Back To School

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

This week, I will run a quick update on our goings-on; there is a little bit of knitting, but no pics just yet; and rather more about the death throes of the Roman Republic in the 1^st century BCE.

For some, at least, this week has seen a return to the everyday routine of getting up early and packing oneself off to work or school. Mostly, the schools start next week – tomorrow, that is – and that is it for the summer holidays. The weather is following suit, being cooler, windy, and alternately rainy and sunny. Typical Danish summer weather, in other words.

And so begins another academic year; and it is time for an update. Some of you know me & my boys already, others do not.

Andreas, my eldest, is 19 now and this week embarking on his third and final year of AspIT, an IT education for young people with Asperger’s. During this year, he will be doing quite a bit of work training to help him decide which area he wants to work in – for him, it will be either Visualisation: building websites, or Technical hardware something-or-other: building and repairing computers and servers and whatnot.

Thomas is 17, going on 18 and thus starting lessons for his driver’s licence. And, on the side, starting next week, his third and final year of the gymnasium (upper secondary / high school); he is taking the arts & language line, with English and Spanish as his main languages, and German and Latin, too.

Victor just turned 15; he is, also next week, heading into his final year of school, 9^th grade, and along with that, the Talent Programme for guitar. This week, actually, Thursday to Sunday, he has done the summer course for youngsters at the Music Academy in Aarhus.

And me? I’m preparing to go back to teaching, this time at the University in Aarhus. Two classes in Latin for beginners ... that should be interesting.

Last time I taught Latin, it was to hordes of 16-year-olds who mostly didn’t have a clue why they were there, except that their schedule told them to go to that room at that time, or why they needed Latin, or why indeed they should care about anything I said, when the grades they got for the brief course did not count.

Not that I am bitter about the school reform or the way it murdered treated Latin. Not a bit.

So, having students who are at least three years older and presumably have some idea why they have chosen to study Latin at university can only be an improvement. Oh, and two classes are fewer than eight.

I still have a few weeks to go, as the semester doesn’t start until September, but there is a bunch of practical stuff that needs sorting out. I went in on Thursday after dropping Victor off at the Music Academy, for a meeting with my friend George who was my classmate back in 1991, when we, young and innocent, entered into the world of academia, and is now more or less my supervisor. Not in the sense that he can tell me what to do, but in the sense that I can ask him about stuff and he helps me out. For one thing, I will have a part-time slave instructor, so I wanted to find out to what use such a one can be put.

As you will have noticed, if you’ve been here before: I have tidied the Basket a bit. I wanted a cleaner overall look, and on the right you can now find links to the stories I put up now and again. It is still under construction, and I want to make a page with links to patterns, and probably sort the story page a bit more.

The Knitting

I have finished knitting the much-mentioned lace shawl: now, it is soaking before being blocked, and then I will take pretty pictures, go through the pattern one more time, and release the Kraken. Or something.

The birthday knit for Laura is coming along very nicely. As yet, there is no reason to panic that it might not be finished in time; the time being next Sunday, her birthday.

See, not a lot of knitting talk this time, even though I have been knitting. I promise, next time there will be more. And pictures.

The Books

So, this week I finished two audio books: Dickens – A Life by Claire Tomalin, and The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis.

The latter can be found on the Forgotten Classics podcast, hosted by the mellow-voiced Julie who reads various books that are old enough to be in the public domain, and not very well known (hence the title of the show, I guess).

Interspersed between book episodes are shorter episodes, Lagniappes (and I learned a new word: lagniappe comes via American French from American Spanish la ñapa and ultimately from Quechua yapa meaning a something extra you get with a purchase – what they nowadays call a ‘free gift’, but this word is so much better!) containing, say, a short story, or an excerpt from something interesting. I have been catching up on Lagniappes, listening to, among other things, two Jeeves & Wooster stories; which was fun, as Victor has been watching the Fry & Laurie series recently (he got them for his birthday), and the reader sometimes sounds almost like Hugh Laurie when doing Wooster. I say almost, for he (the reader) is obviously American and does not sound quite English, though he does a good job.

The Dickens biography I have gone over at length; I won’t tire you with more of that.

My next audio book is a Danish one: Kvindernes Krig / The Women’s War, written by a female language & communications officer, Anne-Cathrine Riebnitzsky, about her work in the Helmand province in Afghanistan.

This is a true story about dust and soldiers and IEDs and women struggling for their rights and their lives against the religiously motivated oppression of the Taliban, as well as the everyday culturally based oppression of poverty, domestic violence, illiteracy, and general ignorance about themselves and the world. Don’t get me wrong, I am not implying that Afghan women – or men – are stupid or backward, only that their country has been wrecked by war for so long that skills and knowledge have been forgotten; and the Taliban will do their damndest to keep it that way.

