(no subject)

[pensnest]

Saw this on, uh, someone's journal and thought, why not?

The problem with LJ/DW: We all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So, I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ/DW and find out what people don't know about you.

Comments

[laughingrat]

I never know what to ask for these! *flails*

Uh. You knit, right? How long have you been knitting?

[pensnest]

I do, indeed. And now that I think about it, I must have attempted my first garment (and failed, dismally) about twenty-four years ago... For some reason my father was inspired to give me Kaffe Fassett's "Glorious Needlepoint", which I thought very beautiful. He subsequently gave me 'Glorious Knitting', which was full of tempting garments that looked as though they might be possible. Anyway, I tried and failed, but my grandma showed me how to weave in a second colour behind the first, and I tried again.

I made a sweater for my small daughter, and then another one because, of course, with Kaffe Fassett knitting you end up with a lot of spare yarn. Then I made one for myself, the tumbling blocks pattern in greens, blues and yellows, which was technically a mess but nonetheless very striking! It has, just this year, finally gone to its rest as a cat blankie.

Then I was well and truly launched, so I suppose I must have knitted a bunch of stuff during the 1990s—at least half the designs in 'Glorious Knitting' and the occasional one where I worked out the colour pattern for myself. It has come and gone, as a pastime/present creation method, and I'm back in the mood for it now, particularly since I joined a local Stitch & Bitch group and have learned some new ideas. I am at this moment wearing my first ever pair of socks! (I had made one sock before, as part of a hat. Hmm.) There are so many gorgeous yarns... and I'm such a slow knitter, alas. But I have stockpiled a few scarves for Christmas, and am hoping to complete more socks as well as Bun's jacket.

And then, I think I'll try and make myself a couple of seamless garments. I hate sewing the stuff together.

[kira-j.livejournal.com]

i'd love to know more about your tattoo! it's pretty. what was the inspiration behind it?

[pensnest]

:-) I just... wanted to have a tattoo, I think. And I decided that if I was going to have one, it was going to be unique, so I designed it myself, somewhat Celtic knotwork-ish, somewhat elvish, somewhat flame-ish. It actually has a name in it - it says 'pen' somewhere in there. I've contemplated expanding it a bit and including Bun, Boy and Beast, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy having my foot inked.

[frausorge]

Do you speak any other languages besides English?

[pensnest]

Well, in theory I speak French and German. I actually did my degree in Modern and Medieval Languages. However, that mostly meant Literature (we actually, if I remember rightly, did the oral exam pretty much at the beginning of the course, and after that it didn't matter if we could speak the languages or not!).

I have an English throat, of course, so I don't have a very plausible French accent. When we went to Paris I made my Beast do all the talking—his mother was Belgian, you see, so he was brought up to French and although he had in those days less vocabulary than I did, he had a French throat.

I did (possibly still do) have a rather nice Hanoverian accent, as I had a couple of exchange visits with a German penfriend near Celle. German works just fine with an English throat! But as I've only used it for an occasional sentence in the last twenty-five years, and I've forgotten all my German vocabulary (except Der Hampelmann), I don't think I can claim to speak those languages any more.

[frausorge]

Still I think it helps to have looked at things from the perspective of another language, even if you're no longer as fluent. Very cool!

[bettina]

How did you get into fandom?
How did you get into writing?

[pensnest]

I sidled into fandom via Star Trek in the early 1990s. Got addicted to TNG, started buying the official magazines (sneaking out of newsagents with my brown paper bags), and found an ad for the IDIC newsletter, which was produced by fans and was a delight, several times a year. From there, found fanfic... I think we essentially got ourselves online so that I could Haz Moar Trek. Went to a few cons, submitted stories to a few zines, posted stories to alt.startrek.creative, published a one-off Data-based zine of my own, and for a few years ran a twice-yearly zine review newsletter called An Idiosyncratic Review.

I had a barren period from 2000, when I gave up on Trek fandom, to 2005, and it made me sad. I watched and loved 'Buffy' and 'Angel', but never felt I could write in those fandoms, and never quite felt like a part of the fandoms either. It was rather sad, because I like *fandom*, which is awesome for all kinds of reasons, and it felt quite lonely not having an actual fandom to participate in.

As a long-term consequence of AIR, which used to carry ads for it, I went to a convention in Feb 2005 and met nopseud. She inveigled me into giving her my email address, and sent me popslash recs, whereupon I was lost converted for ever!


As for writing, well. Hmm. I've always had stories in my head, but for most of my life have been far too lazy to write them down—though I'm sure I told my sister a bedtime story for *ages* when we weren't very old, and I know I wrote an epic, multi-generational, unashamedly angsty fantasy story, longhand, which sadly I threw away when I re-read it at the sophisticated age of sixteen.

I've always been fluent with written words, probably as a consequence of spending my entire childhood with my head in a book. I actually completed a couple of romances when the children were smallish, and sent them off to Mills & Boon, but didn't know enough (read 'anything') about publishing to use the rejection letters as a blueprint for rewriting them to pattern, so I've never been published. There was a Heyer-derived Regency one as well, which I never bothered to send out. Somewhere in this house are microdrives with my books on them, which dates them well back in the 1980s. Possibly written pre-children, then... we got the Sinclair QL in 1983.

As for fanfic, I think I knew about the concept before I sent off for my first fic zine, but reading my first ST:TNG story made me realise that other people also made up stuff about these characters, and if I wrote mine down, other people would *read* them, and that would be awesome! So I wrote a bunch, sadly, not long before the internet obliterated most (all?) of the TNG zines which might have used them. I think there were two or three which were accepted but never saw print, until I put them into my own zine. Finding popslash fandom on LiveJournal was *fantastic* for me, it gave me something to write *and* people who wanted to read it, and so much joy.

[bettina]

I think we essentially got ourselves online so that I could Haz Moar Trek.

Hehe, me too. I got it so that I didn't have to go to the expensive Internet cafe any longer. It was great. Sometimes I miss those old modem sounds. *g*

I got into fandom via Star Trek as well! :D