Internet Access

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

Well, this has been a busy week.

Being the end of the month, the deadline for the FWG short story contest came around (more on that); the monthly meeting in the Viborg story tellers’ guild was on Monday (and this time, I actually told a story to get feedback on it); I had to figure out how to get paid for my teaching (I could choose to report the number of working hours each month or have the complete number of hours for the semester divided equally between the five months of it – I chose the latter to have a more regular income).

This afternoon, it’s time for the monthly local crafting café – it’s actually been five months since I was there last, due to a spot of ill health (May), summer holidays (June & July), and the baby blessing in August.

Oh, and my parents are coming over for dinner tonight, as I won’t be here for coffee. If you are not Danish, let me tell you that afternoon coffee, including bread & cheese & jam and / or cake, is quite an institution around these parts. The appropriate time is 3 p.m., and any deviation from this needs to be spelled out, if you’re inviting. So, having a crafting group meeting from 2 till 4 p.m. on a Sunday can be somewhat disruptive.

In between, I have been devising a little written test for my students, to see how they are doing and to give them a chance of trying out the format for the exam in December. I’ll spring it on them on Tuesday and have them do it in one of the two lessons. (And I can knit while watching them!)

The weather has really turned towards autumn – the lovely, bright, crisp autumn weather, happily, not (yet) the grey and rainy kind. Leaves are yellowing and beginning to fall, there is a threat of frost in the nights; and I want to knit big, woolly jumpers.

As mentioned, the September stories for the FWG contest are in; the deadline for the votes is tomorrow, so nobody knows anything about the results yet – except that 32 writers have submitted stories, which is lovely. And as ever, it is quite difficult to narrow the votes down to three favourite stories ... I am going to have to work on that.

Anyway, the theme this month has been SEPTEMBER TRICKSTER, and the highlights: a trickster, devious or dishonest behaviour, and a bag containing something fraudulent or stolen.

So, I give you my story as the Apple of the Week; hope you like it:

Internet Access

Driving slowly down the street, they passed a young woman walking in the opposite direction, giving him ample time to watch her. She was striding along on strong legs in high-heeled boots, blonde ponytail swinging and a big, white, studded leather bag over one shoulder. What caught his attention, though, was the black, glass-like slab she was holding up in front of her face, thin white cords leading from it to her ears. The woman was obviously upset, yelling angrily at the slab, on the verge of tears. The wheeled glass cage he was sitting in muffled all sounds coming from outside it, but he could still hear her voice, if not the actual words.

He had seen several of these slabs before: everybody seemed to be carrying one, talking to it, peering at it, stroking it.

He wondered whether this was a new kind of magic or a new kind of pet.

 ‘As you know, I have been away for a long time,’ he said to the bulky man beside him. ‘What are those glassy black things that you all carry around and talk to?’

‘Smart phones, sir,’ the man – Erik, he had to remember that – answered. ‘They allow you to talk to people who are far away from you.’

‘Interesting,’ Loke said politely. Magic, then.

‘They also have games,’ the man went on, ‘and Internet access.’

He must have looked blank, for the man (Erik) got a pained expression, as if he didn’t quite know where to begin. ‘Um,’ he hesitated, ‘you can find and read information from all over the world, words and pictures, and sound.’

Now, this was interesting. ‘And can you send information, too?’ he asked innocently.

‘Sure, you can upload whatever you want – if your connection’s good enough.’

‘Upload?’

‘Sorry, sir. Send.’

‘Send to this net thing.’

‘Internet, yes, sir. It’s called the Web, as well.’

‘Web? Like a spider’s web?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘I see. Can you get me one of these things?’

‘Of course, sir. I expect there may be one waiting for you at the house, otherwise we will get one for you straightaway.’

‘Thank you,’ Loke said gravely.

He leaned back in the leather seat, stroking his beard while musing quietly. Now that he was back in the world, he would finally get his revenge for the centuries he had spent trapped, chained and poisoned, punished by the Asar for merely being himself.

He would become a spider in a web that encircled the world.

A few days later, a new video appeared on YouTube. It showed a strangely attractive, skinny man of indeterminate age, with shoulder-length black hair and an immaculate goatee.

The man told a freaky story about being a god and about how the people he thought were his friends, his family, had cheated him, blaming him for an entirely accidental death. He couldn’t have known that that arrow would kill young Balder, could he? After all, the guy was supposed to be immortal.

He told of how they had caught him, tied him to a rock and let a snake drip its venom like acid on his face. He told of the physical pain and the emotional pain, of his longing for revenge and his newfound freedom.

The video went viral, getting hundreds of thousands of hits in a day and soon millions. Korean rappers and Norwegian comedy duos were forgotten: now everybody watched, liked and shared the Loke story.

Of course, nobody took him seriously. Nobody, except maybe a few Hindus or modern Pagans, believed in random gods appearing on YouTube. Some thought it was a promotion for a new movie; most merely thought it was cool.

That is, somebody did take him seriously. Loke immediately recognised the grumpy, one-eyed man standing on his doorstep one evening.

‘Father Odin,’ he greeted him politely.

