A Bluestocking Knits

  • Aktion 0195

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    1

    Finished, thanks to a couple of extra rehearsals of the Bach "St. John Passion".  The wool is one of the limited runs of Lang Jawoll Aktion — this one is last August’s, apparently, color 132.0195.

    I worked them rather longer than usual, and still had quite a lot of wool left over.  They softened up nicely in the wash, too.

    5_3

    I love the little spool of reinforcing thread that came tucked inside the ball.  I didn’t use it, though, not sure why, maybe I just forgot.

    2

    I had to start the second sock three times, to get the colors to match with the first one — but by golly, it worked!

    3

  • Pathétique

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    Well, this is my sorry output since Christmas.  Not very impressive, is it! but at least it does sound better in French.  So this is part of the leg of the first father-in-law sock, and even less of one for myself when I found some Jawoll Aktion at the local craft store — who frequently surprise me, because, to be honest, most of what they have is eyelash yarn.

    Sigh.

  • Spring

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    Edvard Munch, "Spring" (1889), National Gallery, Oslo.

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    Love Letters

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    In honor of the day, here is what must be one of the most romantic letters in fiction, Captain Wentworth’s to Anne Elliott near the end of Jane Austen’s Persuasion —

    "I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone have brought me to Bath.  For you alone I think and plan.  — Have you not seen this?  Can you fail to have understood my wishes? — I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.  I can hardly write.  I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me.  You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others. — Too good, too excellent creature!  You do us justice indeed.  You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.  Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in

    F. W.

    I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening, or never."

    Sigh!

    "You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago –"

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    Fruit Coulis

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    Fc1

    Some knee socks for Julia, Jitterbug in "Fruit Coulis", with a K3, P1, K1, P1 rib, offset by three at the cuff, as in the Yarrow Ribbed Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks, but with a standard slip stitch heel and wedge toe.

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    Fc4

    Fc3_2

    The color is even more vivid in real life, I assure you.

    Poisson_2

    I have been listening to a new album of mine, "Le Jour du Poisson" by Thomas Fersen.  He has a song each on two of the French Putomayo albums, "French Playground" and "Paris", both of which albums we listen to quite a lot — this is how I heard of him.  I find his music fascinating — melodic and quirky, intelligently crafted, with each song having a character completely its own and yet still recognizably "Fersen".  One song has a klezmer-y feel, another salsa, one a rather thrilling tango, one a lovely lilting piano and orchestra accompaniment that makes it almost a lullaby, another has a rather formal brass band intro and then sweeps in with an unexpectedly charming lounge-singer feel.  Fersen’s voice is rough and smoky — very Gauloise.  I suspect that Fersen’s music might bear comparisons to Tim Finn’s, also quirky, melodic, and highly intelligent.  Alas, that I do not speak French! for I am somewhat dismayed that I understand very little of Fersen’s lyrics — one of the things I appreciate deeply about Tim Finn is that his lyrics are so interesting (and they rhyme, always for me a sign that the writer has given a lot of thought to what he wants to say) — but this is certainly my own limitation, and not Fersen’s!

  • “Groundhog Day”, by Julia

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    Ghd1

    "The groundhog is down in the ground, sleeping."

    Ghd2

    "He is going to come up here.  He might see his shadow!"

    Ghd3

    "He’s coming up, and if he sees his shadow, he’s going to go ‘Aaauugh!’ and …"

    Ghd5

    "go back down!"

    Ghd6

    "He’s back down!  Winter is going to last six more weeks!"

  • Twelfth Night

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    Here is my "annual" Twelfth Night photo, from the 1987 Royal Shakespeare Company production — Jim Hooper as Fabian, Roger Allam as a rather svelte Sir Toby, and David Bradley as the dimwitted Sir Andrew Aguecheek.  Brilliant, all — with Harriet Walter as Viola and Antony Sher as Malvolio.  I had the good fortune to see this production in Stratford, and it still glows in my memory.

    I shall not hazard much of a guess as to where in the play this photo was taken, since it would seriously distract me from getting this post written, but here is as handy a quote as any, I think — Fabian says to Sir Andrew, talking him into duelling with Cesario (Viola in disguise), "you are now sailed into the north of my lady’s opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy," (Act 3, Scene 2) which laudable attempt is unfortunately beyond Sir Andrew’s, er, limited capabilities.  Bradley was wonderfully dense — not quite as poignant as Richard E. Grant in the 1996 movie, perhaps — but very funny, nevertheless.

    In knitting news — because there is some! — I finished my Spey Valley socks just before Christmas.

    Spey

    This grey wool — Regia 4-Ply farbe 44 — is wonderfully hairy and dour, quite Scottish, I thought.

    Vikkel

    Am delighted with the Vikkel Braid, which is basically just a twisted stitch laid on its side.  After you work the twist — a K second st tbl, K first st maneuver familiar from EZ’s January Aran and other projects — you put the last st worked back on the left needle and repeat.  Instead of slanting 45° it slants 90, for a fantastically different effect.

    And I started a Vintage Velvet scarf in some delicious "Touch Me" chenille — very touchable, indeed.  I frequently find myself just petting it!

