My Middle Name is Patience

Where I Spend Three Days Knitting and Reading And Finishing Nothing

....typically. I did pick up approximately 810 stitches, knit 27 rows and frog about four times, if anyone else is counting. And I finally got the letters I'm going to use in Mom's vest on Exel and charted. More or less charted. I may change a few things there as well.

Finished reading In The Shadow of the Throne: The Lady Arbella Stuart by Ruth Norrington and meant to read Jack Higgins new thriller but.....Bess of Hardwick: Empire Builder by Mary S Lovell insisted I hear her side first. Bess really did have an interesting life but her 4th and final husband sounds like he had his hands full with Bess, Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots. Wife, queen, prisoner. Prisoner who might be the next queen if the current one didn't make it. That sounds like a thrilling tightrope to walk.

Someone thinks she should be an outdoor cat again. Someone who rolled around in the dirt.

She was not amused.

 

Alive! Alive!

and it's spring! The hills are green, the cows look happy (although there was one young heifer that kept a wary eye on me and kept gamboling back to Mama). Too cute.

Somehow I managed to both gain weight and lower my cholesterol during tax season -  no mean feat.

Now I have to reaquaint myself with this thing called standing? walking? so very complicated....

and knitting and reading! A whole book! More than one! And don't have exciting stuff like AMT in them.

Birthright: The Story that Inspired Kidnapped by Roger Ekrich was pretty fascinating. Another example of family dynamics and entailed estates. Jemmy, the heir presumptive, is only in line for the five titles in England and Ireland because the oldest son line died out after three generations. (Well, he had a girl, but pfft. Don't start me.) His father is actually the heir presumptive but the current heir is a bit horrified - and who can blame him? Arthur Annesley is a ramshackle mess.

Kidnapped was equally rollicking but Robert Louis Stevenson's Jemmy, David Balfour, is a bit older, a clearer lineage and never gets far from Scotland. He's also a bit of a drama queen - at one point he's stranded on an island - within sight of a village - sore afraid and his clothing in tatters (okay, he was swept to the island when the ship sank, lucky to be alive at all) and it turns out that the island is only an island in high tide. Don't see that often in books today.

 

Tagged again!

This time tagged by Marji at Tangled String.

• Who taught you to knit? I did.
• Do you remember the first thing you made? A mass of garter stitch. Then a sweater out of Vogue.
• Do you knit more for yourself or others? For myself. Other people are not grateful enough and that seems like an unfair burden.
• Is there a price too large to spend on a knitting project? Well, yes, but I do anyway.
• Do you knit patterns more than once? Is this presuming there are FO's in my life?
• Do you have a favorite knitwear designer? Yes.
• What is your opinion of those ginormous needle sizes? Nice on your hands?
• Do you understand the Zimmerman EPS system? Yes.
• Do you knit in public? Yes.
• Have you been part of a KAL? Not for long.
• Have you ever knit a “mystery” item? Yes, but it didn't start out that way.
• Do you knit English or Continental? continental.

Don't make me come back here after April and tag you. (Presuming I live through it) Tag!

 

Tagged!

Rules: • Post these rules. • You must post 11 random things about yourself. • Answer the questions the tagger (KSD @ hand eye crafts) set for you in their post. • Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer. • Go to their blog and tell them that you have tagged them. • No stuff in the tagging section about ‘you are tagged if you are reading this.’ blah blah blah, you legitimately have to tag 11 people! (whatever, tag as you like, fun remember?)

Random Facts:
1. My mind goes blank when confronted directly.
2. Well, not blank, but nothing appropriate to the situation either.
3. I have a cat type. Apparently. (Gray)
4. There is no end to the creative and useless things I can do when up against a deadlne.
5. Like reading "Excel: The Missing Manual" by Matthew MacDonald. Or thumbing through HW Fowler's "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage"
6. It's pretty fabulous actually.
7. I've ordered it. (The Excel manual. I had a library copy. I've had Fowler's dictionary for ages.)
8. Did you know that you can see the sum of the cells you've highlighted on the status bar?
9. And you can make up your own fill in set?
10. I like rain.
11. I like puppies.
 