‘Don’t you father Odin me, you wretched half-breed,’ the ancient father of the gods growled. ‘You have been using my invention to further your own twisted agenda, spreading your incessant lies again. You really haven’t learned anything, have you?’

‘What exactly was I supposed to learn from being chained to a rock and poisoned?’

Odin glared at him. ‘Luckily, humans these days don’t give a fig – as long as they are entertained, they don’t care by whom or what. So there’s really no harm done. Nothing you can do.’

It never occurred to anyone to connect the popular YouTube video with the waves of aberrant behaviour sweeping over various parts of the world.

In Germany, Japanese style cosplay gained a hitherto unseen popularity, with night club-like cross-dressing spreading to daytime activities. Universities and businesses saw otherwise serious professionals decked out in school girl uniforms, wigs, and heavy makeup. Bank clerks wore clown masks and carried soft guns to work.

Tokyo night life already mastered the art of dressing up and instead developed a new trend of deliberately and consistently lying to your lover, demonstrating fidelity by flirting with others.

A shoplifting spree originating in Paris spread like an epidemic across most of Europe, causing near panic in shop owners, exhaustion in detectives and police, and intense worry in parents of teenagers. As a kind of internal signal or uniform, the shoplifters all carried white bags for their loot, from tiny shoulder strap purses to baskets to rucksacks.

Applications for sex change operations proliferated, along with a sudden market for not only the usual gender-specific enhancements, but additions as well – hermaphroditism became the new black.

In England, an animal research facility was burned to the ground by the ALF after it came out that an obscure line of research had reached new heights, so to speak: the successful grafting of wings onto mammals.

Meanwhile, in a large house somewhere in the Scandinavian countryside, Loke leaned back in a comfortable leather armchair, stroking his beard and smiling contentedly to himself.

© 2013 Dorthe Møller Christensen

The Knitting

I’ve started taking my knitting to work with me; the daily schedules have lessons starting at a quarter past the hour, so between each lesson are 15 minutes (give or take). This is just enough time to go to the bathroom or fetch a cup of coffee when needed, but often, I just stay in my classroom. Sometimes, a good portion of the break is taken up by questions from students, but if I am left to myself, what can I do?

So, I brought my stripy sock along to knit a few rows; this is good for my calm and centeredness. And the students like it, generally; many of them have come straight from school and living at home to a new life in a new city, and watching someone nearly old enough to be their mother knitting is familiar to most, either from home or from school.

A couple of the girls talk about knitting (and crochet) – and the next day, one of them brought her knitting, as well.

So, the socks are moving along – the multi-coloured yarn moved from a long stretch of green that made the beginning of the first sock look like a Christmas elf sock, into blues and then purple (yay!), which means that the toe of the second sock is three shades of purple.

My Leaf cardigan is at a tricky stage right now: I am working the garter edge all the way around the body. The tricky part is having 600+ stitches on an 80 cm circular needle; as I am working on 2½ mm needles, I am stuck with fixed circs instead of my favourite interchangeables that only come in 3 mm and upwards. With the interchangeables, I could switch to a longer wire; but I’ll manage. It’s only 7 rows, after all, and I’m on the 5^th now.

And then come the sleeves on dpns, and I might finish this cotton cardigan before winter. Brilliant timing, right? Something tells me I miscalculated or forgot that my knitting rate would slow down when I started work. Oh, well, it may be spring again sometime.

With much better timing, I finally sank my teeth into the red cowl I have been wanting to make, inspired by The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (which I reviewed here two or three weeks ago – and on Goodreads).

The circus in the book is kept in black, white, grey, and silver, and the group of followers of the circus also dress in those colours to show that they adhere to it – but then add ‘a shock of red’ to show that they are not part of the circus, merely spectators. The items most mentioned in the book are scarves, but also hats, roses, ties, &c.

I decided to make a moebius cowl, to keep the magic feel of the circus and the sense of not quite knowing which side is which.

I am using the lusciously soft Sandnes Kashmir Alpakka that I bought at the craft fair (Husflidsmessen) three weeks ago – when I for once was drawn to the red yarn and not the purple. And when it is done, I will post the pattern for the Rêveur Cowl on Ravelry.

As ever, I have lots of plans for further knitting; right now, I have a bunch of wool stacked up in front of me: some Donegal Aran Tweed for another sleeveless o w l s, and two samples of Peruvian Highland wool for – well, I think I will use the moss green for the cabled hoodie that is nudging me, the adult version of the Samwise.

And I have patterns that need to be finished and handed over to the Free Pattern Testers group for test knitting.

The Books

All too soon, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki ended – I have written about it here several times and a short review on Goodreads, so I won’t go into it again, only to remind you to look it up.

In an afterword, Ozeki mentions that the printed version of the book contains annotations, footnotes, and illustrations, so ideally, one should probably have both the audio book and the printed book; the audio has such immediacy and charm that I wouldn’t want to miss that, either.

I’ve managed to finish several books this week, actually: when Trespass by Rose Tremain ran out, I continued with At Home by Bill Bryson and finished that one, too.

Trespass tells of siblings, of ageing, of handling your past and attempting to secure your future; it is also a mystery with an interesting, though not unforeseeable, twist.

