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So there I am trying to figure out what kind of proposal to put forth that won’t die in Chapter Two, while short stuff is sprouting up all over my mind, like greenbriar in a mowed pasture. Greenbriar will never grow into a tall, shady tree full of delicious fruit, but it sure can pop out of the ground and stab you in the ankle. Short fiction is less painful (I hope!) but I do now know the difference in feel between “This should run out of steam before x-thousand words” and “AHA! This character and situation has real potential.” Usually. Almost always. Many of my stories try to grow longer, but they’re like greenbriar, putting out long sneaky strands that have no woody potential.
Right now I’ve got a new story going about a character I told you had been secretive with me before, Cracolnya. Nobody, he’d always said when I cornered him, really wants my story. It’s nothing. There’s nothing to see here, move along. He had little personality he wanted to share, it seemed. And since I had a sheaf of characters eager to come onstage and show me their worlds, I let it go.
This story started out as what I thought would be a simple but interesting story of “known character’s adventure when young.” First few pages went that way. Then…down the rat-hole we went, and into something far more…something. I can’t yet define something. There are tantalizing hints, but nothing definite yet except what’s going on in the immediate present, but it’s feeling like resolution is farther and farther away, while story-stuff is accumulating, rather like the way storm clouds did on Monday (thought they fizzled out. Will this story fizzle out? Having had several fizzle-outers over the fall and winter I’m not eager to have another.)
(Interruption: a very young Texas Spiny Lizard leaped up on the window screen and then discovered I was watching it. Closely. It gave me the hairy eyeball from the right, then the left, and then decided to leave, zipping back down to the window sill and away.)
To resume. Cracolnya would not have been my guess to arrive with a story longer than 7000 words, if that long. It’s over 3000 words now, and there’s no sign of a “turn.” I can’t figure out how this could be a book, given that we know how he turns out as an adult…we know the end, so to speak. Or we think we do. I’m getting peculiar twitches out of this thing. A YA book, maybe? Or something else….Cracolnya as the connection to a more protagonist-like character that he’s going to come across? The story so far, though it’s definitely him, is not leading in a direction that will end in his being a Fox Company captain, so there’s a turn in there somewhere.
Discovery writing is scary sometimes. Climb on the wild horse–no saddle, no bridle–and be taken somewhere. Appropriate for a story about someone whose family was born into a horse nomad tribe.
Meanwhile a couple of other “When they were very young” stories about other Paksworld characters are sort of stuck. Not badly stuck, but Cracolnya came charging out the gate and knocked them aside.
Then there are the fans clamoring for more SF because they don’t like fantasy. More Vatta! More Serrano! Um. I tried several times, but…nada. It’s not that there aren’t ideas, but they’re all ideas for scenes, and the scenes don’t go anywhere afterward. Hence dying in chapter one or chapter two.
Comment by Joyce — April 23, 2014 @ 1:06 pm
When my children were little I heard a comment from an older woman that struck me as wise. She said,”Keep your expectations loose and don’t be surprised if they don’t turn out exactly as you might think. Sometimes we think we’ve planted a sunflower and up comes a rose!” Sounds like birthing stories, long or short, is the same sort of thing.
Comment by LarryP — April 23, 2014 @ 8:04 pm
Well My lady Moon time to grasp the word processor and dig in deep and see were it goes…be blessed in the hunt.
Comment by rochrist — April 24, 2014 @ 12:54 am
Paksworld, Vatta or Serrano, I’ll take any of them happily! Although it would be nice to see what happened to Kylara and Rafe. Not to mention Toby. And the dog.
Comment by GinnyW — April 24, 2014 @ 8:27 am
Enjoy the story as it unfolds, we will. I think many of us would enjoy a few more extended glimpses into the horse nomad culture, and its interface with the rest of Paksworld. Even if the story breaks away, leaps a stream or two, and carries into another country entirely.
Comment by Chuck — April 24, 2014 @ 9:24 am
Cracolnya has always been something of a mystery for me as a reader, too. Maybe you don’t need to worry too much about what we already “know” about the older character, how he “ends”–because maybe this guy will turn out not to exactly be Cracolnya but someone with a similar background, but a different life. If the rest of this story is working, then the early part can be adjusted. Aragorn in “The Lord of the Rings” was variously a boot-wearing hobbit (“Trotter”) and an elf before he settled into the Ranger and destined king of men that we know. Arwen arose very late in the story and was retrofitted into the early part. Even characters whose lives we have seen up close have gaps where potentially quite different life experiences may be discovered to have taken place.