  Questions
1. Who is your favorite Disney villain? Michael Eisner
2. What one fear do you wish you could overcome? imposter syndrome
3. What's your dessert at your last meal? something with whipped cream and coffee
 4. If you had the chance now, would you date your high school crush? I can't even  remember  my high school crush.
 5. If cost were no object, where would you build your dream home? I'd just move here or there.
6. Any sound can wake you up in the morning --- what is it? Whatever it is, I'll think it's something else.
 7. What is your dream pet? What? And risk the Wrath of Hez? A darling gray kitty.
 8. You can commit any crime and get away with it.  What would it be? If I'm committing it, it's not a crime. I hope.
9. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Jack Reacher. He comes in, saves the day, and goes on his way.
 10. You have your own knitting store.  What is it called? Get Out of My Stash. I may not do well.
 11. Eleven questions, or an even dozen? 11

Tag! You're it.

James Bond and explorers

James Bond and explorers are a big thing in book collecting.I know Robert Silverberg wrote madly but have you tried to find any of his books lately?

Oddly, at an event called the Antiquarian Book Print & Paper Fair, most of the books I was really interested in had a price tag of about $975. Or more. A lot more. $25,000 for a 3-volume set of Wealth of Nations? Considering its provenance, yes.

 

 

  Captain Cook featured prominently but honestly, he was the tip of the iceberg. Heh. If I'd thought of that earlier, I'd've hunted down a copy of Shackleton's book.

Guess where I spent a few hours away from my desk? And why did I not remember/know that the Cliff House served popovers? YUM.

St Brigid Poetry Festival, Year Seven

THE SLOTH by Theodore Roethke

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard-

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.


Theodore Roethke

Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

"The Vision of a World Made New"

Nannie Helen Burroughs invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak * at the Women's Convention Auxiliary, National Baptist Convention in September 1954.

 

*PDF file. Click on the arrows rather than try to scroll.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Her Royal Majesty, Queen Hezekiah, wishes to extend her heartfelt hope that all her subjects have a healthy and joyful New Year. 

Her Private Secretary has made a number of resolutions this year that include finishing more projects, focusing, being more "in the moment" (Typepad wants to correct moment to money....) and exercising (she'll take moving more). 

There's a great picture of Hez to be added when I have access to my pictures on a computer and not the phone. Mobile app FAIL. Mind you, no wifi here.

Sadly this conflicts with Her Majesty's desire to be an unmovable lapcat.

*My Kingdom Has Been Returned to Me!

AT LONG LAST! an FO!

Finished kniting the garter stitch collar last Friday night and tried it on - it fits! Modeling it (proudly) for my mother, who gasped "That's amazing!"

Er....wha'? Was it because I actually finished something?

No.

It's because she's been watching me knit that combination of colors in sort of a fascinated horror for the last couple of years and seemed shocked that she liked it.

Let's see if she tries to borrow it.

 

 

I've been reading "Small Talk" by Harold Nicolson

Perusing the shelves at the library, as is my wont, a hardback caught my eye. Small, somewhat inconspicuous, it was noticeably different in that the library call number and author's las name was written (not typed) on the spine. Too cool.

It was written in 1937 (the year my parents were born) and is a series of essays that the author's note advised has been published previously in Good Housekeeping, Nash's Magazine, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, The Listener, Oxford, Britannia & Eve, The Queen, The Graphic and The Radio Times. Some of those periodicals are around, some are long gone and some I've never heard of, presumably because a) I'm not that old or b) they were published in England.

It's vastly amusing to see how different and how similar the world is now. He grew up at the tag end of the Edwardian age and is being schooled by his children - a product of the Great Wars.

Checking some reference, I discovered in Wikipedia that Harold Nicolson was the husband of Vita Sackville-West, who was also the lover of Virginia Woolf.

*"My Kingdom has been returned to me! I have long prayed for this day to come."

"

 

"And now I want to know - who got rid of the fluffy pillow fake snow and replaced it with this overgrown doily? And WTH is with the pointy picket fence?  It's not like it's real snow.

Also, there is too much stuff. I can lie down, in fact, I must, but I'm telling you. I am NOT comfortable. Harumph."