The Bluestocking Women’s Pub: definitely full of ludicrous halfwits who refuse to get a grip (with unionised gerbils)

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking: convivial by design, opinionated in the best way, generously stocked with excellent food and drink that complies with whatever it’s meant to comply with, and any calories, gluten or alcohol are entirely virtual.

Staffed by impeccably trained, unfailingly polite gerbils who run a tight bar with plenty of enthusiasm and good intentions. Quick with the drinks, but terrible spillers spellers and liable to turn an idle thought on existential existence into a full blown musical with Busby Berkeley routines. You have been warned.

All women welcome, just in case that isn't obvious. Men can go to The Staunch Ally round the corner.

Previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5477133-the-bluestocking-your-local-womens-pub-warm-friendly-and-not-at-all-unusual-in-any-way

An interesting side-effect of the St Brigid moment is female scholars on XTwitter not all of them medievalists, nearly or totally melting down as they try to point out that there is lots of evidence of Brigid the woman, virtually none for a goddess, and that a 6th century woman (born, according to legend, to a slave mother and a king father) having power and agency and education, and founding a monastery that survived for more than half a millennium (until a man who wanted to seize the land raped the then-abbess, thus annualizing her chastity) is a huge deal.

So many men who can't cope with a real woman.

Though someone on the medieval Irish history podcast a year or so back made the interesting observation that the goddess thing seemed to have been promoted by Maud Gonne who wanted a female power figure who was not associated with Catholicism, which makes a certain amount of sense in a late-nineteenth century Gaelic revival setting.

But oh dear, how the Belfield generation of men, each and every one of whom burned down the British embassy, love an opportunity to pretend medieval Ireland wasn't Christian. And that living human women aren't worth paying attention to.

@WearyAuldWumman wrote:

“@AsWithGlad I'm interested that you only recently got your diagnosis.”

It’s not me who’s diagnosed with that, sorry. Your post is most interesting, though.

For reasons I occasionally do the 50-questions online autism screener, although I don’t know how respected it is. A score of 25+ indicates a likely diagnosis of autism. I’ve only ever score 6, 7 or 8. Others in my family are diagnosed or score well above 25, though.

Hands a bit shaky because I was chucking rocks about earlier, but a last look at the elephant, camel, hedgehogs, kings et al until next year

Whoops! Trust me to muck up…

Have made it to the farm shop café without the bottom dropping off.

It’s all good @WearyAuldWumman . I only mention the not-ADHDness in case a fellow Bluestocking person sees it and makes a mental note to include me in that group.

Interesting posts about you losing your Russian, it coming back, and Stalin speaking in your dream with a Georgian accent.

edit: I’m glad your car bottom is OK.

Sorry to hear about your beetroot, @SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius . According to Good Housekeeping beetroot stains are water soluble if you act quickly. However all the effort needed to wash a ball of wool (skeining it first) probably isn’t worth it if, as you say, the yarn isn’t expensive.

Hurray!
that fell looks familiar - I lose track of who is whereabouts (if they’ve said) so I may be way off.

@MyrtleLion , in my opinion either side of your knitting is lovely. As long as when you pick up for the front you do the same it should look good either way round.

Part of the joy of the finished cardigan is the way the ridges go in different directions. A raised section where you’ve pick up stitches would just enhance that.

Have you seen the Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket? It’s surprisingly easy to knit as long as you are happy to follow the instructions closely. Definitely within your skill set. I have the instructions in a book which I’d be happy to donate to The Bluestocking library if you’d like it.

edited with a better

The better link keeps disappearing.

Here it is in full and not magic linked.
www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/baby-surprise-jacket

If I could knit, I'd knit with beetroot- stained wool and call it " made with original artisinally, organically, free-form dyed wool".

People do similar, Fuzzy. Beetroot, lichens, woads…

One of my favourite methods is solar dyeing, perhaps because it’s a very lazy method. You put yarn or fabric plus water and onion skins in a Kilner jar, and leave it in a sunny window for 3 months. The results can be quite pretty.

Now, when I’m typing something on the t’tinternet using my tablet, autocomplete often autocorrects blue to Bluestocking.

Ah now Deano, I have to stick up for Brigid the 'Goddess' - I don't like the word 'god' or 'goddess' in the Celtic context because they weren't up-in-the-air gods bossing humans around, they were more like the spirit of a place, or of an art, or of a trade.

Brigid was one of three sister 'goddesses' , she was goddess of poetry and wisdom- her sisters were of medicine, and of metalwork and smithying.

She was 'the goddess whom poets adore, because very great and very famous was her protecting care'

That's a quote from 'Cormac's Glossary' which was written in the 9th century, long before Maude Gonne or the Departments of Medieval Studies

It’s Scotlandwell. The farm shop looks onto the Lomond hills.

I’m in Fife, but the farm is on the edge of Kinross-shire.

There is a most beautiful full moon for Imbolc.
I hope it's visible where you are.

That was one of the patterns I looked at for the baby cardy I did recently.

And @MarieDeGournay no full moon here tonight - very cloudy, I got rained on when I took B&B on their afternoon walk.

Ah, I’m a long way out.
if I had my brain engaged I’d have taken note of your name…😂

To be fair, there are plenty of Weary Auld Fifers who have left the area!

Yes, but the trouble with Cormac is that he was trying to fit an unrecorded Irish past into a world comparable with the classical and biblical literature. Was he right, was he wrong? No way to tell. Probably a bit of both.

But the woman Brigid existed independently of any Iron age mythological figure, and had her own legends and wonder stories. The goddess narrative is often used to swamp her and diminish her importance, and the importance of her monastery (which was considerable), and the traditions and lore associated with her.

I remember seeing a TV drama about Stalin many years ago (1980s?) where they had a good way of dealing with that. The ethnic Russians had various English accents while Stalin and Beria had Irish accents. It was quite funny, in a very dark way.

Onion- flavoured scented wool?

I visited the Crannog Centre at Loch Tay last year and was fascinated by the various natural pigments used to dye wool. As well as the usual madder root (red) woad (greeny blue) and nettle (green), they used tree bark and leaves, nuts and berries. If the photograph is accepted it shows a range of the colours that can be achieved. The lives of the ancients were clearly a lot more colourful than we might imagine.

Incidentally, the staff there also dispelled the myth that the ancients painted themselves blue with woad, since it is caustic to skin and would have caused severe burns and scarring. Apparently that idea came from a misinterpretation of a quote from Julius Caesar and while tattoos were common in ancient Britain, they were not dyed blue!

Pissing down here, alas.

I don’t know. Mine didn’t/wasn’t, but it was just a small skein.

3 months may have been longer than necessary.