Comment by Annabel — April 24, 2014 @ 12:39 pm
I haven’t read most of the Vatta series, but have recently filled-in the missing Serrano ones (and stayed up until well past sparrowfart reading the middle one, oops – luckily it was a Friday night so I didn’t have to get up next morning). I don’t quite see how you distinguish between SF and fantasy in your writing – and to be honest, I don’t care! What I do care about is that you succeed in writing 3-dimensional characters I care about, and want to know how their stories come out, whether the character is Lady Cecelia or Dorrin, Arvid or Esme….
Comment by John McDonald — April 24, 2014 @ 5:14 pm
I remember reading something years ago, when you where asked about more Pak’s books after Oath of Gold. You said, IIRC, that she had “ridden out of your head” at the time. Well she and all the others have come riding back very strongly. I hope the same will happen for the other series in their time.
I, like a lot of other folks, don’t really care which ones, or maybe even new ones. Reading your stories is a bit addictive.
Comment by elizabeth — April 24, 2014 @ 9:31 pm
Annabel: Thank you!
And to all: Thank you for the continuing encouragement.
Cracolnya’s (or whoever’s–I like that wiggle room you offered, Chuck) grandfather is an interesting guy, as seen from the viewpoint of a difficult boy. Grandfather speaks the horse nomad language, has difficulty with Common, has a withered arm, and has a wicked sense of humor which he conceals perfectly. The internal dialogue he’s let me in on has a lot of “That’ll show the smart-alec little squirt!” to it, though not in those words. I’m not a linguist; I can’t make up a whole language the way Tolkein could, but the meaning, the secret amusement when our POV, who I think of as young Cracolnya, flubs once again at traditional tasks, is very much that kind of thing. Granddad tolerates the townsfolk as a necessity but considers them “fat cows” (the horse nomads do not herd cattle, but sheep and horses. Cattle are too “tame.”)
Cracolnya’s father also speaks the horse nomad language but is much more fluent in Common, though with a strong accent. He came to the settlements early enough to pick it up more easily, and he interacts more with the townsfolk, producing leather goods and some braided horsehair items. Cracolnya speaks and understands little of his ancestral language, is fluent and accent-free in Common, and has accepted many of the townsfolk’s values and attitudes. He runs around town on foot, wears shoes in winter, can ride a little but not much, eats town food, and gets into fights.
Comment by GinnyW — April 25, 2014 @ 8:44 am
It seems to me that Cracolnya’s grandfather, more than Kieri’s captain Cracolnya, is clamoring to be heard.
Your post has sparked my curiosity about archery as a combat skill, and particularly the integration of archers into a short-sword infantry company like Fox Company. That is the one thing about Cracolnya that stands out for me.
Well, also his apparent distaste for gnomes. His reaction to the first appearance of the (now)Arcolinfulk seemed to trail some baggage behind it. I wonder whether we will ever have a better picture of it?
The grandfather sounds fascinating, even apart from the story. Keep on writing! I love your characters.
Comment by Daniel Glover — April 25, 2014 @ 1:33 pm
GinnyW,
Remember the Fox archers are really light crossbows.
Comment by Richard — April 25, 2014 @ 7:29 pm
Daniel,
I think people asked Elizabeth about this long ago, before I’d even discovered Paksworld.
On the one hand we saw that all Company recruits got basic archery training – with bows not crossbows, because the first time Paks tried a crossbow was at the siege of Rotengre. We also saw her as a corporal in the north, leading out a mounted patrol of swordsmen with bows as secondary weapons, in hope of bringing down fleeing orcs they couldn’t catch.
Stammel told us in KoN how Siger, being from Lyonya, preferred bows to crossbows, even though the Company’s bows could not be blackwood longbows. When Paks mentions “longbows” in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter I believe she must mean weapons standing in relation to the Lyonyan blackwood bow as, in our world, the ones with which the Normans famously got King Harold in the eye in 1066 stood in relation to the Anglo-Welsh yew great longbow used at Agincourt etc.