The women whom ‘AC’ worked with in 2007-8 wanted independence, to be able to earn their own money, to be pretty, to read, to learn English. They wished for police and judges who were not corrupt; for girls to not be married off at 12 or 10 or 8; for their children to go to school.

Such a report from a woman who has actually been there, talked with the women, worked to help them with various projects, is hugely interesting and useful, not least to us Danish civilians. The debate in this country about our military presence in other places tends to focus on the perceived unreasonableness of Danish soldiers being maimed and killed, and of even having a military presence anywhere. A lot of people who should know better need a reminder that there is actually very valuable work being done by Danish military forces, in conjunction with not least the British, and that the soldiers going out there know the score. They, and their families, deserve the admiration and respect of the rest of us, no less than the admiration and respect they are given by the people they work to help.

My ongoing Latin reading project has me still reading Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, and still, even, the first book, The First Man in Rome. This will last me a while.

After reading Caesar and the biography (mentioned last week), I decided it would be fitting to read Cicero’s so-called Philippic Speeches, held in the period between the murder of Caesar – that happened on the Ides of March, 15^th March 44 BCE – and the murder of Cicero himself in December 43 BCE.

Just a reminder: Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 BCE in Arpinum outside of Rome and was, like Gaius Marius, a homo novus, one of the very few to come from outside the old families and attain consular status. So, he was a statesman, a politician; he was a brilliant speaker, which was part of the reason for his success in politics, and led a number of people to request his help in various court cases. Professional lawyers were not invented, so proceedings before the magistrates or courts were regarded as services to friends, favours that could later be called in.

Cicero was a philosopher, too, and performed a huge task for the Latin language and Roman philosophy by translating the works of Greek philosophers, thereby developing new words and turns of phrase and rendering schools of thought accessible to a new group of people.

44 BCE – and several years to come – was a time of chaos, when everybody was scrabbling to fill the void left by Caesar and discovered that the Republic did not automatically restore itself once the tyrant was gone.

The ‘liberators’ had failed to make plans beyond the stabbing itself, which left room for Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony) to reach in and grab for the reins. He quickly secured Caesar’s papers (and his secretary) and proceeded to have the Senate recognise not only Caesar’s proper acta, his laws & decisions, but also half-thought-out notes and even Marcus Antonius’ own plans, claimed to be Caesar’s.

This was done after the Senate had found itself compromising over the legitimacy of the murder: if Caesar had been a tyrant, then the slaying was just and legal and even necessary – but in that case, all of his acta were to be deemed illegitimate, and a lot of the senators held their positions and their restored fortunes thanks to Caesar. So nobody really wanted that.

On the other hand, they did not want to condemn the 60 senators who had participated in the plot to kill Caesar, as that would mean civil war, and they had just had one of those, between Caesar and Pompey / the Pompeians in 49 – 46 BCE.

So, in the end, the ‘republicans’, the killers of Caesar, received an amnesty, and the acta of Caesar were allowed to stand.

Cicero had tried for years to play the role of the wise philosopher guiding the men in power, first attempting – without any success – to reconcile Caesar and Pompey, who both wanted his advice and support. Now, he at first rejoiced in the removal of the threat to his beloved Republic, believing, it seems, that it would right itself. Nobody was, apparently, able to comprehend that the Republic was already dead, and that now, it was a matter of which one ruler Rome was to have. He eagerly advocated that Marcus Antonius be removed, as well, recognising the threat that he, too, posed to the resurrection of the proper order.

That did not happen, though, and Marcus Antonius proceeded to embezzle the funds that Caesar had set aside for his planned campaign against the Parthians.

After leaving Rome in early April to travel to Greece, Cicero returned when rumours reached him of Marcus Antonius being approachable, and between September 44 and April 43 BCE, he worked against this would-be heir to Caesar’s power in 14 speeches to the Senate and people of Rome.

In April 43 BCE, even Cicero had to realise that words were not enough, that civil war was coming.

The two designated consuls were both killed in battle against Marcus Antonius during this month;

Octavian (the grand-nephew whom Caesar had adopted in his will and made his heir) demanded to be elected consul in July, but only succeeded in August, when he led his army towards Rome;

the amnesty for the killers of Caesar was revoked;

in November, a triumvirate was formed by Marcus Antonius, Octavian and Lepidus (who was only there to make up the number), and they immediately proceeded to proscriptions;

in December, Cicero was killed while wavering over whether to flee or not.

This was not the end of the troubles: the leaders of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, Cassius and (Marcus) Brutus, were defeated in October 42 BCE.

Then, Marcus Antonius and Octavian went on to fight each other, until Octavian won in 31 BCE, and Marcus Antonius committed suicide together with Cleopatra of Egypt.

