When I first read The Lord of the Rings, it was a worn-out, waterstained paperback that was thoroughly read by my parents previously and one of my brothers simultaneously. I'm sure you've seen these paperbacks; they have pictures from the movies on the cover, no other illustration or decoration, and ink that smudges when you touch it.

A couple of years ago, we got beautiful hardcover copies of the trilogy and I was enchanted by the beautiful illustrations by Alan Lee. His imaginings of Middle-Earth are very different from mine, but I love them all the same.

Alan Lee works primarily in watercolors and pencil. He clearly loves landscapes with vast expanses of space and color. I've noticed that a lot of the people in his paintings are small figures. In a way, this fits in really well with the epic tone of Tolkien's stories. The characters are all at once so important and so small, set against a backdrop that they influence. If that makes sense. :)

In addition to creating illustrations for the books, Lee worked with John Howe as a conceptual artist for the movies! He's in New Zealand working on the Hobbit films at the moment.

Bag End. From FotR illustrated by Alan Lee. image via.

Random fact: Alan Lee has several cameos in the movies. He was one of the Nine Kings of Men in the opening scene, and was a Rohan soldier in the scene where Aragorn and Legolas are talking to each other in Elvish!

image via.  But honestly, I couldn't tell you which one of these soon-to-be-Nazgul is said awesome illustrator...

image via Alan Lee is the farthest to the left.

All of his drawings are insanely complex and detailed, right down to thousands of tree branches and leaves, each drawn with great precision.

I'm taking a walk through The Lord of the Rings, inspired by A Walk to Rivendell. You can read the previous post to learn more about it!

Shaylynn's Week 1

The Last View of Hobbiton

As they began to climb its first slopes they looked back and saw the lamps in Hobbiton far off twinkling in the gentle valley of the Water. Soon it disappeared in the folds of the darkened land, and was followed by Bywater beside its grey pool. When the light of the last farm was far behind, peeping among the trees, Frodo turned and waved a hand in farewell.

Middle-Earth Location: A few miles ago, I caught my last glimpse of Hobbiton. (I wish! Hobbiton is so loverly. Feat your eyes on this beautiful image of Hobbiton from the films...)

image via

image via

"Miles": 11. 
Traveling Music: I've fallen in love with a wonderful version of The Road Goes Ever On and On:



I've also been listening to a lot of non-LotR music, like Hayley Westenra, Kansas, the Fray, and Madsen.

Traveling Shows: No chance to do any walking on the elliptical and watch TV shows this week!

Feeling: A little bit restless; I wanted to walk much farther but being busy keeps you cooped up inside, away from the vast outdoors and long stretches of time to take walks and bike rides!

The drought has finally ended; at least, we've had several days of rain (and I've had some very interesting allergies from the damp pollen, like an itchy eye that kept me stuck in a bookstore's parking lot for fifteen minutes until I could see well enough to drive!).

This means that all the fields and woods are actually colorful again! These beautiful daisies popped up in less than a week!


I can just imagine flowers like these decorating all the lanes around Hobbiton...

Hobbit's Week 1

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Location: By the seventh day of their journey, the Hobbits had traveled ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN MILES. 

They've already been chased by the Black Riders, run through Farmer Maggot's field, and crossed the Ferry. Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Fatty (Fredegar) told Frodo they knew of his plans and would help him... And once they left Crickhollow, they got caught by Old Man Willow, saved by Tom Bombadill, caught by the Barrow-Wights, and saved by Tom Bombadill again!

It's only 20 more miles-- a single day's walk-- before they reach Bree.

How in the world do they do this with their little Hobbit legs and supposedly over-furnished bellies???

Miles: 115!
Feeling: Overwhelmed and a little bit scared. They've seen a lot, but hope that their troubles will be over once they meet Gandalf at the Inn of the Prancing Pony.

Join in the fun-- YOUR Week 1!

Today I'd like to introduce you to the first guest bloggers for my Tolkien blog celebration! Have you ever been really confused by all the genealogy that Hobbits love so much? Read on for an awesome explanation! -Shaylynn



 Megan and Laura are homeschooled sisters, ages 14 and 15 respectively. (Yes, the younger one is taller.) They first read the Lord of the Rings trilogy three years ago, and were instantly hooked. Laura enjoys learning obscure crafts (such as bobbin lace, weaving, and spinning yarn) and researching things. Megan likes to play her violin, sing, and make up stories. They both love dressing up in costumes to go to movies or things such as their local Renaissance Fair; reading; playing the piano; and acting.
If you’ve ever paged through the back of a book by Tolkien, you’ve probably noticed the detailed family trees. Lots of names and dates, connected by lines which branch off into even more names! It seems awfully confusing to us modern humans, but most of the characters seem to be familiar with their family connections. Even Pippin, that fool of a Took, seems to know what he’s talking about in the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring!