Then (the same thing, or a further variation?) there are the bows Kieri told us some of Sir Ammerlin’s mixed command had – short, sharply-curved nomad-style ones suitable for use mounted or afoot, with no risk of snagging in forests. I’d expect – subject to correction – Cracolyna to be familiar with those.
On the other hand we’ve had Arcolin’s cohort recently hired to Vonja (for security work against supposed bandits), without archery until they captured some crossbows.
When Paks was a private, only the specialists seem to have taken bows (of any description) on campaign in the south, for set-piece battles and sieges. The Company benefitted from being able on its own to storm a small fort – such as the Wolf Prince’s in Paks’ first year, after the main campaign was over. The Duke then used Cracolyna’s cohort, bolstered by half of Dorrin’s. I see Cracolyna’s archers trying to keep defenders’ heads down while his assault teams placed scaling ladders for themselves and for the other swordsmen to climb.
It could be that the Company had crossbows for the specialists, plus bows (not crossbows) for some or all of the sword-and-shield-men but only in the north; though there was one occasion when the Company’s archers had kept their strings dry but Siniava’s crossbowmen hadn’t: “Rain’s a lot harder on those than on longbows”.
Comment by greycats — April 26, 2014 @ 3:36 pm
A man that I know very well once said that he joined the police force in a major city because, as he said, “I wanted to be like a tree in the forest.” I took that remark as an indication of what his life had been like up to that point–full of unsupported and unrewarded struggle as a result of just trying to do the right thing. Once he joined the PD he never looked back, but he still regularly did the right thing.
Comment by Suburbanbanshee — April 27, 2014 @ 6:42 am
There’s a really interesting audiobook course on Audible called “The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes.” Apparently crossbows were also invented by our horse nomads, and pretty darned early, which I hadn’t known. Best guess is that wheels and wagons came from the steppes peoples also, and not just stirrups and recurve bows. It used to be thought that they just transmitted stuff from China or Persia, but Chinese and Persian sources seem to be pretty sure that this stuff came from the nomads first. I will totally crack up if it ever turns out that math and the zero also came from the nomads.
So apparently we owe the barbarians big time, and maybe all that herding and riding gave people a lot of time for thinking.
So with all the focus on the old magical empires being the tech powers in Paksworld, it’d be interesting if the horse nomads were also an unacknowledged center of tech innovation.
Comment by AThornton — April 27, 2014 @ 4:21 pm
Reading the back story of Cracolnya would be fascinating.
At the Czardian battle the mixed cohort is said to be archers. At the siege of Rotengre “the specialists of the mixed cohort led the climbing teams” up the walls. And it is a man of the mixed cohort that knows how to open the gates. While not stated it may be inferred Cracolnya’s cohort were for the logistic support during the Czardian battle, specifically making sure water was available to the troops during a break in the battle. Another inference is the mixed cohort is responsible for building, maintaining, and being in charge of constructing and firing siege weapons and their ammo. And the mixed cohort would be the ones to Command and Control the military engineering of constructing marching camps, siege lines (surveying!,) maintainence of engineering equipment: axes, shovels, etc., and the rest of the logistics tail: tents, ropes, saddles, mule packs, soup pots, and yadda-yadda that aren’t TO&E’ed to the infantry cohorts.
Being the CO of all that needs a person who is not only intelligent and trained but *educated* in the military sciences and military technologies.
And the question becomes … how?
Comment by elizabeth — April 27, 2014 @ 11:08 pm
Suburbanbanshee: I became fascinated by the central Asian horse nomad cultures when I was in college studying history and archaeology. They weren’t a feature of our classes, but the people in our classes came in contact with them…and then I found books about them. Archaeology has found out a lot more since (some Altai tombs were just then being excavated.)
AThornton: In her first campaign season Paks was a novice, and nearly all the story is shown from her viewpoint. Her understanding of the organization is that of a beginner (talented, but not omniscient.) So she’s an unreliable narrator who intends to be reliable but lacks the experience to make it so, and her understanding of Czardas (her first battle experience) is thus lacking enough data to make sound inferences. In the Duke’s Company, all share some tasks that are now often allocated to specialized groups–can’t really do that with such a small group, and in that (relative) period. Siege machines, however, are a specialized skill, and later in the book Plas Group contracts to build and operate siege engines for the alliance of mercenaries against Siniava. Siniava had his own specialist group.
