yes I take classes in handwriting

Our handwriting exam was today. Before you ask if I'm a second-grader--it's a class in other people's handwriting. For example, Gerard Manley Hopkins is killin' me:

Though he actually has quite modern writing, so it's not as bad as some. But Hopkins does these weird symbols on occasion...


Our exam consisted of reproducing a Charles Lamb sonnet, and not a good one. The only tricky bit was reproducing the part that Lamb had crossed out and written over, since he didn't cross it out with a nice easy line, preferring instead a series of X's. Oh, and he uses silly words like "Sabbathless" and "turmoiling" and "worky-day". Like I said: not that good.

But I love love love handwriting class and I'm quite sad that it's over. Our professor, Clive, is great...and I will miss him. Sigh. I think I did quite well on my exam, though. Clive looked over it for a moment or two and told me it looked perfect, which would definitely be a first. Especially with silly Charles Lamb not ever crossing his T's. I feel like they can't be properly called T's if they're not crossed.

Anyway, did you know that when people ran out of space in writing letters, they would turn the letter 90 degrees and continue writing the other way? Their letters cross each other and it looks really bizarre. Every time we start a piece of work in handwriting class, I think to myself, oh gosh this is hard. But after a couple of hard-earned sentences, it all starts to flow a bit more. The purpose of all of this, of course, is to prepare us for working with manuscripts in our fields. Not that I feel prepared to do anything of the sort.

Speaking of "extremely awesome classes that I'm taking", we're finishing printing tomorrow--I'll keep you posted.

Apologies for poor photos: the light in my room isn't very good.

OH AND IT SNOWED TODAY. Not as much as in London though.