My Middle Name is Patience

Mitering Mary Tudor

I've joined a reading challenge! Eco-Challenge at Chris' Book-a-rama. I like that the rules say between 1-5 books and I can justify my choices with a spirited debate. Starts May 1 through Sept 30th.

I've gone from saying "Cool" to saying "Excellent." Not so much in a Ted & Bill Adventure way but more in a mad professor style. What I want to know is why? Am I going to start cooing  "darling" soon?

In knitting news, stupid mitered corner. Evidently you're supposed to pick up the edge stitches of the body and miter the corner of of the buttonhole band while you're attaching it.

Somehow, I don't think this is right.

She has a "marked stitch" at the end that I read as it's knit together with a picked up stitch from the body but then I still have only the one marked stitch and I'm supposed to be adding five stitches to the band. Shouldn't there be slipping in there? And picking up of more stitches?

It's the mitering one side and picking up the edge of the already knit part that's confounding me. I can miter a corner while I'm knitting the whole thing but half done? Argh. Any suggestions? (Not including setting it on fire. I'm too close to being done).

READING: I've been reading The Periodic Table by Primo Levi - I ran across it in a used bookstore Thursday night and it’s just fabulous so far. It’s the semi autobiographical novel of his life as an Italian Jewish chemist up to and during WWII (so far) and he’s done the fascinating twist of sectioning off pieces of his life using various periodic elements as the anchor to those memories.

                    Monday

Is anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it’s supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There’s nothing sadder.

Except perhaps a cart horse,
Shut between two shafts
And unable even to look sideways.
Its whole life is walking.

And a man? Isn’t a man sad?
If he lives in solitude a long time,
If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.

–Primo Levi
January 17, 1946
From Collected Poems
Faber and Faber, London, 1988.

Ten Is A Lot

Chartroose tagged me for a meme and against all odds, past practice and fate, I'm actually going to do this within a 24 hour time frame. Shocking, ain't it?

Well, it would have been.

The Rules: The rules are simple:  choose 10 favorite things beginning with a single letter of the alphabet and explain why you like them.  The only catch is that the letter is assigned to you by the person who wrote the post you’ve just read.

Uh oh. Let's see how quick I am to assign the letters.

My letter is T (because I am Terrific. Chartroose said so.)

T: Ten things? Geez. Hey! 1. Ten. 10.   That's one of ten. What's not to like about ten? Ten fingers to knit with, to turn pages, ten toes to count when ten fingers arent enough. Ten helps to scale unweighable options, as in on a scale of one to ten, a way to combat the homicide rate by counting to ten first, ranks everything from authors to hot guys to zoos in the Top Ten. Image taken from Lil Fingers Storybook Coloring site. 

Poem found at  The International Virtual Institute for Historical studies of Mathematics. 

Ode to the Numbers by Pablo Neruda
			Such thirst to know how much! Such hunger to know how many stars in the sky! We pass our infancies counting stones, plants, fingers, sand grains, teeth, pass our youths counting petals, hairs. We count the color and the years, the lives and kisses, bulls in the fields, waves in the sea. The ships made ciphers which multiplied. The numbers spawned. The cities were thousands, millions, and the wheat came in hundreds of units each holding other integers tinier than a single grain. Time became a number. Light became numbered and however much it raced with sound it had a velocity of 37. Numbers surround us, At night we would lock the door, exhausted, approaching 800; below having come to bed with us in that sleep the 4,000 and the 77 goaded our foreheads with their wrenches and hammers. The 5 would compound itself until it entered the sea or the delirium where the sun might greet it with steel and we co racing to the office, the mill, the factory, to start fresh with the infinite number 1 of each day. Friend, we had the time so our thirst could be satisfied, the ancestral longing to enumerate things and total them, reducing them until rendering them dust, dunes of numbers. We are papering the world with figures and ciphers, but the things existed nonetheless, fleeing all tallies, becoming dehydrated by such quantities, leaving their fragrance and memories, and the empty numbers remained. For that reason, for you I love the things. The numbers which go to jail, move in closed columns procreating until they give us the sum for the whole of infinity. For your sake I want some numbers of the way to defend you and you to defend them. May your weekly wages increase and grow chest-deep! And out of the number 2 that binds your body and your beloved wife's emerge the matches eyes of your sons to tally yet again the ancient stars and innumerable spikes of wheat which shall fulfill the transfigured earth. (Trans. William Pitt Root) from NUMBERS AND FACES, Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, Issue # 24, June 2001, pp. 23 - 25.

