On "The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall": A Book Review

Title: The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall
Author: Ali Standish
Genre: Children's mystery/adventure 

About the book...
It's 1868 and school aged Arthur Doyle is living a life of poverty with his family. After facilitating the rescue of a baby with his quick thinking, he gets a mysterious invitation to attend the private school Baskerville Hall where he quickly gets pulled into an unexpected world involving much more adventure than he would have ever anticipated.

What I think...
I've only read a small handful of Sherlock Holmes stories, but didn't feel like I was missing anything and I thought this was perfect for introducing children to the realm of Doyle's writing.  

Standish does not write down to children or try to over explain things, which is a big factor in my liking a children's book.

This had a number of satisfying twists and turns that moved the plot along nicely and kept things interesting without being too predictable. The characters were entertaining, including a young Jimmy Moriarty and an Irene Eagle, as well as Mrs. Hudson and John Watson. Being a fan of Doyle's The Lost World, I was happy Challenger was included as a character as well and that a baby dinosaur ends up featuring in the story.

I should also mention the author got support and praise from the Conan Doyle estate! 

To sum it all up...
After reading this, I couldn't wait to read the second book, which is not something I say too often about children's chapter books anymore and am still hoping that eventually there will be tv adaption (it's been a long while).♥

On a Little Bit of Carroll Fun!

Still here...just can't manage to get all the posts I've started writing up in a timely manner and I was determined to get this one up before the year ends!

In October, I had the pleasure of going to the opening of an exhibit on spectral science and technology and a magic lantern show. 

This required the making of a coat, of course. A fellow Carrollian brought this marvelous Mad Masquerade by Riley Blake fabric, which is made up of advertising cards with illustrations from Carroll's Alice books, to my attention quite some time ago, but I'd been putting off using it because it's such a busy print and I wanted something that would do it justice. I ended up deciding that my revised pattern version of McCall's 9130, would do very nicely. 

Aside from choosing to cut it out during a heatwave and not really clearing enough space to do so in a convenient manner resulting in very sore muscles for several days, this coat came together without too many issues. As an added note, unlike last time I made it, this time I happily remembered to include facings and the front seam allowance.

Normally I would spend a significant amount of time searching for the perfect buttons. Nothing I looked at seemed quite right for this coat, though, and then I couldn't decide between what I did have. As a result, there are two round metal buttons, two grey rose buttons, and two cream colored rose buttons, which I find perfect considering the theme.

A wide width ribbon tied in a bow finished off the outfit! 

As for the exhibit, the big highlight for me was seeing a distorting mirror that belonged to Lewis Carroll! As you can see, I was upside-down with delight over it! 

Other fun things included a board of Houdini's keys used by his wife in attempts to contact him after he died (part of continued efforts to expose frauds, which became a large part of Houdini's later life), a variety of magic books and tricks, and several magic lantern projectors. 

 

As someone who doesn't go out and about often, it was a delightful event to attend! 

❤ ❤ ❤

On Two Little 1920's Elephants!

Hi, happy new year a quarter of the year in, clearly things are not off to a racing start on here...

Ages and ages ago, I came across an image of a pattern for an elephant from the September 1921 issue of Allers Familie Journal on Pinterest and it went in a folder for later use. Time went by and after quite a bit searching I manged to hunt down a digital copy of the magazine on the PLU Archives and find the remaining pages I needed for his clothes.

And then I forgot about it, which was followed by remembering it a considerable time latter and finally printing the pieces out. The project then was put off for ages while I tried to find the right fabric both in terms of color and texture. 

Found the right fabric about a year and a half ago and ended up buying it in two shades, and then once again it was put off. Recently I decided it was time to tackle this project (with motivation coming from possibly needing some gray for another project). With continued indecision over which of the two color gray fabrics I was using, the solution became that I would be making two elephants because, why not also make a girl elephant? 

I did end up translating the original instructions from Swedish more just to see if they did anything fun construction-wise, but then it became a mission to get it all translated resulting in over four hours of "fun".

And...after three months (no, it should not have taken more than a weekend), I had Imogene and Walter.

 

With Walter I used the pattern from the magazine for his clothes, although I'm not entirely sure they were the right size for him since I resized the page from the magazines and originally for the body I was working with a screenshot image. Imogene, being my own idea, I used the pattern for Walter's shirt, extending it and leaving off the sleeves, and adding a bias tape belt. I keep wondering if she might need a sequin brooch eventually. 

 

 

♥ ♥ ♥

On Reindeer Bells

I'm a little late in starting in on my Christmas crafting this year. This past week I got to work on remedying this and to justify last year's on sale purchase of a pack of 72 bells, made reindeer. 

In case you are wondering, the one is yellow because I was out of brown pipe cleaners and was eager to see if my idea of using bells for the body would work. 

While I was intending for them to be ornaments, I may just be happy with letting them stand about on their own.♥