So, 13 years of war followed the murder of Caesar, and in the end, Rome had the Emperor Augustus (Octavian’s new name). So much for saving the Republic.

And on this happy note, I will leave you for now. I will be back next week, and until then: have a great week: keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!

Publish or perish

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

This week, I plan to be completely insufferable, bragging about my accomplishments in various fields. So, consider yourself warned.

Would you believe it, it is still summer here – though what was threatening to become the driest July ever (or something) was cancelled in the nick of time, on the 30^th, with thunder, rain, hail and sunshine all at once.

So, the popular saying about the weather on someone’s birthday reflecting that person’s behaviour, good or bad, during the previous year, came into effect, as Victor turned 15 that day. We agreed, though, that the bad part of it was caused by the leader of the right-wing Danish People’s Party ...

And it was still warm enough that we could sit outdoors at the restaurant in the evening, with my parents, my sister & brother-in-law, and the niblings running around.

The next day offered more rain (let’s not blame J. K. Rowling for that!) – and then Friday turned out to be the hottest day of the summer, with temperatures over 30° C in several places, and followed by what is termed a ‘tropical night’, during which the temperature does not drop below 20°. And true enough, it was 21° at 7.30 Saturday morning.

All in all, I have been practising my hot weather running – in theory, I should probably get my, um, self out of bed much earlier to run, but ... not really happening. So the Saturday morning run was tough: 22°, luckily with a stiff breeze, but still, I went in search of the shade.

I am beginning to look forward to the crisp September air – though when it comes, autumn and rain and darkness won’t be far off, so I’ll probably be grumbling about that. So it goes.

Last week, I told you about the July Short Story contest in the Fiction Writers’ Guild on LinkedIn – well, the votes have been counted, and my story came in 3^rd out of the thirty stories!

That was surprising, and gratifying, and somewhat worrying; I have to ignore all that when writing next month’s story and not expect anything.

 Anyway, here it is, so you can judge for yourself:

All In A Day’s Work

I wake up soaked in sweat. The light filtering in speaks of morning, though the alarm clock by my bed insists that it is only 4:18. Nothing unusual in that: this is summer, the white nights when the sun sets for only a few hours and it never gets really dark. I struggle out of the damp, clinging sheet and push the window further open, hoping for a cool dawn breeze. But no, the air is as still and arid as it has been for several weeks now, and even the birds, normally so annoyingly bright and cheerful at this hour, seem mugged.

I decide to get in my morning run before the temperature rises any higher, so I get into the smallest possible running gear that is still decent, drink as much water as I can stomach, and set out.

I run every day; in my line of work, running is not a fashionable leisure activity, but a survival skill. I would rather not begin to count the number of times I have been saved by my ability to run away from someone or something nasty that wanted to do unspeakable things to me – and I am not being Victorian here, I really do mean unspeakable.

Quite a few other runners are out and about this early, working around the altered weather conditions.

We are all trying to adapt, Vikings getting used to a tropical life – well, not tropical, exactly, the last few winters have been exceptionally cold, with frost and masses of snow lasting well into April. Then a sudden, short spring sets in, and summer right on its heels. The meteorologists have had to come up with a new definition of ‘heat wave’; the old one consisting of three days in a row over 28° C has become a joke, when we have temperatures well into the thirties for weeks on end, months even. And droughts to rival the Australian outback.

And today is The Day, Friday the 13^th of July, when everything has to be resolved or the world go to hell in a handbasket.

It is going to be a long day.

When I return, a black cat is sitting on the garden fence glaring at me. ‘Hello, Shadow,’ I say. No reply. He is understandably put out by my blatant selfishness in not feeding him before going out. I point out that he wasn’t around, but he refuses to speak to me until I have given him a whole tin of tuna.

Yes, I know, I’m a cliché: a witch with a talking black cat. So sue me.

After a cool shower and a big mug of coffee, I set about gathering the appropriate spells and ingredients for today’s work. Shadow, with the sense of occasion so peculiar to cats, paws at my knitting, but gives it up when I ignore him. I cannot be bothered about losing a woollen sock right now. The circle at the bottom of my garden needs to be fortified, so that’s where I’ll begin.

A circle of smallish granite menhirs sits unobtrusively inside a copse of oak trees, planted in concentric circles. Oaks are the strongest and most powerful of trees, drawing ancient powers from the soil and storing them in their massive boles. It is no coincidence that the Druids of Gaul and Britannia revered the oak above all other trees.

And I am going to need those powers to bind and hold the force that is causing this havoc to our climate. For I know now what it is: a Khaos being, an incorporeal will using its temporary liberty only to disrupt and destroy – not from any active malevolence or ill will towards mankind, mind you, just for the kicks.