At Home walks you through a house, the old rectory in England where the Bryson family lives, regarding the provenance and fittings of the various rooms in a home; the walk turns into a world-wide journey to find spices for the kitchen, wood for furniture, and not least the challenges for the new inhabitants of North America to build and acquire all the things they saw as essential for a comfortable life.

And I made it through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I’m probably being unfair to this book, expecting it to be a novel (as I did at first) and then being disappointed when it didn’t meet my expectations.

So: this is a portrait of Savannah, Georgia, in the 1980s, and the protracted murder case against Jim Williams, a Gatsbyesque figure, for the shooting of his assistant and lover Danny Hansford. The book resembles a series of feature articles in the New Yorker where, indeed, the author had his day job at the time.

Recently, I listened to an interview with the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood on the Guardian Books podcast (from 28^th August 2013), about her book The Blind Assassin – so I went to look for it and found it in the local library (they have shelves with literature in foreign languages, mostly English, but also German, French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, &c).

I haven’t got all that far into it yet, but I’m liking it.

And do go find that interview: Ms Atwood is a charming lady. One person in the audience remarked admiringly that she is very well read, and she replied: ‘I’m old. It accumulates.’

My current on-the-go audio book is Silver by Andrew Motion, a sequel to the classic Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson.

The sub-title of Motion’s book is Return to Treasure Island, so the silver in the title refers to both Long John Silver, the nefarious ship’s cook, and to the silver left on the island when Jim Hawkins was a boy. Now, his son, also named Jim, is approached by the lovely daughter of John Silver to go back to the Island and claim the remaining treasure.

Silver is read by David Tennant whom we all know and love as the Tenth Doctor. I have heard David Tennant read Doctor Who books before, very appropriately, and he does this one very well, too, with the occasional doctorial emphasis on a word.

That is all for this time – I need to tidy up a bit before I go knitting (parents coming over, remember?). I will be back next week with more knitting, more books, more chatter.

Until then: have a great week, take care of yourself and your loved ones, and happy knitting!

Summer Holidays

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket! The summer holidays are here, the fresh-baked students are out in force in their white caps, and once in a while, even the weather remembers to be summery.

So, the big news of the week is that I have gotten myself an honest-to-goodness, proper job. Starting in September, I will be teaching Latin propaedeutics (a fancy word for language for beginners) at Aarhus University. This is, of course, very exciting; I have taught Latin in the gymnasium, but now I will have more mature students, who are actually taking the course of their own free will and thus presumably are prepared to work for it.

It has been a while since last I taught, so I will be using the next couple of months to get my brain into gear; funnily enough, even before I knew about this vacancy, I was turned onto Pliny, Catullus, and Seneca, for various reasons.

More on that, no doubt.

The Apple of the Week

This week, I have a story for you about the nature of humans – it is from Plato, appears in the philosophical dialogue Symposion, and it is a fictional myth told by the writer of comedy, Aristophanes. A symposion was, in the Athens of the 5^th century BCE, a drinking party for men; at this particular (fictional) event, however, the participants agree to give talks instead of drinking, talks on the subject of Eros. This is the fourth speech in the sequence.

By ‘fictional myth’ I mean a story in the form of a myth, but not a part of ancient Greek mythology: this story was invented by Plato and put into the mouth of Aristophanes. The supernatural elements of myth occur, such as gods and other strange beings.

Consider, if you will, the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen as opposed to the fairy tales collected and recorded by the brothers Grimm: the latter are a part of European folklore from ancient times, presenting old and deep conflicts, warnings, and hopes, and passed down in the oral tradition from generation to generation; while the former were consciously composed and written in the style of fairy tales, by a single author with something specific on his mind.

This fictional myth, then, as allegedly told by Aristophanes, plays its very own part in the grander scheme – Plato’s scheme – of the Symposion and the truths that he wants to impart through that whole text. But that is another story for another day; let’s see what the comedian has to say

On Human Nature

In the beginning, humans were not as we know us now: they were round, like spheres, with four legs and four arms and two faces on the head, so that they were able to look in all directions at once. They were strong, these spherical humans, and happy: they rolled about on their many limbs, doing whatever they pleased and taking no heed of the gods. In fact, they even tried once to oust the king of the gods, Zeus himself, from his throne, because they didn’t want to pay obeisance to him or bring offerings to the gods.

This would not do – after all, what are humans good for if they don’t bring offerings? And daring to threaten Zeus himself! The gods struck back: Zeus teamed up with Apollo, the god of surgery, and cut the spherical humans in half. Just like that. Apollo drew the edges of the skin together over the cut and sewed them up right at the middle (that’s where the navel comes from), and he turned their faces around so that the halved humans now had a front and a backside. There they stood, cut in half and trying to find their balance on only two legs.

And Zeus uttered a warning to them: if they did not learn to behave after this, to show the gods the respect they deserved, they would be cut in half once more. Then they would be quite flat, hopping around on one leg.

Zeus was happy with his plan: now the humans would be properly weakened and chastised, and they would bring offerings to the gods as they ought to.