Since the family trees in Appendix C of The Return of the King are devoted to hobbits, that’s what we’ll be looking at today. Who should we start with? How about Frodo and Bilbo?
As most of us know, “Uncle” Bilbo adopted Frodo as a young boy. We also know they’re related in some way, but how? Let’s look at the Baggins Family Tree to get started.


If we go way back in time, Bilbo and Frodo share a common ancestor: Balbo Baggins. Balbo had five kids, but we’re only going to concentrate on two at the moment: Mungo and Largo.  Both of these Hobbits got married and started families. Mungo had five kids (just like his parents), and Largo had one son. Mungo’s oldest son was Bungo, who had a child named Bilbo. Largo’s son, Fosco, had three kids, and his second child was Frodo’s father, Drogo.

So what do we call Bilbo and Frodo’s relationship?

Well, most of us know what a first cousin is. That would be our uncle/aunt’s child. Thus, Bilbo’s father Bungo and Frodo’s grandfather Fosco are first cousins, because their fathers were brothers. (Simple enough, right?) Now what’s a second cousin? A second cousin would be your parent’s cousin’s child. This makes Bilbo and Drogo second cousins because their parents are cousins.

So how does Frodo fit into this?

If you look carefully at the family tree, you will notice that Bilbo and Drogo are on the same generation level. That means if you go back the same number of generations from either descendant you will reach their common ancestor. Go back three generations from both Bilbo and Drogo, and you reach Balbo Baggins. If you go back three generations from Frodo, you reach Largo. That’s not the same ancestor Bilbo reached, so that means that Frodo is not on the same generation level as Bilbo.

To be a first, second, third etc. cousin, you have to be on the same generation level. So what do you call relatives who are on different generation levels?

This is where it can get pretty complicated! If your extended relative is one generation above or below you, they are once removed. For example, a first cousin once removed is your parent’s cousin, or your cousin’s child. And a first cousin twice removed is either your grandparent’s cousin or your cousin’s grandchild. A second cousin once removed is your parent’s second cousin, or your second cousin’s child. (See why this gets confusing?)

Now Frodo’s dad, Drogo, is Bilbo’s second cousin. This would make Frodo and Bilbo second cousins once removed.


Wow! Pretty complicated, huh? Now that we’re familiar with the terms, it should start to get easier. How about trying to figure out how Frodo and Peregrin Took are related?

This time we get a little help. Remember, in The Fellowship of the Ring movie when the four Hobbits are at the Prancing Pony, Pip says, “Sure, I know a Baggins. He’s over there. Frodo Baggins. He’s my second cousin, once removed on his mother’s side and my third cousin twice removed on his father’s side, if you follow me.”

There, Pippin has given us a little starter. We can still check to make sure he got his facts right, though! :) Let’s start with the relation on Frodo’s mother’s side.


Frodo and Pippin’s common ancestor is Gerontius, The Old Took. Gerontius and his wife had twelve children. (Wait, twelve!?!? Wow!) We’ll only have to work with two, though!

Hildigrim, a son of The Old Took, is Pippin’s great-grandfather. One of The Old Took’s daughters, Mirabella, is Frodo’s grandmother. If Hildigrim and Mirabella are siblings, then their children would be… that’s right, first cousins! So Hildigrim’s son Adalgrim and Mirabella’s daughter Primula are first cousins. And their children would be… yes, second cousins! Paladin II and Frodo are second cousins. Wait a second… Paladin II is Pippin’s dad. Hmm, this means that Frodo and Pippin are on different generation levels.

Pippin and Frodo are second-cousins once removed, because Pip is Frodo’s second-cousin’s child. So Pippin got his facts right for the first half of his quote! “He’s my second cousin, once removed on his mother’s side.”

Now Frodo and Pip’s common ancestor is Balbo Baggins! We’ll focus on his two younger sons, Ponto and Largo.

As we know, Frodo is the great-grandson of Largo. It turns out Pippin is the great-great-grandson of Ponto! (Notice the difference in generation levels…)

Let’s think about this. If Ponto and Largo were brothers that would mean that their children were cousins. So Ponto’s daughter Rosa (Pip’s great-grandmother), and Largo’s son Fosco (Frodo’s grandfather) are first-cousins. That makes their children second cousins (Adalgrim {Pip’s grandfather}, and Drogo {Frodo’s father}), and their children third cousins!