Wearing nothing but a loose-flowing silk robe – even that feels like a fur coat today – I trace the inner circumference of the menhirs with salt, leaving a small opening. Next, I trace the outer circumference in the same manner, weaving binding spells into the lines. I place a silver bowl in the centre of the multiple circles and with my silver athame cut open my left palm. I let my blood drip into the bowl and then wrap a cloth around my hand: no drop must be allowed to fall on the ground inside or outside of the circle. I step out carefully, closing first the inner and then the outer salt circles with locking spells.

Only blood will summon the Khaos creature; salt and stone and oak will hold it.

I hope.

When I begin the summoning chant, smoke rises from the bowl of blood; wispy at first, but gradually, it grows into a thick, spiralling column, reeking darkly of gore and rot. The Khaos being resists the summoning, fights against the binding. My muscles ache, my joints feel like they are on fire. Still, I chant. The spell must not be broken before the binding is complete.

After what feels like days, the howling of the smoke subsides, and the column itself dwindles down to a puddle inside the bowl. I feel the grip on me relax, and I have to work not to sink into a puddle myself.

I tremble and then realise that it is the ground beneath me: the granite menhirs are shaken, begin to sway and then topple inwards, crumbling. All around me, the massive oaks are swaying and groaning. I manage to pick myself up and run, away from the circle, before the innermost ring of oaks creaking and cracking fall on top of the stone debris.

When the rumbling stops, a dust cloud hovers over a jumbled pile of stone and wood, slowly settling in the still, dry midday air.

Exhausted, I have another cool shower and a nap.

I wake up covered in goosebumps. A cool afternoon breeze carries the scent of rain into my room.

© 2013 Dorthe Møller Christensen

The Knitting

First, the patterns – I managed to finish Victor’s jumper in time for his birthday, and even got the pattern up on Ravelry.

 

Too hot for wool, but he performed nicely :o)

And just to continue the self-promotion: the pattern for the Elanor cardigan is finally done and published; I threw in the little hat pattern for free. Not surprisingly, the free pattern had 64 downloads after less than a day, while the paid-for cardigan had several ‘faves’ (little pink hearts), but no sales as yet.

The obvious part here is, of course, that the free stuff is downloaded more than the paid-for, not that I take the popularity of my stuff for granted.
Oh, and I don't think I've mentioned the provenance of the name: Elanor the Fair is the first-born daughter of Master Samwise Gamgee.

As far as knitting goes, I am working happily on the lace shawl I mentioned last week, while checking the written pattern and its translation for typos and correcting errors found by my sister.

It’s odd, the difference between improvising something and working from a pattern, even your own pattern: while I was making it up, it flowed organically, and I had to remember writing notes once in a while before I forgot what I had been doing. Now, I read a line in the pattern, follow that, and have to think about what is going on. Weird. But it is a pleasant knit, if I may say so myself, and soon done.

My other project right now is something for Laura, who will be 4 years old in two weeks exactly. More on this later, as always.

So, I still have a wish to decrease my number of wips; so far, I finished one thing and cast on another. And I will be casting on more things in the foreseeable future, as I will need some new nice jumpers and/or cardigans for work – that’s my excuse, anyway.

The Books

On the Forgotten Classics podcast, I am listening to The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis; this is my first encounter with the crime-fighting duo Doan & Carstairs – or whatever their agenda may actually be. The story takes place in Mexico in the 1940’s, during a sight-seeing trip to a picturesque village in the mountains; murders ensue, and it remains to be seen how the fat detective and his huge Great Dane will come out of it all.

If you like Agatha Christie mysteries and dogs, this may be something for you; Carstairs is no Scooby-Doo, though he does have a distinct personality.

Over on CraftLit, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is running, and I managed to get the first five episodes in at one go – I was catching up on podcasts generally after Canterbury Tales and Bleak House. The story is set in New York in the 1870’s, dealing with the rigid social structure in the upper class and the narrow circles consisting of the ‘right’ families, in which it is difficult to manoeuvre and nearly impossible to be accepted.

Wharton of course satirises over the shallow, but stern dictates of the fashion – much like Dickens does in Bleak House – and at the same time keeps a watchful and caring eye on the victims of these constraints.

By the laws of synchronicity, I have been reading about the upper spheres of another society where name, family, and fortune were all-important: ancient Rome.

One of the arguably oldest families, the Iulii, traced their ancestry back to Iulus, the son of Aeneas and Lavinia, Aeneas being himself the son of the goddess Venus. Quite a pedigree.