 

2. Taxes.  I don't love paying taxes and I wish there was a dollar for dollar acounting for where exactly the tax dollars go but tax returns? Are fun. The deductions, the credits, there's a story behind how each one landed on your tax return and the little social tweaking that goes on.

3. Traffic: Techically I loathe and despise traffic. I've been known to go miles out of my way just to drive at a snail's pace so I don't SIT on the freeway. (Now if I was at a stop light, I'd probably pull out my knitting or a book. But on the freeway? I just fume.) But the last few months, there has been an eerie and somewhat terrifying dearth of traffic. Please tell me all those folks time shifted their work hours, moved out of state or are working from home, as opposed to, say, mass unemployment.  Pretty please?

Side note: Last night when driving out to Berkeley to meet up with Birdsong - who is as fabulous as you'd think, if not more so - check out the Triina she's knitting, that yarn is so soft. Also nupps are pronounced noops evidently just because Nancy Bush says so - there was plenty of traffic, particularly when I was on the frontage road by the Berkeley Marina with oncoming traffic on both sides of me. Yowza.  

4. Tuna: Technically Sheba was the one that loved tuna but I must include it. She loved Bumblebee water packed tuna the best. Actually she loved the juice the best, the rest of it I could toss.   Hezekiah has not really hopped on the Tuna Love train (although she'll eat it, if it's fresh.) What she really likes are my spinach souffles but those are S's, not T's.

5. Trees. I LOVE trees. Look at my late lamented poor ghost pine trees. They were viciously attacked by pine beetles (who are currently working on the rest of the pine trees in the neighborhood -sob). To this day, the bluejay will occasionally hop around disconsolantly where his pine tree was and complain bitterly about its loss. We are in complete agreement.

There seems to be this dreadful conspiracy against trees lately. They're being lopped out of yards, shopping malls (the to better "see" the shops - any shop that felled trees, I don't frequent anymore). 

And, at times, I can't see the forest for the trees.

6. Tomatos. There is no more glorious food than a tomato freshly plucked from your garden.

7. Tomorrow. My favorite time to do something. Which is one reason why this post is so darn long.

8. Time. No time left for me! On my way to better things........What's not to love about time? I just wish they'd perfect Time Travel.

9. The Tudors. No list of T's would be complete without the Tudors. Now that's what I call a fun family. Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth R PBS miniseries began a fascination with British royalty.  Wow, Glenda Jackson is an MP now? And that series was shown in 1971? Huh.

10. Think. Think, think, think. What else starts with a "T"?

Miss T, of the Mystery House of Yarn & Horrors, who graciously awarded me with the  Kreativ Blogger Award.

I'd be happy to give out a letter to anyone who's interested! But I warn you, this is harder than it looks. Just me? That figures. :)

Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading

A Blogger's Silent Poetry Reading.  I almost missed this! And I'll have to be content w/Maud because a book I just finished kept quoting it at the beginning of the chapters and it's the only poem that comes to mind. For now [said ominously].   Yes, it's the beginning of Poetry Month.

Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson

Maud

COME into the garden, Maud,
    For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
    I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
    And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
    And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
    On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
    To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
    The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
    To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
    And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, 'There is but one
    With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
    She is weary of dance and play.'
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
    And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
    The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, 'The brief night goes
    In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those
    For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,' so I sware to the rose,
    'For ever and ever, mine.'

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
    As the music clash'd in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
    For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
    Our wood, that is dearer than all;

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
    That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
    In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
    And the valleys of Paradise.

The slender acacia would not shake
    One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
    As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
    Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
    They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
    Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
    Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls.
    To the flowers, and be their sun.

There has fallen a splendid tear
    From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
    She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'
    And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'
    And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
    Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
    Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
    Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
    And blossom in purple and red.

From Englishverse.com

I also have something to ask of you.

In these days of terrible economic crisis, you might want to adopt - a word! Go to Save the Words for your own word to adopt. Mind you, the site is a bit  keleusmatic.