So Frodo and Paladin II are third cousins. We know that Paladin II is Pippin’s father, so Pippin must be on a different generation level from Frodo again.  What would be the relationship of Frodo and Pip…. Yes, third cousin once removed, because Pip is Frodo’s third cousin’s child.


What did Pip say in the movie? “He’s my third cousin twice removed on his father’s side.” Twice? We got third cousin once removed. Either Pippin is wrong, or we are.  Personally, I think Pippin was a little forgetful right then… but you can always check it out more yourself! :)

Now it’s time to move onto how Frodo and Meriadoc Brandybuck are related. What is very helpful is that Merry and Pippin are first cousins. They should have the same relation to Frodo, but let’s check it out.

Meriadoc’s grandfather Adalgrim and Frodo’s mother Primula are first cousins. Therefore, Merry’s mom (Esmeralda) and Frodo are second cousins. This would make Merry and Frodo…. That’s right, second cousins once removed because Merry is Frodo’s second cousin’s child.

That turned out the same as Pippin’s relationship to Frodo through Frodo’s mom.  Yes, Merry is also related to Frodo through Frodo’s dad, so we’ll have to check that out too.

Frodo’s grandfather Fosco and Merry’s great-grandmother Rosa are first cousins. That makes Frodo’s dad, Drogo, and Merry’s grandfather Adalgrim second cousins. So Frodo and Merry’s mom would be third cousins… and Frodo and Merry would be third cousins once removed (because Merry is Frodo’s third cousin’s child).

That also turned out to be the same as what we came up with for Pippin through Frodo’s dad. This gives us another reason to think Pippin got his facts wrong in the movie.

We’ve figured out how Frodo is related to the main Hobbits from The Lord of the Rings, except for how he is related to Samwise Gamgee. Search as we might through the Hobbit family trees, there is no common ancestor recorded between Frodo and Sam. Sam is not related to Frodo, Pippin, Merry, or even Bilbo. Sadly, this is because the Gamgees were not considered an ‘upper-class’ family, and thus they didn’t intermarry into Bagginses, Brandybucks, Tooks, etc.

There we shall stop with the family trees. There are many more interesting relationships between Tolkien’s characters, but alas, we are running out of time and room. If this has sparked your interest in the genealogies of Middle Earth, you can try to figure some out for yourself! We haven’t even touched on the subject of how Elrond is a second cousin twice removed to his mother-in-law…

The End

All images belong to Megan and Laura.

In case you haven't heard of it already, Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site. I started off by using to bookmark my favorite blog posts, but since it is a social media site and I get to see all the pins by my online friends, and half of my boards have turned into collections of "MUST PIN ALL THE PRETTY PICTURES, MUAHAHAHA!"

Pin via

Anyway, Pinterest is a great tool for discovering crafts, tutorials, artwork, GIFs, funny memes, and more. I created a Tolkien board at the start of this month and have been pinning like a maniac. It may or may not have killed all my free time one evening, when I was planning on working ahead in my college chem course...

Speaking of said chemistry course, I'm going to be attending a four hour lecture this evening, so today's blog post will, of necessity, be quick and short. I've decided to do a Pinterest Roundup of some of my favorite LotR-themed pins! When possible I'm linking to the original site.

You can see my board here, and if you pin any awesome LotR-themed pictures that you think I would enjoy, tag me with @Shaylynn. (Hopefully that will tag me, you should see a thumbnail of my avatar, the little fairy named Shea). Or, enter your own Lord of the Rings Pinterest boards into the linky, and I'll follow it!

Pinned from The Nailsaurus.

One Ring nail polish. How amazingly geeky! I actually bought some gold nail polish in order to copy this design (minus the Black Toungue... I may just write "One does not simply walk into Mordor" in Tengwar, the Elvish script). However, it turns out that the nail polish is gold sparkles, not gold matte. Waste of a good $5. Oh, well...

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I love these Lord of the Rings movie memes... they do a wonderful job of reminding you of the best, funniest, and most emotional scenes... and making me wish I could just go do a nine hour movie marathon.

Pinned from ShaylynnAnn at DeviantArt

So this is something I made, is it bad that I'm posting it in my roundup? It's my all-time favorite quote from The Return of the King! This graphic was made for and published in Ink and Fairydust. 

Pinned from this tumblr blog, no idea what the original source is.

To quote the description on the pin:

German art student Benjamin Harff decided for his exam at the Academy of Arts to do something only slightly ambitious — to hand-illuminate and bind a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion. It took him six months of work. In very 21st century elvish-monk style, he hand-illuminated the text which had been printed on his home Canon inkjet printer. He worked with a binder to assemble the resulting book.