And the most famous of all Iulii was, of course, Gaius Iulius Caesar, who in 44 BCE was murdered for – maybe – wanting to be king. He did draw a worrying large number of offices and thus a large amount of power into his one person, political, administrative, military, and religious power; the senate and the people bestowed honours on him that befitted a god, and even though he – in a possibly staged display – refused the crown, he did wield all of the might of a monarch. So they killed him, to save the res publica, and what they got was chaos, civil war, and an emperor. So it goes.

Anyway, I have been reading Caesar by Peter Ørsted. Caesar is, of course, always hugely interesting, whether you like him or not; he must have been a fascinating person, charming and scary at the same time.

But this book, not so much. No doubt a lot of research has gone into it: we get the history, the wars and politics, the system, and lots of quotes from ancient historians and philosophers, including Cicero and Caesar himself.

I found the tone too familiar; biography writing is always personal, of course, since the biographer needs must find the subject interesting, whether in a positive or a negative way. In this case, though, the writer is too present; mostly so in the prologue that takes place in a small town in Spain to which the writer has travelled in Caesar’s footsteps. Scattered throughout the narrative are a lot of personal reflections, too many I thinks – if you want to do that much conjecture, write a novel. Really. And it seems somehow at least one round of editing was forgotten.

So: great man, not so great book.

Nevertheless, I felt inspired to re-read Colleen McCullough’s series Masters of Rome, beginning with The First Man in Rome – who is not Caesar, but his uncle Gaius Marius. (Note the absence of a third name, a cognomen: Marius was a nobody, a homo novus, and one of the very, very few of the kind to achieve the highest post in the Roman magistracy and become consul. So, not really a nobody, only in the sense of not belonging to one of the ancient families.)

I have recommended this series before; here, we do have the novel writer’s approach and freedom to imagine thoughts, feelings, and motivations. I ought to mention that McCullough is pro-Caesar: the nasty rumours about his sexual proclivities – which were probably true – and his attitude to world domination are all explained in a positive light.

I finished also The Gallows Curse by Karen Maitland; the narrator is a female mandrake, which already gives you an inkling of what to expect. The story, set in mediaeval England – Norwich in 1210 – is a whodunit, a spy thriller, and a love story, with elements of the grotesque and the supernatural. Great fun.

The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenegger is a graphic novel, or rather novella, based on a short story about a young woman who by chance encounters a bookmobile in the night streets of Chicago. I gave it to my sister for her birthday, having found it on her amazon wishlist and knowing how she loved Her Fearful Symmetry and The Time Traveler’s Wife; and she kindly let me read it, too.

The young woman in the story, Alexandra, finds that the books in this particular bookmobile are all the books she has ever read, including her own diary; and after being shooed out at dawn (it is a night bookmobile, after all), she searches for the bookmobile again to return and preferably stay there, among the shelves of books, the familiar smell of paper and dust – and a bit of wet dog.

I won’t spoil the story by telling you anymore, but I will recommend it.

Embarking on this book, as with every other book, I went to goodreads to place it on my virtual book shelf, among all the other books that I have read; for that is the function of these virtual libraries, isn’t it, to let us imagine walking between rows of shelves of books, smelling the paper and the dust, and the whiff of wet dog. Now, all we need is a plug-in to this particular corner of the Matrix, and all would be well.

Or not.

Well, that’s it for this week – I do hope you are enjoying your summer (or winter, if you are of the southerly persuasion). I will be back next week, and until then: keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!

I'm back!

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

Would you believe it, it is still hot here; this weekend is less sweltering, as we have some rain, wind, and cloud cover – the runner’s friend – but still, it is unmistakably high summer. The butterfly bush is blooming and brimming with butterflies, bees buzz in the clover field that is supposed to be a lawn (ahem), and the cat practises his Dali clock impression.

Very appropriate, as noted last week, for writing Hot Day-stories: the LinkedIn Fiction Writers’ Guild July Heat short story competition ended this Thursday, and I managed to finish a story for it. I took my laptop outside to enjoy the warm air and the shade under the lilac tree and got a story together, coming in just under the word limit (980 words out of 500 to 1000); I could expand, clarify, and continue. Funny how story elements crop up and have you wondering where that came from or how this will impact the situation or ... Maybe later.

Now is the week for choosing three of the about thirty stories to vote for; several are very good, while others ... need a bit more work. I got a few positive comments on my story – that do not necessarily translate into votes, of course, and may only have been prompted by kindness and my own ‘I am new to this’ presentation.

As I have mentioned before, summer is the time for me to sort and tidy – and so, in the process of cancelling a couple of superfluous subscriptions, I have come across different approaches to customer service.