Now, Zeus soon realised that the offerings weren’t really happening as they should; so he went to find out what had gone wrong. He discovered that the halved humans were unhappy: they wanted to be whole again, so they spent all their time wobbling about on their two legs, desperately searching for their other half – not necessarily their better half, but the other one, the one that had been cut away. And when they happened to find this other half, they clung to each other with all of their four arms and wouldn’t let go; they forgot to not only go to the temples to bring offerings, which was bad enough, but to work and to eat, and in the end they lay down to die, still clinging to their other half.

That, of course, would not do. Zeus put Apollo to work again; this time, the divine surgeon moved the sexual organs of the halved humans round onto their new front (before, they had been on the side, the front not having been there at all). And so, the halved humans were able to come together with their other halves and become one flesh for a little while – and afterwards in good cheer go back to their work, not forgetting to eat and, most important of all, go to the temples to bring offerings to the gods.

So, this is how humans became humans in search of love. And this is also why some seek a man and some seek a woman: the spherical humans had three genders, male, female, and mixed; when they were divided, the male spheres became two men, the female spheres became two women, and the mixed gender spheres became a man and a woman – all searching for the one person who can make them whole again.

The Knitting

I have started a new project. Again.

Hi, my name is Dorthe, and I am a compulsive on-caster.

This time, though, it is actually an old project, pulled out of hibernation and re-invented. At some point last year, I made a cable-and-lace edging for a top, intending to pick up stitches and work up from there; but I never really got round to it. So now, I am re-using the name and the project page – and even the yarn from another project: my Flirt tee, a Rowan pattern and for once made in the called-for yarn – which is almost unheard of for me.

I bought the yarn for it, Rowan 4-ply cotton, in Edinburgh, which means it must have been in 2006, on sale because the colour was discontinued, and made the top. Very cute, I liked it and wore it quite a bit; and then I shed a lot of weight, and the top was too big. It has been sitting around for quite a while without any purpose – and now it is frogged.

And the yarn is going into another tee, the Rondeur by Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark, from Knitty. There is not much to photograph yet, so the pics will have to wait till next week.

On the other hand, I have finished something, as well: some of the secret stuff that I can’t tell you about yet. Sorry about that; you will just have to wait until the gifts are given, and then all will be revealed.

Finally, there are visible developments on the V neckjumper for Victor: the body is done, and with it the black stripes in the rib. Similar stripes are underway on the neck edging; and soon, I can start the sleeves. I will only be able to finish them, though, in about two weeks’ time, as Victor and Thomas are going camping with my parents in a couple of days and will be gone for ten days – and I want to try the jumper on the boy before doing the cuffs.

The ‘denim’ skirt is just creeping along, becoming slowly longer. It still hasn’t reached even mini skirt length, so there is a ways to go yet. I’m not sure whether I’m bored with it, or it’s merely that it has been pushed aside for other things and thus seems to be going nowhere. I will have to give it some attention and see how it goes.

The Books

After having struggled with the CraftLit app to listen to the ongoing subscriber audio for The Great Gatsby (Just The Benefits), The Canterbury Tales, and Bleak House, I finally became so frustrated with it that I went to find the two older texts on Librivox.

I am not sure whether it is the app or my unstable wifi that is the trouble; all I know is that I get to listen to a minute or two once in a while, and then the thing shuts down on me. Grrr.

For Bleak House, I found the version that Heather is using, read by Mil Nicholson; that one I’m saving for later.

The complete version of The Canterbury Tales, the D. Laing Purves (1838-1873)edition with preface, biography and notes, is performed by several readers of varying skill. Such is the world of Librivox.

One of the readers is ‘our’ very own Chip, well known to listeners of CraftLit & Just The Books. I have to say, though, much as I enjoy Chip’s voice and diction, that he absolutely murders the Latin quotations. Shudder. But he is much better than, say, the girl (I use this term consciously) who reads the Wife of Bath, hesitating at words and not having edited out throat-clearings and tappings of the microphone. And the woman reading the Merchant’s Tale ... well, you get what you pay for. It just reminds you how much editing must go into professional recordings – and how much volunteer work goes into the good Librivox recordings, too.

The life of Geoffrey Chaucer himself is interesting: his primary occupation for quite a few years was as a customs officer, though he managed to travel extensively in the European mainland and possibly met Dante and Petrarca. Eventually, he was paid for his writing, as well, though he was never free of the need to earn a living by working; his wife, Philippa, was a lady-in-waiting to the queen of the same name.

Chaucer began the Canterbury Tales when about forty years of age, planning a huge work: 32 pilgrims meet up on their way to Canterbury to pay homage to St. Thomas, the murdered archbishop, and it is decided that they each tell two stories on their way to Canterbury and two stories on the way home. That is 128 stories, plus the setup and presentation of them all, the events at Canterbury, and the home-coming including the dinner awarded the best story teller. As it turned out, Chaucer left behind an unfinished work when he died of unknown causes at fifty-seven; only 23 of the pilgrims get to even tell their first story.

The English language owes a huge debt to Chaucer: a lot of words are first attested in his work, as he wrote in Medieval English as opposed to Latin or French. To a modern reader, the text may look odd, with strange spellings and unusual words; it becomes a lot easier if you read it out loud in an everyday diction – and, additionally, knowing Danish and/or German helps a lot with the old Saxon words that have gone out of use in English since Chaucer’s day.