Third Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Day

One of my favorite cyberspace traditions, posting poetry in honor of Brigid, the Celtic Goddess of Poetry, smith craft and healing. Here are my contributions in Feb 07 and Feb 06. (Darn, I can't link Feb 06. The poems were The World is Too much With Us by William Wordsworth and El Dorado by Edgar Allen Poe, practically the only poem I can still recite. )

And this year's offerings, the first by Anonymous from 1885:

A Stocking in Rhyme
To knit a stocking, needles four,
Cast on the needles and no more;
Each needled stitches eight and twenty,
Then one for seam stitch will be plenty.
Four twenty rounds your stitch must be
Two plain, two purl alternately,
Except the seam stitch which you do
Once purl, once plain, the whole way through.
A finger plain you next must knit,
Ere you begin to narrow it;
But if you like the stocking long,
Two fingers' length will not be wrong.
And then the narrowings to make,
Two stitches you together take
Each side the seam; then eight rounds plain,
Before you narrow it again.
Ten narrowings you'll surely find
Will shape the stocking to your mind;
Then twenty rounds knit plain must be,
And stitches sixty-five you'll see.
These just in half you must divide,
With thirty-two on either side;
But on one needle there must be
Seam stitch in middle, thirty-three.
One half on needles two you place,
And leave alone a little space;
The other with the seam in middle,
To manage right is now my riddle.
Backward and forward you must knit,
And always purl the backward bit;
But seam stitch, purl and plain, you know,
And slip the first stitch every row.
When thirty rows you thus have done,
Each side the seam knit two in one
Each third row, until sure you feel
That forty rows are in your heel.
You then begin the hell to close;
For this, choose one of the plain rows;
Knit plain to seam, then two in one,
One plain stitch more must still be done.
Then turn your work, purl as before
The seam stitch – two in one, one more;
Then turn again, knit till you see
Where first you turned, a gap will be.
Across it knit together two,
And don't forget one plain to do;
Then turn again, purl as before,
And sew till there's a gap no more.
The seam stitch you no longer mind,
That, with the hell, I s left behind.
When all the heel is quite closed in,
To knit a plain row you begin,
And at the end you turn no more,
But round and round knit as before.
For this, on a side needle take
The loops the first slip-stitches make;
With your heel needle – knit them plain,
To meet the old front half again.
This on one needle knit should be,
And then you'll have a needle free
To take up loops the other side,
And knit round plain, and to divide
The back parts evenly in two;
Off the heel needle some are due;
Be careful that you count the same.
On each back needle, knit round plain;
But as the foot is much too wide,
Take two together at each side,
On the back needle where they meet
The front to make a seam quite neat.
Each time between knit one plain round,
Till stitches sixty- four are found;
And the front needle does not lack
As many as on both the back.
You next knit fifty-six rounds plain,
But do not narrow it again;
'Twill then be long enough, and so
Begin to narrow for the toe.
Your long front row knit plainly through,
But at its end knit stitches two;
Together and together catch
Two first in the next row to match;
Then to the other side knit plain
Half round, and do the same again;
That is, two last together catch,
Two first in the front row to match.
At first knit four plain rounds between,
Then two, ten one, until 'tis seen
You've knit enough to close the toe;
And then decrease in every row,
Until to stitches eight you're brought,
Then break the thread off – not too short –
And as these stitches eight you do,
Each time your end of thread pull through;
Then draw up all to close it tight,
And with a darning needle bright,
Your end of thread securely run,
And then, hurrah! The stocking's done!

By Anonymous

A poem both dismal and hopeful (love those Russian poets):

When Life Is But A Round Of Crushing Care

When life is but a round of crushing care And, a great heap of stones, lies heavy on us, There suddenly, God knows how, why, upon us A joyous mood descends... Of balmy air A breath comes from the past and, o'er us drifting, Invades the heart, its fearful burden lifting. At times with autumn's coming is it so, When empty lie the fields, when bare the groves are, And paler turn the skies - and of a sudden, over The darkened earth a damp wind starts to blow. A fallen leaf it chases with elation And to our hearts of spring brings a sensation. by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev

Poetry For No Reason

Marina Ivanova Tsvetaeva / December 12, 1923

You who loved me with the falseness
Of truth - and the truth of lies.
You who loved me-beyond
Anything!-Over the edge!
You who loved me beyond
Time-Right hand, wave!
You love me no more:
The truth in five words.

I love that poem.

Found surfing around:Programmable Robots - WHAT year? exerpt: Yet the trail doesn't stop there. It led me even further back past the automata of the Byzantine court and ancient Rome to ancient Alexandria. It was here that Hero, one of the greatest Greek engineers, constructed a programmable robot that pre-dates da Vinci's by 1500 years. Its control system turns out to be unique; more like knitting than a computer circuit. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence linking Hero's design to the programming languages used in, say, Honda's latest humanoid robot Asimo.

Ha. Knitting is everywhere, which, considering its mathematical properties, isn't all that surprising.

Joan at The FairyGodknitter is having a comment contest, the deadline being August 13th, her birthday. Go comment!