I decided several months ago not to renew my Rowan membership, since I have not knitted anything from the latest issues, and £32 seemed a bit steep for two pretty picture books and the annual ‘gift’ of yarn. So when the first emailed prompts came, I ignored them, only noting that this was a first: the previous years I have had to be aware of the dates myself. Oh, well. More and more prompts showed up in my inbox, and even though I know it’s a robot sending them, I was a bit annoyed at getting two in the same day. So, I went to the Rowan site looking for the Unsubscribe button. No such thing. Even logged in, under my account settings, there is no option to unsubscribe or cancel. Lots of ‘let’s remind you of the benefits’ and ‘buy now’ and ‘this is how easy it is to renew’ – but no easy way to not renew.

I left the page and continued to ignore the prompts, which stopped arriving on the date of my subscription ending. End of story.

Or so I thought, because a couple of weeks later, I had a postcard from Rowan, reminding me how easy it is to renew and get all the benefits from a membership.

I also cancelled my Netflix, because I never get round to watching anything, and it seemed silly to keep it running. So, I went to the Netflix site looking for the Unsubscribe button. And clicked it. And got a ‘we’re sorry to see you leave, please come back any time, and you’re welcome to watch whatever you want until [date of subscription ending].’

Guess where I am mostly likely to return to.

The Knitting

Yes, I am knitting! Not 10 hours a day – which I didn’t before, either – but knitting. I feel whole again; hence the title of this week’s post.

Back in May, when I started the V neck jumper for Victor, I promised to finish it before his birthday, which all of a sudden is not some-time-several-months-away, but this coming Tuesday. Who would have known? I managed to not panic, but did the whole I have so-and-so many separate bits to do, rib, setup, decreases, rib again, ends; and so-and-so many days to do them, and then dividing.

Anyway, concentrating on one project quickly makes a difference, and being entertained by films in the evenings, I have finished the first sleeve and worked the second. All I have left are the ends to weave in; and not even as many of those as I could have, as I have joined skeins using Jane Richmond’s double knot technique, found on YouTube.

So voila, one jumper done. I am all set to get as many wips out of the way as I can before starting work in September, so there will be no (more) frivolous casting on. Only the necessary: Laura’s fourth birthday is coming up in August, and as my niblings are reared on designer handknits (heh), she will of course be getting something. More on that later – after the birthday.

And I am writing patterns, translating (from English into Danish) and editing, several at once which is a bit of a mess and again caused by my wanting to make all the things, preferably at the same time. But I am getting through them, bit by bit. The interesting thing is, even though you cannot proofread your own text properly, because the brain interprets what it knows should be there instead of what the eyes see – when you translate your own text, you do find the errors and inconsistencies. So there is actually a way to tech edit your own stuff.

Of course, another pair of eyes is invaluable: I am working on a lace shawl, for which I made the prototype for my mum’s birthday in June; my sister wanted one, too, so I got her to test knit (clever, eh?) and thus find not only typos, but also explanations that made perfect sense to me, but no-one else – and now I am translating the pattern and knitting from it. When this is all done, it will be a thoroughly worked-through pattern. So watch this space!

The Books

I am moving through the Dickens biography by Claire Tomalin; now I’m even past the time when he wrote Bleak House. The name for Esther, the main first-person narrator, Dickens got from the eldest sister in a batch of orphans whom he helped and corresponded with for years: a sweet and caring girl, apparently much like the Esther in the book.

The picture that emerges from the biography is not altogether appealing; Dickens was brilliant, of course, and prolific and caring and doing a lot of good – but also selfish and uncaring. I really do not envy his wife, Catherine, always pregnant – they had 10 children – and having to put up with his travelling and moving house and working and corresponding intimately with various men and young women, including the love of his youth.

Oh, and the woman who ran the Dickens household, as much as anyone could run anything with Dickens around, was not Catherine, but her younger sister, employed as a governess and almost a second wife. It is said that Dickens admired the setup of his friend, Wilkie Collins, who lived with two women for most of his life; maybe he tried to emulate this.

Staying with the audio books: DR, Danmarks Radio, gave out a handful of free audio books at the beginning of the summer, one of which is Den Store Omstilling / The Big Transition by Jørgen Steen Nielsen. Quite an interesting book on the need for a global transition away from the hunt for economic growth, consumerism, &c, and the detrimental effects they have on the environment, on the planet. Instead, we need to focus on ‘ecological economy’, to realise that continued growth inside a closed system is not possible. We must find out how to live without spending more, without consuming and destroying the basis for our own existence.

Several theories and experiments on this are presented, among them a plan for a 21-hour work week, instead of the 37.4 that is the Danish norm now, or the 40+ hours in many other countries. The idea is that this would make room for more people in the workplaces and at the same time give everybody more space in their lives, to bicycle to work, to grow vegetables, to take care of children and relatives, in short, to live more organically.