A few examples: hent = fetch, brenn = burn, barm = bosom; there are many more, of course.

The stories themselves deal with the eternal themes: sex and/or love, relationships, jealousy, adultery, &c. Some are in high style, dramatic and with a pious morale, others are fun and ribald.

For a little light reading, Hermione Granger-style, I have picked up The Latin Language by L. R. Palmer; a thorough walk-through of the history and peculiarities of Latin – in preparation, of course, for teaching. Not that first-year students will be much concerned with either the influence of Oscan or the subtleties in Caesar’s choice of vocabulary; but it is nice to get my brain into that train of thought again. And it is quite interesting to discover how much more I get out of the book now than I did when I actually took the course twenty years ago.

On a lighter note, I have gobbled up Politi by Jo Nesbø, the tenth instalment in the Harry Hole-series; this will be coming out as Police in September, I think. It came out in Danish simultaneously with the Norwegian release.

Well, everybody – or nearly everybody – thought that book 9 was the final in the series; but it turns out there is another one. Which is rumoured to be the final one.

I’ll try to comment without giving any spoilers: a murderer is at large in Oslo, and the team of familiar police officers try to catch him. There are numerous suspects, and several members of the team at some point find themselves alone with someone who may be a psychopathic serial killer.

Hmm, that went well, don’t you think?

Nesbø seems to have a fondness for psychological and psychiatric peculiarities, not to say disorders, in his characters; I am all for that, but he is a bit heavy-handed with it, in my opinion, having characters quote doctors and evaluations instead of just showing us their behaviour and reactions.

One example – no spoiler, if you have read any of the books you know this already – is Beate Lønn, the female police officer who recognises every face she has ever seen: Nesbø apparently wants her to have Asperger’s and doesn’t content himself with letting others refer to her as ‘Rain Man’ or as ‘coming from Mars’; he has her running, slipping on wet grass, and reflecting that one symptom of Asperger’s is clumsiness.

Well, yes, it often is – but not every Aspie is clumsy, and not every Aspie has spectacularly extraordinary powers.

And who thinks like a list of symptoms? Oh alright, come to think of it, someone on the autism spectrum might actually do that; so, ok, I’ll let him get away with that one.

On the other hand, slipping when running on wet grass is not unusually clumsy, is it?

The story itself is a fast-paced, page-turning thriller, no problem there – only that my hours of sleep were somewhat curtailed for a few nights.

Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for stopping by; I hope you have a wonderful week, be it working or holidaying – and I will be back.

Apples

Hello, everybody, and welcome once again! Come on in, have a seat and a drink of your choice.

This week, I recommend the cider: cool and fresh for a hot day, if you’re having one of those, or mulled to keep that autumnal chill at bay. I know, it’s only August, but the mornings here are definitely cooler than they used to be, wet and foggy, though we are having some balmy days of sunshine and only a few showers. The air is beginning to smell like autumn is approaching ... and I have my woollen socks on.

So, how have you been? Well, I hope, and looking forward to either autumn or spring, depending on your hemispherical persuasion. Life here is finding a routine with the boys in school and me doing what I call work these days. And knitting, of course.

The Apple of the Week this time is all about – apples.

It is late summer now, and the earlier apples are ready for picking; some have been for a while. Already a whole month ago, Victor and I picked apples for his birthday cake. 

And for the next couple of months, more apples will ripen and fall to the ground, releasing sweetness when they are crushed underfoot or in a lawn mower, or be picked and used for cakes, desserts, cider, savoury dishes, decoration – or simply for munching. Apples are intrinsic to the feel and smell of autumn in northern temperate areas: the crispness in the air, the first cool mornings, are accompanied by the red fruits hanging from trees.

A lot of traditional Christmas foods contain apples: many Danish families have duck for Christmas dinner, in which the filling consists of apples and prunes; several variations of pork, always a popular meat around these parts, come with apples in some form; and the Waldorf salad has apples, as well.

The popularity of apples in Nordic winter foods is, of course, based on the fact that apples thrive in temperate climates and keep well when stored coolly. Some types of apples even benefit from a touch of frost. So from the earliest of times, people have been able to gather apples all through autumn and keep them through the winter, when everything else is frozen. They can be dried in slices over a wood fire and munched like that, or they can add rare sweetness to porridges and stews of meat and cabbage.

Not surprising, then, that apples play an important part in ancient myths and folklore.

Apples in mythology

We all know of the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden; this is traditionally portrayed as an apple. The text only defines the forbidden fruit as a tree-fruit, though; and given the Middle Eastern setting of the story, it is much more likely to have been a fig or a peach. But never mind about that – in this context, we can be happy to call it an apple. Because the forbidden knowledge that the eating of the fruit imparted to these first humans was the knowledge of sexuality, and apples in many mythologies are symbols of fertility.

It probably didn’t hinder the identification, either, that the words in Latin for ‘apple’ and ‘bad / evil’ are similar – though by no means the same: apple is mālus with a long a, while bad is mălus with a short a.

Apple trees spring up everywhere, seemingly in random places and of their own accord; they grow and bear fruits with many uses, fruit that sustain people through darkness and cold: a red apple in the dead of winter is a sign that world is not dead, even though it may be buried under the snow for now.