    Vv

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    Now is the Caroling Season

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    I’m in the middle of a long week-end of concerts — well, two, to be honest, but we usually do only one! and so it feels rather intense.  This year we are singing, in addition to some of the wonderful carols from the first volume of "Carols for Choirs", the "Gloria" by Francis Poulenc.  I wasn’t so sure about this piece when we sang it some years ago, but it’s growing on me.  I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to church music — sometimes, the more ancient it is, the better!  Well, that’s a sweeping generalization, but modern stuff usually leaves me rather cold.  But after six or eight weeks of rehearsals, the Poulenc has gotten fun to sing — difficult, though, not like, say "Messiah", which is not only possibly my favorite piece ever to sing, out of a very extensive field, but wonderfully sensible.  The Poulenc has some very strange leaps and progressions that puzzle when you are picking them out on the piano, but come together in a surprisingly cinematic way.  In fact, I find myself humming snatches of it and "scoring" movies in my head — one theme in the "Agnus Dei" sounds rather like a 1930s horror movie, frightening and poignant at the same time, the "Domine Deus Unigenite" is quite rollicking, even "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", and the last movement, with its dreamy "tu solus altissimus," seems to belong in a bittersweet 1960s French romance, all rainy umbrellas and Parisian melancholy.

    We also have unusually early calls this year — had almost an hour this afternoon between the end of rehearsal and the beginning of the concert — and so I’ve gotten quite far on the second Spey Valley sock, almost down to the heel already ….

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    Thoughts on the Fuzzyfeet

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    What have I been doing all this month, you ask?  Knitting?  Ha!  I have been driving small children hither and yon — tonight I am up late waiting to go and collect my mouse/little angel/Gingerette from Dress Rehearsal #1.

    Well, I have managed to winkle out of my free minute-and-a-half this month a pair of the famous Fuzzyfeet by Theresa Stenersen of Bagatell, though.  These were going to be a Christmas present, but I’ve sort of, well, redirected them a bit.  Here are the before and after photos, with the first half of a pair of Spey Valley socks for scale.

    Fuzzyfeet1

    Fuzzyfeet2

    Zoinks!  I washed them on my front-loader’s warm-cold setting but did not "stop when the desired size" as I wanted them to be easy-care, and I personally am not about the hand-washing of the socks, and don’t want to mess around with running out to the machine every two minutes, so I doubted that auntie would be either.  They shrank much more than expected, unfortunately.  I don’t mind much, though — it was an experiment, after all.  The felted fabric is rather fascinating — wonderful, how all of the wobbly bits just sort of disappear, too!

    I did have to break into the second skein to finish the last two inches, so Fuzzyfeet knitters, take heed.

    Alas, they are now far too small for auntie, and so they have been glommed onto by Laura, who is quite taken with them.  She was, however, quite mortified when I asked her to step out onto the front porch this morning to model them in the only available light, and she shrieked mightily.  "Mom! I’m still in my pyjamas!"  So the photo is a bit rushed.

    Fuzzyfeet3

    Still, the Fuzzies are warm and much as the name implies, and Julia is already casting not-so-subtle hints about a pair for her as well.

    Oh, there’s my warning bell — off I go —

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    They All Fell So Much in Love With Her That They Never Minded Going to the Swamp the Next Morning to Fight With the Dragon

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    One of my favorite illustrators is Edward Ardizzone.  He has a wonderful way with line and form, of catching character with a telling detail, and a sparkling sense of humor — which, by the way, I have to resist spelling with a "u" here, as one of the things I find so enchanting about Ardizzone is his utter Englishness.  I am especially fond of Sarah and Simon and No Red Paint, the story of two children whose father is a painter, but is rather poor because although he paints beautiful pictures, very few people would buy them — and of his "Tim" series of books, about a particularly enterprising boy’s adventures at sea.  Ardizzone seems to have had a knack for illustrating books whose authors’ humor matched his own, such as John Symonds’ Elfrida and the Pig, which starts, "In a house near a lake there once lived a clever child.  She could

    Play the piano,
    Do sums as long as your arm,
    Read Latin,
    And write letters to important people,"

    which you may think is a promising start, and you would be right.

    I was reading The Dragon to the girls last night, a story written by Archibald Marshall, who was obviously another kindred spirit to Ardizzone, who drew the book’s illustrations — "Once a long time ago there was a very horrible dragon that settled itself in a swamp near a city and began to eat up the people who lived near it.  So of course they didn’t go on living there but came into the city where there was less chance of the dragon getting at them" — and decided that I couldn’t resist sharing one of the illustrations, for fairly obvious reasons, I suspect.  On reflection, I realized that this particular drawing is very characteristic of Ardizzone — one can be swept along with the story of this particular Princess who was too beautiful for words, or linger and appreciate the intricacy of the illustrations, the way that the tips of the painter’s shoes turn up, the balance of the Princess’ poses in her chair and her portrait and the lovely way that her point of her hennin just breaks the edges of the frame, of the nurse’s absorption in her knitting, the curl of the spaniel’s tail and the exquisite squiggle behind it.

Knitting, reading, other stuff.

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