The mixed cohort does tend to collect individuals with special skills, but still functions as either a light-archery or infantry (short-sword) company as needed. Its flexibility–its ability to shift from providing archery support to closing in with swords–is essential to the Company’s success, and ability to defeat somewhat larger forces. It is not tasked with building the traveling camps: that’s the responsibility of all, since cohorts may be hired or deployed individually and must be able to handle all the necessary bits of logistics and short-term fortification/camp security without other assistance. Each cohort has people trained in elementary surveying techniques, carpentry, etc. When the full Company is on campaign, they do have with them a quartermaster group (not just one quartermaster) who organizes the transport of supplies; for one cohort that’s usually just two people with the ability to call on more warm bodies when necessary. The generalist training all recruits get ensures that, in a pinch, anyone can harness a mule, drive a wagon, dig a ditch, scrub pots, and cook some simple foods. These chores are rotated through each cohort. Recruits and first-years come with some skills, but the essential for them is to march and fight…replacing those who died last year, and with the expectation that if they survive their first campaign year, they’ll then be worth more training if they’re capable. Some are; some aren’t. After three campaign years, Paks was still not a fluent reader or writer, and though she knew the rules of thumb the Duke’s Company used for figuring out how many pack mules they needed, she could not easily (at all, at first) expand that to a different situation.
All of which still leaves the question of Cracolnya’s specific talents up in the air. Cohort captains had to be capable of independent actions with their cohort–and coordinate with the other cohorts (or allies) if together. All shared some talents and skills. Arcolin learned his primarily in combat, first in Halveric Company, as a recruit who rose to sergeant, then (briefly) in the Tsaian Royal Guard, and then with the Duke’s Company. He had no “college” or “academy” training. Dorrin trained with the Knights of Falk (and has her ruby)–the equivalent of an “academy” training bolstered by combat experience in the Duke’s Company, first as a junior captain under someone who’s never entered the books (he was middle-aged then.) Cracolnya’s early experience was with the horse nomads, where he experienced the fluid tactics of a mounted group armed with a projectile weapon. That was his major value to the first mercs who hired him–he understood light cavalry and the advantages of archery very well, and most did not. In the early days of his time with the Duke’s Company, he and Kieri and the other captains experimented a lot to find out the best way to use what he knew in the campaigns they fought. By the time Paks came along, they had one of the premier mercenary companies in the South, although it was smaller than some of the others, and their competitors studied their tactics while rarely being able to make use of them.
Comment by Richard — April 28, 2014 @ 4:40 am
In one of the later battles of the Czardas campaign, the Duke found somewhere for the archers to shoot from where the enemy couldn’t easily get at them (so Paks heard). I think we can take it that this wasn’t always possible, so the mixed cohort often needed its swords (and shields?) in the front ranks to protect the archers behind.
Also, can we posit that (even as a bastard) Arcolin had learnt at Horngard much more reading, writing, arithmetic, knightly manners, riding, horse care and weapons care than had Paks on the sheep farm?
Comment by elizabeth — April 28, 2014 @ 7:38 am
Richard: Certainly the field of battle wasn’t always convenient…and the archery component frequently had to shoot first and stab later. In the Duke’s Company, all recruits are trained heavily as formation short-sword infantry…so all in the mixed cohort have that in their background and also train regularly with sword & shield, as well as with archery. (Later, under Arcolin’s command, Fox Company develops more archery capability in the other cohorts, largely because of his experiences in his first year of commanding the Company. But that’s barely showing in the new books; it will take several more years to show its full worth–or not.)
Arcolin certainly did learn a lot at Horngard, where he had the equivalent of a squire’s training. Horngard is not a culture that goes to war much (more internal fights than external wars) because of their protected position. They have never campaigned far enough away to learn how to manage a long supply line. (Or so it has been for the past hundred years or so.) But yes, Arcolin at 16-17 knew more about many things than Paks did at 18-19. The same is true in reverse. Their existing skills, when they entered a “regular” military service, overlapped in only a few areas. Paks had the skills of a hill-farm upbringing, where the sex-differentiation in skills was not that great. Both the household skills (cooking, the making and care of clothing, organization and care of resources, the care of children and the sick) and the farming skills (care of livestock, uses of livestock, farm work from gardening to herding, shearing, etc.) She had no formal schooling in academic subjects, and had no talent for them…had there been a school, she would have been considered not worth the effort. Today we’d say she had a specific learning disability; she is not stupid, but she finds (will always find) reading and writing very difficult. OTOH, like many people with similar problems, she is quick to learn from hands-on experience. Arcolin had the innate ability to learn languages, reading, and writing easily, plus the opportunity to do so in his father’s court. His home culture defined cooking, clothing (making and care) as women’s work, so he had to learn “camp cooking” and maintenance of his own clothes as a recruit with Halveric.