The Norse goddess Ydun (or Ydunn, or Idun, or Idunn: there are several ways to spell this) guards the apples of longevity and youth that all the gods need to eat once a year. The apple has a connection to both the Vanir, the fertility gods Frej and Freja; and possibly to a goddess of the Underworld, making the apple the fruit of the dead.

Again, the apple is connected to life & death, sexuality and mortality.

In Greek mythology, we have the golden apples on the tree that the Hesperides, the daughters of the Evening, guard in the westernmost part of the world; and golden apples are used to lure and distract people on several occasions.

The goddess of strife, Eris, is miffed at not being invited to the wedding of king Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis (later parents of Achilles) and, much like the thirteenth godmother at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, decides to ruin the party. She lets a golden apple on which is inscribed the words HE KALLISTE, ‘to the most beautiful’ (in feminine form), roll onto the floor. The goddesses immediately turn into America’s Next Top Model candidates, and Zeus wisely decides to not be the judge, but get a mortal to do it. They locate a prince, Paris from Troy, who chooses Aphrodite in return for the lovely Helena, queen of Sparta. Aphrodite is not bothered by the fact that the lady is married; but her husband is, and thus begins the Trojan War ...

And the apple becomes one of the symbols of Aphrodite and love: erotic love, as in sexual attraction and desire, that is; Eros is the love-child (sorry about that) of Aphrodite and Ares, the war demon. Once again, we have the connection between apples, sex, and death.

No coincidence, either, that the evil queen in Snow White chooses an apple to poison her stepdaughter with, the apple being the symbol of youth and fertility and therefore beauty and desirability: that the young woman should die by a sign of the very traits that the older woman begrudges her, is the ultimate irony.

So, what shall we make of the saying ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’? In the case of Doctor Who, that may not be what we want; on the other hand, if apples keep you young and strong and sexy, it might be an idea – as long as you make sure it isn’t poisoned.

The Knitting:

I mentioned last week the post-Ravellenic knitalong; in the meantime, I finished the cowl. Several knitters, including myself, found that the suggested needle size, 5 mm / US 8, made for a very loose gauge, and changed down. I went so far as a size 3 mm / US 2½, but then my yarn is a bit lighter than what the pattern calls for.

I did only 7 pattern repeats instead of 8, because I wanted it to fit snugly. And I put in buttonholes on the final garter edge. The buttons with the snakes on them remind me of the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail to symbolise the wheel of time – which goes rather well with the whole time-travelling theme, I think.

Anyway, when the cowl was done and sitting there all soft on my neck, I still had 22 grams of yarn left out of the original 50. It is a light fingering weight tussah silk from BC Garn; you can see the blue, green and purple tweed flecks in the photo. This was the one that somehow slipped into my virtual shopping basket, when I was buying Christmas presents last year. Oops.

My sister has made a pair of fingerless mitts and a Baktus scarf from her skein, so I thought: Tardis mitts! I could make a pair of fingerless mitts to go with the cowl. So I cast on, weighing the yarn several times to make sure I didn’t use more than half for the first mitt. They are worked in the round, so I had to modify the pattern a bit. I’m writing it up, and I’ll put it up on Ravelry when I’ve finished the mitts – just to make sure the instructions are followable.

As for the other knitalong project, the Damson is coming along nicely. I rather quickly decided to make a lace edging from one of the modifications put up on Ravelry; after the garter body of the shawl, something had to happen. So, beaded lace it is.

This is my second one-skein shawlette, the first being the Haruni I made for my mum in June; for quick gift knits, both are good, though I personally prefer the Haruni in terms of interesting knitting.

One important criterion for choosing the yarn for the Damson was that I had to have enough of it for one of the four colours in the Creekbed scarf, as well. The Damson is for my cousin’s wife, and the Creekbed for my cousin; and though I’m not into the matching his & hers type of dressing or accessorising, this has a rather discreet matching effect. Not surprisingly, given my predilection for purples, I had about a skein and a half of the purple Shetland wool, a fingering weight, again from BC Garn (they are not paying me for this, I promise!); and I found several possible combinations for the Creekbed. I ended up with purple, blue, green, and yellow; many years ago (well, 14), I made a jumper while expecting my third child, who turned out to be Victor, in those colours. I haven’t got the jumper (or sweater, if you’re American) anymore, but I can still see it in my mind’s eye. The colour combination was intended to be gender neutral with just a hint of the daring – not that purple on a man can shock anybody these days, which is fine.

And then I changed my mind, just a bit, so the scarf will be purple, blue, green, and grey instead of yellow. Stuff happens.

I actually already cast on for the Creekbed; this Sunday, I went to check out a new local crafting group, and I wanted to bring something simple that didn’t require looking at a pattern or fiddling with beads. Casting on 441 stitches and maybe knitting a few rows seemed doable while chatting.

And it was; I spent a lot of time counting and re-counting, though, as I kept getting distracted and losing my place. But in the end, all of the stitches were cast on, I knit a few rows and counted again, when I got home. Still 441 stitches.

The predominant age range in this group is somewhat on the granny side, including the obligatory little old lady with dyed hair and pastel coloured acrylic yarn on plastic needles. Even though the hair on this one is black, not blue ...

