Tuesday 20 May 2014

Yarn Along




This little hat and card arrived yesterday, just in time for mama and baby to come home from the hospital!  I was impressed that it went half way round the world to Alaska in such good timing.  Anyway, it means I can post pictures now without spoiling the surprise.

I more or less made up the pattern for this little crochet hat.  Nothing complex.  I wanted it to look like a little white flower with a green stem.  The recipient won't be able to wear it for a while, but as she wasn't yet born while I was making it, I didn't want to risk the chance of making it too small, so I opted for baby rather than infant/newborn size.

Afon and I are reading The Wind in the Willows aloud at bedtime.  It's a first for both of us, and even though I know he's not really paying attention except for the sparse pictures, I want it imprinted in his memory for when we come to it again.  It really is very much a summer story, something to cuddle up to with the window open and the hint of late evening light lingering in the sky.

I welcomed the Jehovah's Witnesses into my home for their second visit today*, and during a frenzy of cleaning, found these verses from before I was even married (but after I was engaged, as the scrolling signatures practicing my married name attest).  This leaf of paper recently occupied space between the worn pages of my Morte d'Arthur but has since been removed and kindly ripped in three by Sir Afon.  The first lines go like this:

Wales, in places, bares its bones
to wind and time.  The tattered homes
of ancient heroes, nondescript absences
where grass won't

and then were promptly abandoned.  A few lines down, a new stanza beginning a new poem:

Golden Guinevere of the summer wood,
voluptuously ripened in kingdom's plenty.
Echoes in crags of riverbeds sound
the crowning bloom of Arthur's kingdom.
Sweet, full, much for one mouth to contain.
She is honey, stickily clinging to that she touches.
She is the hum of crickets at days end,
a raucous, soothing signal of ending.
She is queen.  She will carry them over,
the flower and the tree.

And then there are some doodles of arrows and leaves.  It was either mid- or late summer when I wrote these lines, not late spring/early summer like it is now, but being here, in Wales, the feeling of what it was to write them is very present to me.  It's interesting to see where my mind was at the time, deeply immersed in writing my Arthurian thesis, in the sun-soaked summer of Wales, mild and fertile.  Looking at them over an expanse of years is eerie and nostalgic, like glimpsing the other side of a riverbank through the fog in early morning.

*Yes, I'm aware they're trying to convert me, even though they say they aren't.  But they don't know that I know.  And they certainly don't know that I'm trying to convert them back!

6 comments:

  1. Alice will love the little hat. I love that it resembles a valley of the Lilly flower - which is her birth month flower. Thank you for sending it. I bet they sent it up and over the north pole ;) Shorter distance.

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    1. Maybe! I sent it last Monday so it got there in less than a week, right?

      I'm so glad you like it, I never got a chance to make something for the other boys. And I didn't even think that it looks like a lily (of the valley?), perfect!

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  2. What a beautiful hat, it is a sheer delight.

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  3. Christie, have you listened to any of the audios of "Journey Home" where the guest is a former JW? They might prove useful for your endeavor. Look up Journey Home in the audio library of the EWTN website.

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    Replies
    1. I love "Journey Home," Anna, thanks for mentioning it. I'll be sure to look into it!

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