OK, I haven't had a time to look into this too closely-- I've only found a few images from this piece and a handful of text written in German, which I am rubbish at translating, but I need you to pause what you're doing for just a moment and let me go bounce off walls and do a happy dance! This is amazing! Celtic knotwork, illuminated manuscripts, calligraphy, The Silmarillion... what better combination can you get? You'll probably see more about this project as I find more information!

Pin from Lee Pace

A first look at Thranduil, the Elf King of Mirkwood, the captor of the Dwarves, and Legolas' father. At first I really didn't like his costume (the crown would be much better if it actually went all the way around his head), but it's grown on me. I like the silver/shadowy take on the Elves-- and it makes sense, since Mirkwood is a dark forest full of giant hobbit-eating spiders and is not the paradise of Rivendell or Lorien.

Pin via

That's an illustration of The Hobbit by Tolkien. Yes, by Tolkien. He wasn't just a genius storyteller, he was a phenomenal artist with a really unique and beautiful style!

That's all for now, folks, wish me luck at my class and enjoy these pines!

When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

-an Ent, in the song of the Ents and Entwives in The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

One of my friends is an amazing seamstress and is hard at work creating an Entwife costume. The Ents are tree shepherds in The Lord of the Rings and they lost the Entwives many years ago. The fate of garden-loving Entwives is one of the many mysteries of Middle-Earth.

I'm very excited to see how the costume will be when it is finished-- she is creating a very gypsy/bohemian/woodland look, entirely from scratch! What you see here is only a sneak peek, helped out by various bits and bobs from my closet. At the time I took these photos, she had only finished the corset, underdress, and cloak.

In just a few weeks I hope to share some pictures of the finished outfit! I'm designing her a jewelry set which is definitely challenging me to learn some new skills. This Entwife idea is just so inspirational!

Illustration by shaylynnann.

A Walk to Rivendell

The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began... -Bilbo Baggins

Did you know that it is 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell? When reading the books, it's easy to pass over the time and distance it took to travel from one fantastical place to another in Middle-Earth. 458 miles, by foot, with the Ring, and no shoes!

image via

How it Works

It's a dangerous thing, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. -Bilbo Baggins

Each day, I will record the number of miles I have 'traveled' in an exercise log. For activities other than walking or running, I'll do a guesstimate number of miles using this chart.

I'm going to keep my goals private for now, especially because I know that my time is going to be very limited this month and I won't be able to set any stellar goals. Plus, I'm not much of an athlete to begin with! So I might travel quite slowly and almost certainly won't even make it as far as, say, Bree (135 miles) during this month.

I'll be using this calculator to determine with more precision just how far I've traveled and what landmarks I am near. (It's also neat because it gives you a quote from the book relevant to your mileage!)

Each week this month, I will share a bit of my journey. I'll always tell you where I am in Middle-Earth, what some of my favorite "walks" were that week (as in, did I prefer unicycling through Farmer Maggot's field or jogging through the Forbidden Forest?), and I will try to give you a few photos of my journey.


Also, just to prove that I have a very long way to go before I am in the same physical shape as fat, hairy-footed hobbits who love food and who legs are less than half the length of mine... I will be sure to let you know where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are on the same "day" of their journey. Granted, they did spend all day, every day traveling. If I had nothing else to do all day, sure, I could walk 20 or more miles. I've done it a few times before. It gave me the worst blisters imaginable-- the stuff of nightmares, I kid you not. It must be nice to go hairy-footed-barefoot.

Shaylynn's Start

Middle-Earth Location: Snug at my beautiful hobbit home near Bag End.
"Miles": Well, I haven't started yet, now have I?
Traveling Music: Why does one need traveling music while one is comfortably at home and can listen to music as normal?
Traveling Shows (TV shows/movies that I watched while doing indoor exercises/exercise equipment): Haven't started yet! But I've already finished every Netflix episode of Doctor Who, Pysch, and Numb3rs.
Feeling: Sleepy and pleasant, it's the weekend and I just finished reading Narnia to my little siblings.

Hobbit's Start

Location: Bag End, Hobbiton, The Shire.
Miles: 0
Feeling: Quite comfy at home, enjoying a hearty second breakfast and thousand other meals.

Join in the fun!

Starting next Saturday, I will have a linky open to let you link to your own blog post about your own walk through Middle-Earth-- or you can just leave a comment with your progress. Comments are nice. :)


Don't forget to check out all the other fun 'Lord of the Rings' inspired posts here at my blog during Tolkien Month (September 2012). 

It's time to party like Hobbits!