There are a handful of women – no men at all – around my age and a couple even younger. Not that I count myself as young, but I am nowhere near granny age, mind you! And knitting in company is nice for a change; my mum knits on occasion, my sister knits, a friend of my parents is now my knitting buddy – but that’s about it. Most of my knitting ‘friends’ are scattered around the world, and I only ‘meet’ them on Ravelry or listen to their podcasts. So I’ll be going along to the group again next month.

I had intended to tell you about more knitting podcasts, but that will have to wait; I am re-embarking on a dyeing adventure. The sun is shining, the fresh air is beckoning me outside – my workshop is in the bike shed – and there is wool yarn to be soaked and treated and dyed.

Much more about that next time; and about the craft exhibition this Saturday, and a movie, and ... some knitting, I suppose :o)

But for now, have a good weekend! Enjoy the weather, keep happy & healthy, stay crafty :o)

Happy knitting!

Here be dragons

Hello, and welcome back! I hope you are having a good week. The weather here is not as warm as it has been, and somewhat grey & wet – but that has its advantages, too. I ran 6 k this morning in 15°C, and it was a lot easier than running in 23°C a couple of days ago.

This week, it’s all about heroes and monsters, about overcoming danger – or adapting to your circumstances. Not surprisingly, perhaps, a bit of history as well, and of course an update on my knitting.

Apple of the week:

Apollon (replica painted to look like the bronze original)

With the Ravellenic Games coming up and all the talk about various ancient Greek games, I wanted to talk to you about a god who has an affinity to one of the games, viz. the Pythian Games in Delphi. 

The god in question is, of course, Apollon (in Greek; the Romans called him Apollo because in Latin, the –n at the end of a word disappears, much like in French). Today, I will tell you two stories of Apollon: first, how he came to be the master of Delphi and why the games are called Pythian, and then something about the laurel leaves which were given as a prize to the winner in the games. 

Both of these stories are what is known as an etiological myth, one that explains the origin of a name, a custom, or a ritual.

Slaying the monster:

Delphi in the mountainous region Phokis is the home of an ancient oracle. Not surprisingly, perhaps: Delphi is the centre of the World. Once, Zeus let his two eagles fly at the same time from the easternmost and the westernmost corners of the world, and they met in Delphi. Anyway, the oracle originally belonged to Gaia, Mother Earth, so it is truly ancient.

Apollon slaying Python (engraving by Chaveau)

According to the legend, Apollon came to visit the oracle and was denied access by the huge snake named Python who lived there and guarded the oracle. After a great battle, Apollon slew the monster and became the new lord of the land.

In keeping with the tradition, Apollon acquired the title Pythios, and thus the priestess of the oracle, who received the divine communications, was titled Pythia. The games in honour of Apollon were the Pythian Games.

We have records of these games dating back to 582 BCE, but by then they were already established. They took place every four years, right between the Olympic Games, and included competitions in music and poetry: a hymn to Apollon, flute and kithara, singing, acting, dancing, and painting. And sports such as running and chariot races, like in the Olympics. The musical contests were the original ones: Apollon is also the Leader of the Muses, the nine goddesses of various art forms.

Oedipus visiting the Pythia in Delphi (vase)

The oracle was in function for at least 2,000 years, giving guidance to anybody who asked: ordinary folk, legendary characters such as Oedipus, Middle Eastern kings, the leaders of democratic Athens, and Roman Emperors, until it was shut down in the 390’s, when Christianity became the only legal religion in the Roman Empire. The various Games were cancelled at this time, too, and for the same reason.

The collective name for the prophesising priestesses of the ancient world is Sibylla; the Roman writer Varro gives a list of 10 sibyls, among them the one in Delphi. (And what, btw, is professor Trelawney’s first name? Exactly.)

The story of a hero or a god battling a great snake, with or without wings or legs, is one of the basic Indo-European myths. It is, of course, a story about good versus evil, civilisation and light overcoming the dark forces of chaos and destruction. We find this story across a vast expanse of time and space, from

India, where the warrior god Indra slays the great snake Vŗtra to free the waters of the sky (very important in an area that is prone to droughts), to

the Norse god Thor struggling with the Midgard Worm on several occasions. During a visit to Utgard, Thor is challenged by Utgard-Loke to lift up his cat, and as we all know, cats grow to tremendous lengths when lifted. Thor heaves and lifts and finally manages to get the cat to take one paw off the ground – and later finds out that this ‘cat’ really was the Midgard Worm, which coils all the way around the world. So that was quite a feat, really.

And during the ending of the world, Ragnarok, Thor and the Midgard Worm kill each other (another story for another day, perhaps).

Sometimes the monster is winged or goes under a different name: any prince or knight worth his salt will know how to slay a dragon like St. George did; Harry Potter stabbed the basilisk – and Neville sliced the head off Nagini.

So much for monsters; let’s take a look at our protagonist in a different setting.

This is why the laurel tree is sacred to Apollo: once there was a girl, Daphne, whom Apollo ... shall we say, fell in love with. He tries to woo her, but Daphne is not interested. Apollo has not been brought up to know that when a girl says no, she means no (remember, he is the son of Zeus), and becomes rather insistent. Daphne runs. Apollo runs after her. Away they go, weaving between trees, ducking under branches, fording streams, uphill and downhill, dodging rocks, she desperately trying to get away, he still trying to entice her: ‘Come back, sweet girl, I love you. Don’t you know who I am?’