For just over 3 weeks, I have every day been reading a chunk of Caesar from a collection for schools, just to get myself back in the habit. This way, I got through (some of) the Gallic Wars, (some of) the Civil War, a handful of letters, saved in Cicero’s collection, and a bite of Suetonius’ Caesar biography; and both my Latin reading and my historical knowledge are refreshed. Oh, and I found out how it can be that a single Gaulish Village was not conquered by the Romans: the village of Asterix and his comrades lies in the land of the Venelli, a tribe that was conquered not by Caesar himself, but by his legate Sabinus. So, if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself.

(You don’t know Asterix? Go find out, they’re fun!)

While I’m at it, I am now reading Caesar by Peter Ørsted, an account of Roman morals and politics in the shape of a biography of the most famous of Roman leaders.

By the by, if you want to know something of Roman history in an easily accessible way, go to Colleen McCullough’s series Masters of Rome. In six fat books, she gives us, in great detail, the history of the Italian Wars, Caesar’s life, the final century of the Republic, including the Spartacus rebellion – and a seventh book tells of Antony and Cleopatra.

And more historical fiction: The Gallows Curse by Karen Maitland is yet another of her Mediaeval English supernatural thrillers, rich and gory and suspenseful. I have previously read Company of Liars and The Owl Killers, and I can recommend all three of them – though not to the squeamish. They tend to be quite explicit in dealing with sickness, maiming and death.

But if you don’t mind all that – on the page, that is – and have a few nights’ sleep to spare, this is a great book.

One of the very first books Victor got for his Kindle was Stephen King’s UR, in which a college English teacher acquires a Kindle, and strange things start to happen. It is a small book, a 61-page novella, featuring King’s well-known blend of the quotidian and the fantastic, and keeping you reading until the last word. And it won’t even cost you any sleep.

That’s all, folks!

I hope you have a great week – I am off to weave in ends, but I will be back next week with pictures and more. Keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!

Hot Days

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket! We are sweltering hot here, at least by Danish standards; summer has really come at last with daily temperatures above 25° C and unremitting sunshine.

So it’s time for sunbathing – and seeking out the shade, as I am doing right now – for the short, strappy dresses that spend most of their lives packed away, and for getting out of bed early enough to run before it is too hot.

I love it, more so because I know it won’t last. Very soon, the temperatures will drop, the sky will be overcast, and we can once again complain about the wind and rain. So the present languor brought on by unwonted heat causes only a temporary disruption of life and work ethics, and soon there will be no excuse for laziness.

Not that I am completely idle, and some of my perceived idleness is enforced: I am having a hard time watching films – only in the evenings, mind you – without knitting. I feel lazy sitting there with empty hands, and now that my arm is so much better, it is even harder. But I don’t want to jeopardise my recovery, so I am toughing it out for a few more days, and then I will pick up my needles and see how it goes.

This weather makes the perfect backdrop for writing a summer short story; the Fiction Writers’ Guild on LinkedIn, of which I am a newbie member, has, as it turns out, a monthly short story competition, with a few set parameters and of course a limited word count. The July story has to be set on a very hot day, include a superstition and the word ‘liberty’. Well, it is American, after all. So, I have been doodling a bit and may come up with a submittable story.

The Knitting

Well, there has of course been no knitting at all this week; I had the second and hopefully last round of acupuncture on Wednesday, and things are really looking up. I am even able to contemplate the possibility that I might actually be able to knit again, that this part of my life is not necessarily over.

My ever helpful mum let me know that it is Perfectly Possible to live without knitting.  I did restrain myself from any comments of the ‘easy for you to say’ kind. She does knit, though – at least, she made a doll’s dress for Laura last year.

Earlier this week, I had a newsletter from Garn Garagen (the Yarn Garage) informing me that the Samarkand yarn – light fingering / laceweight lambswool & silk – is going to be DISCONTINUED and therefore, it was (is?) on SALE.

As you know, those are two dangerous words, and when they are in conjunction, as in this case, the danger is not merely added, it is multiplied and squared. Any yarn addict will understand that now is the time to quote Oscar Wilde:

‘I can resist anything but temptation.’

Let me hasten to say, before you become too nervous, that I did not sell any of my children or even endanger the food budget for the remainder of this month. I did buy some yarn, and almost all of it has planned / intended projects attached to it. This is what I got:

A cone of colour 57, Azure, 962 grams including the cardboard thing in the middle. With this I can make the Queen Street Cardigan by Andi Smith, for my Lady Violet look, and the Laminaria shawl by Elizabeth Freeman. Have I mentioned that I love lace knitting?

4 50-gram skeins of colour 16, Ecru. This is for one or maybe two lace shawls that I want to design.

1 50-gram skein of colour 40, Gentian Violet. Ok, this one was just for fun and because it was the last one in that colour. But hey, it was DKK 16.20, so the damage done is limited.

