On "The Emerald Circus": A Book Review

Title: The Emerald Circus
Author: Jane Yolen
Genre: Fiction, Short Story, Fantasy

About the book...
A collection of 16 of Jane Yolen's short stories with fairy tale, folklore, and fantasy based poetry themes, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Arthurian legends, encompassing stories first published in the 1980's up until present day. These stories also range in the age group they were written for with some being aimed at a younger audience and others at an adult audience.

What I think...
I want to like Yolen's stories, I really do, but despite how much I love her non-fiction book Touch Magic, enjoy watching/listening to videos of her talking about writing, and, in general, tend to agree with her views on writing and fairy tales, her fiction books (picture books excluded) just don't appeal to me as much in comparison to other writers.  Out of all the stories I only ended up liking "Andersen's Witch" and "A Knot of Toads". In the first one, Yolen takes the idea of Andersen struck a deal with the Snow Queen to be a famous writer, which I thought was a really cool idea (no pun intended). The other story, while slightly predicable in some ways had a nice build of suspense and made me think of M.R. James type stories (I don't have the book anymore, but she may have mentioned him as inspiration, though I read something else recently that made a comparison to him, so I could be wrong).

Given my feelings about her non-fiction works and her viewpoints on fairy tales and writing, it should come as no surprise that the other thing I really enjoyed about this book was that the end there was a "Story Notes and Poems" section that was very reminiscent of older fairy tale books, like those of Joseph Jacobs, that had a section that gave background for each of the tales included. While I didn't always care for the story, reading what inspired Yolen to write them and why she chose to go the direction she did with them, as well as finding out where they were originally published added an extra layer of depth to the stories.         

To sum it all up...
Not something that I would re-read, but if you're interested in re-tellings of classic tales or folklore it's worth at least looking into. ♥️ 

On Finishing Up New Curtains!

With only a brief period of free time remaining at the end of my summer I was excited to get to work on several clothing items I started making over the past few years, but never got around to finishing for various reasons. Instead I managed to get a cold, which curtailed my plans for a weekend fully devoted to sewing.

However, among the unfinished dresses, the bolero, and the vest/skirt set, I also had curtains, which I started two years ago and in my stuffy nosed state was the only thing in the unfinished bag that didn't require much effort, nor would a minor mistake lead to a complete disaster.

Now you might wonder why so simple an item has taken me so long to finish. In part it's because the print fabric I chose was too thin alone and rather see-through (defeating the purpose of having the curtains), so I needed to back it with something which then turned into the idea of having the thin top layer pull back from the bottom layer using ribbon, as well as trying to figure out how I wanted the top part the curtain rod slipped through to look. I just wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to do either. 

The other reason is that I really, truly, hate the process of hemming things. While I had the selvages and the bottom edge hemmed on the printed fabric from when I started the project that was where I decided I had had enough hemming, leaving the purple under layer unhemmed.

Moving back to this past weekend, I managed to get everything hemmed, decided on having the back layer come down over the top to create the casing, and created button holes to slip the side tying ribbon giving me the option to pull either both layers of curtains back or to pull back just the top layer! Now I have lovely new curtains that produce a marvelous purple glow and that I'm quite happy with!

Inside the curtain!

Outside the curtain! (Pulled forward for your viewing pleasure and because standing on the 60's children's rocking chair to take the photo did not seem intelligent.

Yes, I know it's dark! Just wanted to show what it looks like closed and no matter what time I took the picture or if the light was on there was some issue with the photo.

 ♥️♥️♥️