Apollon & Daphne, sculpture by Bernini

Finally, she has to realise that she cannot outrun him – he is a god, after all. So she prays to her father, the river god Ladon, to save her. And of course Daddy saves his little girl from the nasty man lusting after her – by turning her into a tree. Her feet sprout roots that dig into the soil, her soft skin becomes dry, wrinkled bark, her arms extend upwards with fingers lengthening into branches.

Apollo catches up in time to see the transformation happening, to see the love of his ... well, week, gradually become inaccessible to him. He hugs the tree, moaning (as in weeping, for cryin’ out loud! Get your mind out of the gutter), and vows that from this day forward, the laurel will be his and will be held in high esteem by him and all who follow him, in one way or the other.

And so, the winners in the Pythian Games held in Delphi are crowned with garlands of laurel leaves, as are poets.

And finally, The Knitting:

I am currently working on two rather large projects: the Regrowth shawl, that I have mentioned several times already, and the secret gift knitting. Both are coming along, getting bigger day by day. Now, with large projects it can sometimes be difficult to sense any progress, because an hour’s worth of knitting produces a very small part of the whole thing. In this respect, though, my two projects are quite accommodating.

The Regrowth shawl is worked from several different charts, of which only some are repeated, and I am past all of them now; so every knit row is different from the preceding, and I can tick off each of them on the chart.

The rows are becoming very long. I have no idea how many stitches are on the needles; I am using a circular needle, KnitPro (KnitPicks or Knitter’s Pride in the US) with cubic needles size 4 mm (I just love the cubics, they are so much easier to hold than the usual round ones) and a 150 cm wire. I did count the stitches a good while ago – or rather, I counted till the marker in the middle and doubled the number – and at that point I had about 420 stitches. I’m not sure I want to know how many there are now ... it takes at least 30 minutes to knit a row, and in a bit I’ll be at the Owl chart with the quadruple yarnovers.

...

Okay, moving on, before I’m struck by the enormity of that. I may count the stitches and tell you next week. If I dare – but by then I’ll be almost done, so it won’t be as daunting. I hope.

The other project is in multiple colours, so for that I can gauge my progress from the colour changes.

Maybe because of this almost monogamous knitting – so unlike me! – I have been visiting my queue and thinking about other knitting plans. My Ravelry queue is deceptively short; I have only 9 or 10 things in it. That doesn’t mean, though, that my total to-knit list contains less than a dozen projects: I only put stuff in the Ravelry queue that I really plan to knit within the foreseeable future, either gifts or something for which I have the yarn in my stash. All the ‘ooh, nice, I might do that’ go in favorites (I’m getting a red squiggle now, because my spell check is British). And, obviously, my own designs exist only in my head and / or notes, so they can’t go in the queue. But really, I have enough on my plate, knitting-wise. I have no reason to consider new projects. Hold that thought.

Anyway, the other day I noticed a new episode of Cast On: Brenda is back from her tour of the States, so let’s hear what she has to say. Among lots of other interesting stuff, she talks about her souvenir knitting project: the Color Affection (red squiggle again). Made famous by the Yarn Harlot and knitted by over 4,000 Ravelers, it is a 3-coloured shawl: it starts out with one colour, adds one more in stripes, then the third, still in stripes, and finishes with the third colour by itself. Brenda talks about the lovely hand-painted Canadian sock yarn she found in Toronto, the exciting colour combinations, the knitting and blocking of it (do check it out on Ravelry, it’s quite pretty).

I have seen and read about this shawl before; Hoxton of Electric Sheep has talked about it; it is nice, but never really called to me, begging to be mine. But this day, while I was out walking and listening, I found myself seriously considering it. Here’s what I thought:

# 1: Hmm, it does sound rather nice, I might do that, and those miles of garter stitch would be brilliant for reading. I could name it my Book Affection shawl or something (creative, right?)...

# 2: What am I thinking?! I have two big deadline things on the needles; in the days between finishing those and the start of the Ravellenic Games I have six things I really want to get moving, for the Games themselves I have three projects in 17 days – or rather, 16 and a bit, since they start in the evening – and there’s a lot of other important stuff to knit, so this shawl would be something like item number 23 on my list, and I might get round to it, if all goes well, in Dec– oh, jeepers, Christmas knitting! Let me reshuffle. I might get round to this shawl in February.  Providing I don’t add something more urgent to the list in the meantime. Forget it.

# 3: Sock yarn ... I don’t have ready access to Canadian hand-paints, but I do have several single skeins of fingering weight Shetland wool in my stash, some of which I got for that Dangan blanket that I frogged. I could probably put together a pretty combination ...

And you know what? I did. I got home, found the box with the fingering weight wool, and laid the skeins out in threes. I actually found a great combination and a few other nice ones. I resisted the urge to download the pattern and cast on. Now I just have to put that aside for a few months. I may still forget it.

That’s all, folks! Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings – and do come back next week. Until then –

Happy knitting!