Saturday, February 17, 2007

Going nowhere, slowly

My usual blog nite and large chunk of crafting time this past week disappeared in a pile of blankets surrounding my shivering self, bleary eyes, and a temperature - the sum of whose digits was a whopping total of three (no decimals included). I knew things were bad when I considered knitting and dismissed the notion out of hand. I did manage to listen to the last 2 cassettes of Turgenyev's Fathers and Sons, however. That only required wiggling a hand out of my cocoon, engaging in a small display of manual dexterity (the tape recorder was on the floor, and the room was dark), and returning the hand back to the cocoon.

I survived to make a 210 mile round-trip trek to dd's doctor the next day, and review a knitting submission once we returned home. I'm still on the tired side, though.

I do have pictures of February's Stash Hat, have finished one sock (doctor visits are good for that), and have made some abysmally small progress on the Alpine Lace (but I did order more yarn!)

No pictures today, though. That would take too much energy. Instead, I shall share my daughter's imitation of "Sing a Song of Sixpence", one of this week's assignments.

Knitting is creative fun,
Let me tell you why.
You can play with colors,
Patterns multiplyu.
Toys are soft and fuzzy,
And are knit easily!
They are delightful to be found
Underneath the Christmas Tree.

You can knit a blanket
Quickly to get warm.
You can knit some wool socks
To keep your toes from harm.
You can knit some mittens,
To give to charity.
While wearing handknit sweaters,
You can drink some warm mint tea.

It's nice having another knitter in the family.

I wonder what she'll do with "Rise Up, O Men of God"? Perhaps something along the lines of
Rise Up and Knit That Stash
Have done with buying yarn.
Devote yourself to using up
The wool stored in your barn.

Knitlore has wonderful possibilities for language studies. Whatever will dd do when we get to studying maxims and chreia? I can see the possibilities now ... take one of Stephanie Pearl McPhee's archived narratives, summarize it, create a maxim from it, recast it as a chreia, and write an Encomium paragraph for the maxim you have created. (Have I been doing too much editing today?)

Knittior, Altior, Fortior
Knitto, ergo sum.
Dum spiro, knitto.

Knitting wasn't around in the classical Latin period (unless, of course, you consider the Knitting Madonna to be an accurate representation of an event during Mary's lifetime), so there isn't an official Latin word for it that I know of. If you know of a semi-official one that has been coined since then, leave me a comment!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh you poor honey. That sounds like a miserable cold.

I love your progymnastic view of knitting. And hats off to Miss A., who is clearly following in her mother's worthy occupations.

: )