Viborg has been bombed – yarn bombed, happily, which
is so much nicer than the awful goings-on in Boston earlier this week.
A couple of trees on the edge of Borgvold, a little
park by the lakes, have been wrapped in colourful knitting. Before we had two
days of stormy weather, there was also a sign on the fence next to the
multi-trunked tree, saying ‘There is so much work you never see’ – which is why
I suspect locked-out teachers to be behind this.
Yes, the school lockout is still in effect; it has
lasted three full weeks now, and rumours are that the government is not going
to interfere after all. At Victor’s school, some degree of teaching is being
done by teachers who are employed as civil servants: so the ninth graders, over
whom the final tests are looming, are getting some lessons, and the sixth,
third, and second graders, as well.
Victor is in eighth grade, so he is concentrating on
his guitar lessons and practice. And he should: he has been entered to audition
for the Talent Programme at his music school – very exiting!
But I digress. One major point of conflict and
discussion in all this mess is the apparent inability of politicians and people
in general to understand that teachers have more work to do than merely
classroom teaching; this also pertains to the negotiations over the conditions
for high school teachers earlier this year. For some obscure reason, teachers
in all levels of the school system are accused of ‘sitting around and drinking
coffee’ half the day instead of working. And well, yes, teachers do sit around drinking coffee half the
day – while they work. Preparation,
grading, meetings, &c – all this is invisible work and thus susceptible to
denigration by those who do not know what it is to teach, or do not care.
And this is why it seems probable to me that the yarn
bombing was done by teachers.
The
Knitting
I wanted to report back on the Ocean socks that I
knitted recently, just to say how much I love them! Love the yarn, love the
pattern, really enjoyed knitting them – and then I had them sitting there in
all their pristine glory for several days before putting them on to wear for
real, not only to model.
Because herein lies truly the eternal Dilemma of the
Hand-knit Socks: you want to wear them all the time, because they are soft and
warm and pretty, but you don’t want them to be worn out, ever. And you know
that yet they will be worn out, that a thinning of the fabric will occur, and
eventually a hole under the heel or the ball of the foot; and you will have to
choose whether to try darning them or chucking them out. Thus hand-knit socks
can teach us a lesson about the transience of beauty: like the flowers that are
appearing now, in springtime, must wither and die at the end of summer, so all
socks must be worn out. But as new flowers will appear next spring to replace
the dead, thus new socks can be knitted to fill the shoes of the worn out
(sorry about the awful pun, couldn’t help it).
And with the abundance of gorgeous sock patterns and
yarns available, the transient nature of the hand-knit sock is live-with-able.
Though a thing of beauty really is a joy forever, the bittersweet knowledge of
its impermanence can enhance the enjoyment of it. So, I wear my Ocean socks
with love and pride, relishing their warm softness and knowing that they won’t
last forever – although I can’t help wishing they would, sometimes.
But there will be other hand-knit socks: I am down the
leg of the first Fosco sock and onto the heel. This pattern has several
interesting features: a cuff with cross-over ribbing, followed by a complicated
cable going down the side of the leg – the two socks have separate charts – and
a combined cable and eyelet pattern on the remaining part of the leg. So far, so good. Next came the Welsh heel, which I
haven’t tried before, so this is really a quite interesting project. Right now
I am fiddling with the beginning of the gusset: my stitch count may be off, as
I can’t get the instep pattern to fit – I’ll have to look at it again and work
it out.
I promised you pictures of my two most recent FOs, the
Wilhelmina shawlette and the driftwood cardigan, so here goes, straight from the spring sunshine in the garden today:
The KAL for the Comfort of a Friend Woman Shawl
started on Tuesday; I inadvertently jumped the gun and dove into swatching
while it was morning over here – and seven hours later, the official start was
announced. Oops. And then later, next day I think, I realised that the plan for
the KAL has the cast-on happening NEXT WEEK. By that time, I had done the
ribbing and was started on the body increases. Oops again. Almost as if I had
planned it, by the time I had done half of the increases I realised that the
shawl was getting too wide too quickly, so I frogged all of the garter part and
did it over, increasing on every 6th row instead of every 4th.
Anyway, I am not the only one to have worked ahead. To
fill the whole five weeks of the KAL I can either string this shawl out, so to
speak, by only working on it once in a while – or I can finish it and then go
on to knitting the doll and girl versions that I want to make for my niece
Laura, anyway. Or I could string the adult shawl out by working on the little
ones alongside it. Decisions, decisions ...
The
Books
As I mentioned last week, I have been listening to Quiet by Susan Cain, about introverts in
an extravert society. It is no wonder that I enjoyed this book: any book that
caters to your own personality traits, confirming their validity and values, is
easy to love. Cain provides both anecdotal and scientific evidence for the
distinction between the two major personality types treated in the book:
stories of people and their lives, how they handle or fail to handle the
challenges they meet; and studies done by psychologists and psychiatrists in
babies, children, college students. We get a description of a Tony Robbins
seminar – that left me tired just hearing about it – and later in the book
advice for couples, parents, employers and employees on how to respect the
needs of introverts in a world that continually demands outgoingness.
Next up in my Audible downloads is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond,
a history of biology, evolution, language, culture, invention, and warfare to
explain how it is that Europeans have conquered so many other parts of the
world instead of the other way round. The whole of the explanation can, not
surprisingly, be summed up in the title of the book.
This book is in no way a justification of the white
European’s superiority or claim to rule the world; rather a list of natural and
geographical factors that have coincided to make Eurasia the place where
‘civilised’ life developed earliest. Europeans are, of course, no more
intelligent or inventive than peoples around the world: they simply had better
conditions in which to work.
To give a few examples: Eurasia is mainly orientated
East-West, so plant and animal species adapted to the climate of a certain
latitude can spread more easily than on continents lying on a North-South axis
(the Americas and Africa). Most of the ‘big fourteen’, the large herbivores
suited for domestication, were originally found in Eurasia (cows, horses, pigs,
camels, &c).
And so, settled life providing more food and closer
contact with other people and with animals developed earlier in Eurasia than in
other parts of the world, thus exposing humans to various microbes that either
kill you or make you stronger. It wasn’t just Spaniards on horses with guns
(the Spaniards, not the horses) that killed so many Indians in the 16th
century, it was smallpox and measles.
An entirely different book on humans and animals is
George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Thomas
has been reading Orwell lately, so I decided to re-read Animal Farm to better be able to talk with him about it; it is
probably at least 25 years since I last read it, so there may have been a
couple of details I had either forgotten or missed altogether.
It is really a rather depressing story, reminding us of
the glaring incompatibilities between the ideals and the realities of Communist
societies.
‘All Animals are Equal, but some are more Equal than
other.’
And I finished the Ravenor
trilogy; as all good science fiction, this is not only about space travel and
gadgetry, or even daemons and weird magic, but also the human condition in general
and particularly when faced with evil. Ultimate evil, of course, but also the
more squalid kind: slavers, corruption, greed and meanness. I like the way Dan
Abnett manages to write whole persons, not cardboard cut-outs, for minor
characters as well as the main ones; and to drop in those everyday observations
that bring life and depth to the story.
On that happy note, I will leave you for now. Have a
great week; keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!
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