Back in the first book, Paks’s friends who had grown up in towns were generally better educated (in our terms) than those who grew up in more remote farming communities. In both Fintha and Tsaia, towns would have a Girdish grange, and the Girdish system valued schooling–granges held classes for children and adults both. Over the centuries, this produced families in which–even before children went to school–they were exposed to literacy because their parents were literate. Merchants needed those skills; a merchant’s child would quickly learn (or be scorned for not learning) the basic math needed to run a market stall or shop, and the ability to keep clean records of transactions. So Vik, brought up in a larger town, in a family where both parents could read and write, arrived as a recruit able to read, write, and calculate. In the new series, Arcolin’s step-son, at about six or seven, is already learning to read and write; his mother’s family are prominent merchants and his mother would not consider allowing him to miss a day’s practice. Outside the walking range of a grange, however, formal education did not exist. For a farm child, needed at home for daily work to keep the farm going, if the grange is more than an hour’s walk from home–and the school lasts more than two hours–it becomes impossible. Losing a half-day’s work every day from a child able to do significant work can imperil the family’s survival. For a modern example of the kind of work even very young children can learn to do, take a look at the Twitter stream of Amanda Owen, a shepherdess in Yorkshire: @AmandaOwen8.
Comment by Lisa — April 28, 2014 @ 10:16 am
I’m always amazed at the difference between farm kids and non-farm kids. My kids understood at 2 that gates got closed and would shriek horribly if they were open—the sight of a tiny kid trying to shut a 12′ metal gate is priceless! I know a kid who at 7 could back up a 5th wheel dually trailer into a space a foot or so wider than the trailer.
We grossly underestimate the usefulness of children now, much to their detriment.
Comment by elizabeth — April 28, 2014 @ 11:22 am
There’s a similar situation with kids whose parents run a small business…at least in my generation and I think still. Very early I knew how to greet customers in the store in English and Spanish (I didn’t speak Spanish, but I could say “Good morning/Good afternoon, Welcome.” and then go find the appropriate grownup to actually help them if the Spanish went beyond my scope.) I knew how to tidy up a display that had been disarranged, wrap packages, and as soon as my writing for numbers was legible, I was marking merchandise. (We didn’t have stick-on labels for things like cookie-cutters–a marker right on the item.) All of us who grew up on Main Street–merchants’ kids–knew how to behave in stores (which a lot of townies and farm kids both did not: ye gods some of those kids! Sticky hands on merchandise, knocking things over, running in a store aisle, etc.) We knew wholesale and retail, knew the merchandise in “our” store and the others run by friends of our families, could be reliably sent on errands by any downtown store person (“Tell your mother I want one of those aluminum saucepans, 3 quart, and I’ll be by at closing to pick it up, OK?” or “I need three spools of *this* red from the sewing department of X store…and tell me if they have the corduroys in yet…”) In these family-run stores, the adults were willing to–eager to–teach the other merchants’ kids about their stores. So any of us who wanted to could be tutored in furniture, hardware, home furnishings and kitchen stuff, stationery, office supplies, art supplies, fabrics, sewing notions, shoes, clothing, silver, china, jewelry, furs, sporting goods…all with an emphasis on quality and value. Just as I learned to tell good steel (and other metals) from “pot metal” or “mishmash” in “our” store, I learned to tell good woolen fabric from poor, well-made garments from badly-made ones, good furniture from stuff that would fall apart in five years, and so on.
