In Peru they used some plant but that had not been discovered in Europe. But they did have yellow, blue (indigo) and red (madder).
So, where did they get green? Here is a better shot of the green tape.
I asked the interpreter and he referred me to the Archaelogy Department. Answer: they over dyed, beginning with yellow and then blue.
For pictures of the dress and shoes I refer you to the blog by ArchaeoFox.
Norway
After Copenhagen, a city I loved, we went to Norway. We stopped at several cities: Oslo. Kristinsand and Stavanger. Another wonderful country.
One of the things we saw in Oslo was a stave church. Only a few of these remain.
The pointed roofs are absolutely characteristic but of course they have tons of snow. This stave church was on the way to an Olympic style ski jump. I would never do it; just looking down at the run up made me queasy. It was about half an hour out of Oslo – the Norwegians love their sking. As we saw in Copenhagen, there are lots of buildings hundreds of years old – like this stave church.
All the buildings here are very very old and are still in use, mostly. The inhabitants can do anything they like inside but the outside has to remain as it was. This was a medieval bakers. He went out of business several hundred years ago but the pretzel still remains.
As one would expect, Vikings are very important to Norway’s history. This is NOT a reproduction; it is a ship, one of three, pulled out of a bog. From the 800s. Yipes! Hard to believe anyone sailed in these little tiny things – and crossed the Atlantic besides and made a colony in North America.
But how did people live?
This shack housed about 15 people with their animals. There was no chimney, just a hole in the sod roof which had to be closed during bad weather. Infant mortality was 50%.
The good old days were terrible!
Death in Salem books
I am thrilled to announce that I have received my first copies of Death in Salem and they look stunning. Here is the cover:
The books look even better in real life. I will probably be having another Goodreads giveaway later in the summer.
To summarize the plot: Will Rees is on a weaving trip and stops in Salem to buy some imported cloth for Lydia. He gets stopped by a funeral and sees an old friend at the head. Anstiss Boothe, the deceased, has been ill a long time but the very next day her husband Jacob. a wealthy Salem merchant, is dead and this time it is clearly murder. Rees has already left Salem but his friend rides after him and draws him back to investigate.
Smuggling, piracy, prostitution, and of course all the dynamics of interpersonal relationships keep Rees investigating.
I had a lot of fun roaming Salem when I researched this book.
Shrink Wrap
If I may vent a moment about shrink wrap. It now seems to be used for everything and a more non-user friendly device was never invented.
Although I stream music to my phone all the time, I listen to CDs in the car. (I drive a very old car. Besides a CD player it has a tape deck – no kidding!) So I tried to listen to the new CD of Fallout Boys. I couldn’t get the plastic off! With Arctic Monkeys, I managed to get my nail in the plastic and peel it off. The cardboard case opened like a book and the CD was in one sleeve. But Fallout Boys I had to take the package inside the house, slit the plastic with a knife and then cut those little sticky things that hold the OTHER case closed.
Really? (she said snarkily.)
Now lets talk about the plants that come swathed in shrink wrap. As most people who know me, and I count the readers of this blog in that number, know, I am a pretty passionate gardener. Why do they come in shrink wrap instead of straw or something like that? There is nothing more frustrating than getting out to a section of the yard and discovering the plant cannot be put into the ground because it is tightly covered with shrink wrap. I have sometimes been reduced to trying to cut the shrink wrap with my teeth. (Not a good plan, by the way.) I now have set up a little tote bag with scissors and gloves. I try never to forget the bag and now I am thinking of adding secaturs – which are like stronger scissors.
I guess the next step is a belt like the medieval housewives used to wear with keys, scissors and everything else they might need.
Musings on car colors
My husband and I took a trip over the weekend to visit a friend (a friend that I have had for forty years!). When we drove down 95 I noticed that it was a sea of black, white and silver cars. There were a few burgundy SUVs but from a distance, just like the dark blue and dark green, they looked black. I love seeing the bright red cars. mostly Pickups, that look like bright red tomatoes riding down the road.
Finally, on 85 South, I saw a robin’s egg blue VW beetle and a copper colored KIA.
Where are the rest of the colors? My first car was a Chevy Malibu. It was a beautiful creamy yellow. (In 1973. Can you believe it?) If you go further back, to the time of the movie American Graffiti, the cars were all kinds of colors: Pink, light blue, yellow. I’d like to see royal blue and emerald green, bright red like the pickups, and taxicab yellow
I say, stand up for colorful cars!
Gardening – and insects
I spent a lot of time this past weekend working in the garden: putting in string beans as well as taking out a lot of the winter-killed plants. (Yes, out of 12 roses, I have only 4 left.) The vegetable garden in enclosed by a fence, and most of the larger yard is fenced to keep out the deer. I coated my gardening pants with off (Deet variety) but I still got bitten by mosquitoes and black flies. Welts all over my ears and neck. But my husband, who was mowing in the front, and unfenced yard, got a tick. And the dog and my grandson (who spends hours running around the yard ‘with the doggy’) both got ticks.
It is the season. Be careful out there.
Malice domestic 27
I spent last weekend in Maryland at Malice Domestic. This was my first Malice and I had a great time. I had planned to take lots of pictures but got caught up in the activity and only took two, of a fairly early panel.
At least this one was with Sara Paretsky.
I always find listening to other authors interesting as I discover how similar our experiences are.
I always go home with bags of books.