Because you are clever and quick, you will have spotted the inconsistency in the above: first, I whine about not being able to knit and falling into the pit of despair, or at least teetering on the edge of it – and then, I go and buy yarn.

What can I say? Except to put the mood swings down to withdrawal symptoms: when you are prevented from doing something you love and are used to doing, it is all too easy to feel deprived and estranged, to see that world gliding away from you and leaving you stranded on a desert island. It is the same feeling I get when I am (have been!) unable to run because of injuries, and I cannot bear to even look at my running shoes or books, and the list of unheard episodes of Marathon Training Academy just grows and grows.

But once in a while, a ray of hope bursts through the cloud cover, and I am convinced that all will be well soon enough, that the future me is running and knitting to her heart’s delight – while of course being rich and beautiful and happy and successful and all that. And in the spirit of those moments, I can buy yarn and plan more projects.

At the University of Surrey in the UK, Dr. Julia Percival of the Chemistry Department is right now running a project to create a huge, knitted and crocheted model of the molecular structure of a group of mineral called Perovskite; these ubiquitous minerals have great properties such as superconductivity, magnetoresistance, and ionic conductivity, making them hugely important in microelectronics and telecommunication (according to Wikipedia).

The project invites knitters and crocheters from around the world to either knit a blue octahedron or crochet a yellow ball, which will then be all assembled into the crystalline structure. Submissions will be welcomed until the end of August 2013.

I am thinking of knitting an octahedron; I have some more of the blue Kauni wool that I used for the TARDIS last summer during the Ravellenics, and I think the colour falls into the given spectrum. Just for fun.

The Books

While not knitting, I can at least read; so this week, I have finished The Sign of the Four by sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the second of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Also, I have read about writing: my lovely cousin Lasse gave me Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, an American bestselling writer (whom I must confess I had not heard of before), in which she with great warmth and humour recounts tales of her life and writing, and gives tips & tricks as to how to tackle both. Your own life, of course, not hers, and your own writing, too.

When you have read a handful of books on writing, and of course the ’10 tips’ lists found here & there on the Internet, you begin to notice how several pieces of advice recur, often in slightly different wordings, but essentially the same. This is somehow comforting: it seems there is a plan, be it divine or not, writers do have certain traits in common, and some of the method is communicable.

And of course, listening is always an option: I finished Bleak House by Charles Dickens this week, with some relief over certain developments in the narrative – I can’t say which without spoiling hugely, so I will be silent on those points.

Bleak House is not bleak, though populated with persons in troubled circumstances; Dickens’ well-known social indignation shines through, but so does his knack for satirical and funny descriptions of characters large and small.

The Dickens biography by Claire Tomalin that I am also listening to is proving to be rather long-lasting; of course, with everybody home I have less listening time than when they are not – but the book does seem to want to include every detail of Dickens’ life and be rather verbose about them, too. I am sticking with it, though; at the point I am at (1842, I think), Dickens is being criticised for not being able to write female characters, so I have to consider what I think of the women in Bleak House.

Certainly Esther, the first person narrator – there are two voices in the book, Esther and an impersonal, omniscient third person narrator – is an example of the ever good, ever patient and humble and self-deprecating and generous and  [fill in the blank] little woman, to the point of being nauseating or at least annoyingly naïve. Still, I was relieved when her future was settled, so she must have evoked some sympathy in me, if not any desire to emulate.

Each morning, I read a chunk of Caesar; by now, I know the words and phrases for sending ambassadors, receiving hostages, engaging in combat, burning farms and villages, and other cheery pastimes, by heart.

In Book 6, he breaks off the narrative to play ethnographer, recounting the habits and institutions of the Gauls and the Germans; including the no doubt intended-to-be-chilling description of the huge tracts of forest covering most of Germania. In these forests live reindeer, elks, and aurochs, three otherwise unknown species. The description of elk hunting had me laughing out loud, much to the surprise of my surroundings.

You see, according to Caesar, elks resemble goats, but are larger, and have no joints in their legs, so they are unable to lie down, and if they fall over, they cannot get up again. Thus, they sleep standing up, leaning against certain trees; and when the hunters find those trees, they undermine or cut them so that they stay standing, but break and topple when next the elks lean on them, and the elks topple over as well and can be killed.

Bet you didn’t know that!

Of course, Caesar makes quite a point of the vastness and wildness of the woods, the ferocity of the aurochs, and thus of the people, repeating how they are big and strong and live on and for hunting and warfare – all in order to explain why Rome is not colonising the far side of the Rhine.

Well, this is it for this week – I have been typing two-handed this time, and now it is time to not overdo things.

I hope you have a lovely week; keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!