Coolest DS Assignment Evah!

[dawn_felagund]

I was just scrolling through the DS assignment list, looking for something dull and easy to write about fruit trees or native plants or powdery mildew or any of the other garden-variety topics that are my bread and butter on DS, and I found the. best. DS. topic. evah.

Comments

[nelyo_russandol]

Are you going to do the assignment in theory or will we see a picture of the end result? Don't forget to buy the bright-coloured paint for the round door! :o)

[dawn_felagund]

Lol! Now I won't! :D I'll post a link to the article when it's done, but it's likely to be disappointing to most Tolkien fans. We're limited to 400 to 500 words, so I'm going to aim more for how to make an existing house Hobbitish. I need to do some research to see if I can find any good instructions on how to hang a round door ...

[nelyo_russandol]

You must have seen this already... http://www.simondale.net/house/. To me, this is more hobbity than PJ's version!

[dawn_felagund]

Wow, that's gorgeous! I would totally live there. I wish I had skills in building, to build one for myself.

[nelyo_russandol]

Amazing, isn't it! There is a picture of the structure of the ceiling seen from underneath, it is beautiful, it looks like a spiral.

I laughed at the description of their life during the building, with mum looking for toilets in cafes, and children rolling in mud and slug slime, while dad worked, worked, and worked... I don't know if I would have survived that long without a bathroom and electricity.

[pandemonium_213]

Very charming, but when I look at that, my arachnophobia, which is largely limited to wolf spiders, kicks in big time. I imagine the species of that eight-legged clan scuttling around all over those rustic beams. *shudders* And yes, I know any given house attracts spiders (which is a good thing, I guess, since they keep bug populations down), but based on my experience with my childhood treehouse and playhouse, wolf spiders seem to love such places, which I would imagine includes hobbit holes. :^D

[dawn_felagund]

Indeed! Although I like spiders a lot (I just discovered a cute tiny one building a web in the lemon verbana overwintering in my study :D), wolf spiders definitely fall into the category of species that I'd rather enjoy outdoors, from afar. (Anything that produces a large orb web is the same, with the added caveat of "outdoors, afar, and off the hiking trail!") We were getting enormous spiders in the house last fall (no wolfies, that I know of), but that problem seems to have ceased when we replaced our storm door with something that actually closes all the way. While still living with his parents, Bobby had a bad incident with an invasion of fishing spiders--very similar to wolfies--in his basement bedroom that neither of us care to repeat!

[nelyo_russandol]

I think my reluctance to move into a hobbit comes from two three other key factors.
1. Electricity? What's that?
2. Bathroom, what bathroom? (Did we ever get any Toilkien wisdom about the need for sanitation in smials, or is this one of those obscure topics like agriculture and forestry?)
3. You may not like spiders, but I freak out if I find a slug has squeezed under my kitchen door from the garden *even more shudders*. Once I found a 10cm long specimen on the ceiling and I almost had a fit. Give me Shelob any day of the week!

So I will admire the pictures, praise their laudable eco-spirit and stay put! :o)

EDIT - I am so terrified at the thought of a slug invasion that I can't even count.

[dawn_felagund]

EDIT - I am so terrified at the thought of a slug invasion that I can't even count.

LMAO! We had a minor slug invasion in the basement laundry room this summer. (I know, first with giant spiders and now with slugs, I make our basement sound so charming, don't I? We get mice too.) There weren't a lot, but they were big--about 8 cm. They don't bother me except for the fact that it's a short walk in the laundry room to the pull string for the light, and I dreaded stepping on one, so I'd sort of shuffle in while groping ahead of me for the string so I'd have to walk as little distance as possible.

My husband's students used to bother him constantly for a "slug" (dollar) to buy a snack or drink, and he teased that he'd take one of our monster slugs into school and give them that instead. Repeated refusals of "slugs" seems to have cured them with no harm to gastropods. :^P

Anyway. I would not want to go entirely without electricity and indoor plumbing, having done both before for a week or more (it's charming at first but that wears off

[nelyo_russandol]

Do you think solar panels on the roof would ruin the atmosphere much?
Don't know much about how they are manufactured, but once they are there I can't see what the harm is.

I refuse to believe that the Noldor were crapping in chamberpots! :D That's one point of my Felakverse that I expected to be challenged that never was, as far as I know.
I subscribe to that point of your Felaverse. It may be cute to think of wood-elves living in communion with nature, etc. but the effect weould be lost if their settlements stank. And the Noldor may have invented fusion-powered waste-disposal units, in my book. After all, a Silmaril could be placed in the sky and cast the night away, what can that be but a fusion reaction?

EDIT - I can't type.