I got to spend some time on farms (not as much as I wanted) and observed milking, helped make butter, gathered eggs, opened and shut gates for whoever was on the tractor, and predictably did some stupid things that got me yelled at. (The most notable was the time that Lucy–the farmer’s daughter–and I decided to break a couple of long yearling colts to saddle. She was a couple of years older, and we were both horse crazy and had read books…only…we were far less skilled than we thought we were, and we got both the colts lathered up and running wild in a cornfield. Boy, were we grounded. We washed every dish in the house–twice. We washed windows, scrubbed and mopped floors–that house had never been THAT clean before, Lucy said–but very quietly. And of course we deserved it. Lucy was in worse trouble because she was older, and a daughter of the house and should not have led the townie into mischief. She was honorable enough not to tell that the townie had required no “leading” at all.) In the course of my childhood I spent one hot day picking cotton (because my mother was appalled that I made a comment about how it must be easy. I had my lesson. Picking cotton is not easy even when you’re short and don’t have to lean down as far.) I picked some citrus, we gleaned in some fields a few times (carrots and onions, mostly) and I had a little garden behind the garage, where I grew parsley for the local grocer until the swallowtails found my patch and their larvae went through it like a mower. I had encounters with pigs, with dairy cows, with beef cows, with chickens.
Children need that real-life experience as much as school learning. The feeling of competence that comes from doing something useful–something needed–even if it’s just chopping celery and carrots for a soup, or reorganizing a display in the store that’s been disarranged by customers rummaging in it, or sweeping the back steps–is a different boost than making 100 on a spelling test.
Comment by GinnyW — April 28, 2014 @ 4:03 pm
Yes! Many skills are not “school taught” to any significant level. Particularly mechanical skills, woodworking, cooking, sewing. Almost all of that needs to be learned “at home”, and with it, the self-respect that comes from “a job well done.” Strangely, it is also the participation in “real-life” tasks that makes people aware of how different jobs fit together.
Comment by AThornton — April 28, 2014 @ 8:14 pm
Elizabeth: thank you for the exposition.
For a time I ran the warehouse for a university book and supply store (25,000 students) and then became an ICT Emergency Logistic Manager. So TO&E and logistics is of deep interest.
Comment by patricia n — April 29, 2014 @ 5:24 pm
I think that I would enjoy meeting cracolnya’s grand father, he puts me in mind of the old Arab man talking to a reporter when he said,my fathers grandfather rode camels, I rode camels, my son drives a car, his son flies a plane. I think his son will ride a camel.
Comment by MaryElmore — April 29, 2014 @ 8:06 pm
Talking about things you learn at home as a child. (I just celebrated my 70th birthday.) I grew up in Huntsville, Texas with the main unit of the prison system. The back “walls” or the prison were not more than three or four blocks from the house, which was on a main highway in a time when there were no Interstate highways. We were always taught to lock the doors.
When I was living outside NYC on Long Island about forty years ago, a postman suggested I always lock the doors. I told him that was something I had learned from childhood and why.
The story about Cracolnya sounds fascinating. I am looking forward to reading Crown of Renewal.
Take care.
Comment by elizabeth — April 29, 2014 @ 8:27 pm
AThornton: That’s good experience you have. Logistics…yes. Very, very important. Getting the right stuff to the right place and the right people at the right time with all that entails. From the small-scale (20 people coming for Thanksgiving dinner: ensure that all the plates, knives, forks, bowls, glasses, serving utensils, cooking pots, kitchen utensils, tablecloths, napkins, potholders, dish towels, etc. are clean and ready to lay out, positioned so you can find them and move them easily; pre-purchase the necessary food items that will be out of stock two days before T-day and have some place to store them, purchase the produce on the right day and have someplace to store it, arrange the kitchen and design a “flow” that will work from 6 am on T-day (when the turkeys will be taken out of the fridge and prepared for the roasters) until everyone’s eaten dessert, so that a stove burner is open when you need it for the next dish in line) to the vast (moving a division halfway around the world with everything it needs to function, and the right things coming off the transport first…or responding to a large emergency when thousands of people displaced by tornadoes or a hurricane need clean water, shelter, food, medical care, etc.)
patricia n: Cracolnya’s grandfather reminds me of various people I have known, two or three generations ahead of me and also some I’ve read about.
MaryElmore: It’s figuring out which of the things learned at home are life-saving and life-giving and which are either no longer true, or are actually harmful, that’s tricky. Though my mother was right a very high percentage of the time.
Comment by Ellen McLean — May 2, 2014 @ 3:05 am
Another stream of learning is the very proper grandmother/maiden aunt/neighbor who never tolerated grammar blunders, misspellings, nor bad manners. However, knitting, crochet, freehand embroidery, and other needlework were encouraged and perfected.