I'd show knitting pictures and progress but there isn't any. Well any discernable progress. Queueing my projects I've noticed that my WIP's are.....old. Old-old. They've had birthdays old. I've got to stop starting new projects and frogging them with wild abandon. 

I hopscotched around on the book reviews of the books read last month and missed my absolute favorite:

The Secret Lives of People In Love by Simon Van Booy. Short stories written with evocative charm. I love his turn of phrase and his imagery. Stories with sentences like [and here I just opened the book to a random page because every page has something as beautiful as this is] "I cannot walk farther because something sweeps through me - something so sad it renders the world broken and perfect all in the same feeling." I was always aware that I was reading, his choice of words conjures up visions outside the story, but at the same time, I was also being told a story. No matter how small the story, a grief struck young man and his father, they just.....reverberate. I can't think of a better word.

I read the library's copy of the book, then bought my own copy. (I found this book through Bookfool's review. Thanks, Bookfool!)

.......[skipping books I've already talked about].....  Sacred Cows by Karen Olson. I enjoyed the angle of Annie being a journalist investigating and her relationships. Her cop boyfriend and the Boy From High School was a little awkward, but I suppose it would be. I take it either journalists are still the hard drinkers they were in The Old Days or Annie needs rehab. I picked up Secondhand Smoke (the second in the series) at the library last night. (Reviewed & Recommended by Musings of a Bookish Kitty)

Urban Shaman by C E Murphy, (Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos read & reviewed) Another hardboiled dame. Joanne Walker (or is she?) has a near death experience and her world will never be the same. (Which is cheating a bit because things were going a little haywire before that - spotting a damsel in distress from an airplane? Yup. She did.) Kind of a tough girl version of Charles de Lint. She's a police mechanic but circumstances force her into wearing the badge for real and battling Herne the Hunter and the Wild Hunt of Celtic lore. Another book where I liked both the heroine and the people around her (you know, along with the storyline and the plot).

Time's Children by Rebecca Ore. I'd probably like this book a lot better if it didn't forcibly remind me of Kage Baker's Mendoza series. Clearly there are differences, but that those controlling the time travel inherited the time travel mechanism from the veiled future is the same premise. Although I'll see. I'm only about a quarter of the way through it.

Submissions are due August 10th for the Book Carnival - The theme this month is Surviving the Dog Days of Summer: Books That Take Your Mind Off the Heat.

2nd Annual St Brigid Bloggers Poetry

Root Down is hosting  the tradition that Reya started last year. It  was lovely. There was poetry everywhere online. Here are the specs:

WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading
WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2007
WHERE: Your blog
WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid, aka Groundhog Day
HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2nd.

RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on this post. Last year Reya put out the call and there was more poetry in cyberspace than she could keep track of. So, link to whoever you hear about this from and a mighty web of poetry will be spun.

Feel free to pass this invitation on to any and all bloggers.

And my contribution:

                                    Believing In Iron

                                                          by Yusef Komunyakaa

The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years

To discover how the world worked.

We could look at a tree of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added up to much,
But we couldn't stop

Believing in iron.
Abandoned trucks & cars
Were held to the ground
By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines
Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.
We'd return with our wheelbarrow
Groaning under a new load,
Yet tiger lilies lived better
In their languid, August domain.
Among paper & Coke bottles
Foundry smoke erased sunsets,
& we couldn't believe iron

Left men bent so close to the earth

As if the ore under their breath
Weighed down the gray sky.
Sometimes I dreamt how our hills
Washed into a sea of metal,
How it all became an anchor
For a warship or bomber
Out over trees with blooms
Too red to look at.

And there must be knitting content:

Winding Wool

by Robert Service

She'd bring to me a skein of wool 

And beg me to hold out my hands; 

so on my pipe I cease to pull 

And watch her twine the shining strands

Into a ball so snug and neat, 

Perchance a pair of socks to knit

To comfort my unworthy feet, 

Or pullover my girth to fit. 

As to the winding I would sway, 

A poem in my head would sing,

And I would watch in dreamy way

The bright yarn swiftly slendering.

The best I liked were coloured strands

I let my pensive pipe grow cool . . .

Two active and two passive hands,

So busy winding shining wool. 

Alas! Two of those hands are cold,

And in these days of wrath and wrong,

I am so wearyful and old, 

I wonder if I've lived too long.

So in my loneliness I sit 

And dream of sweet domestic rule . . .

When gentle women used to knit,

And men were happy winding wool.