A Plethora of Socks July 3, 2009

 These socks plus the baby beanie are what I have been knitting lately.  I just love the Regia Kaffe Fassett colours sock yarn.

Now I want to write a few words about rhubarb – unrelated to socks as far as I know but I just feel like writing about it.  We have rhubarb growing in our garden.

  rather pathetic isn’t it but it’s early days yet for the 2nd crop.  Then Ian will make a delicious rhubarb and apple and raisin pie.  Meanwhile we’ll depend on store-bought rhubarb for those pies.

I subscribe to a service called Word a Day.  A few days ago rhubarb was the word for the day.  To quote from the site: 

“MEANING:

noun: A heated dispute; brawl.

ETYMOLOGY:

The origin of the plant name rhubarb is from Greek rha (perhaps from Rha, an ancient name of the river Volga on whose bank rhubarb was grown) + barbaros (foreign), but why the word developed this slang sense is unknown. We do know that this usage was popularized in baseball. The Oxford English Dictionary has the first citation from 1943:

“Mr ‘Red’ Barber,.. who has been announcing the games of the Brooklyn Dodgers, has used the term ‘rhubarb’ to describe an argument, or a mix-up, on the field of play.” (NY Herald Tribune)”

The name Red Barber caught my eye.  I remember him from the 1940’s when I was a keen fan of the Boston Red Sox.

Writing Class May 15, 2009

A few years ago I did an adult education course in writing. It was a very interesting class. We had all sorts of assignments and we had to read out our compositions. It was rather daunting at first and I felt quite shy and self-conscious about it. On the other hand it was very entertaining to hear the others in the class. One learned a lot about each of the 15 or so contributors. I enjoyed the class very much – it was so sociable and also we received good criticism and tips for improving our writing.

Our teacher was primarily interested in poetry, being a poet herself with several published works. I felt she wanted to turn each of us into poets but still we were allowed to go our own way, up to a point. I was particularly keen to work on my autobiography but she put me down about that. Nevertheless, I continued to work on it. Our first assignment was to write about our earliest memory. Other assignments followed. Eventually we were told to write a poem. I produced the following:

Nantucket, Nantucket, we went to you for memories sake
You did not disappoint us
The boat, the spray, the mist, the emerging outline on the horizon
Summer island of our youth

We walked your cobbled streets
Absorbed your red bricks and your gray shingled cottages
The air of former whaling days
Of widows looking out to sea
Watching for sea-faring husbands never to return

Your sandy beaches, playgrounds for the summer visitors
We were young and carefree, only there to play
Maybe work to earn our keep
But that was quite light-hearted

Waiting table, washing dishes
Cycling to the beach
Midnight swims
Dancing at the Upper Deck
Flirting with the fellows

And yet behind it all lay the ghost of Moby Dick
And all that made Nantucket famous
In former days of sail and ambergris

The beloved grey lady of the sea

I was disappointed. My teacher didn’t like it – I never did figure out quite why. She held off for several weeks but eventually she discussed it for the benefit of the class. Her criticism kind of made me squirm. She said it wasn’t actually a poem. Oh well, I was still very happy with it and was complimented on it by each of the other members of the class. We were all quite supportive of each other.

After a couple of years I ran out of things to write about and also did not want to be a poet, nevermind the criticism by my teacher. I still liked her but I decided to do some other class – I think that’s when I switched to doing the Irish class so that was about 4 years ago.

Today Ian and I were having lunch at Airfield, an urban farm near our home. (WordPress is not allowing me to show a link – I’m beginning to think my photo uploading problems are related to this – I will investigate further)
At another table was a group of about 10 talking animatedly. I spotted my former writing teacher and 2 of my former classmates. So after lunch I went over and spoke with them. One of them, Brigid, remembered me as did Margaret, the other classmate. The teacher also kind of remembered me. Brigid could always be counted on for an amusing piece of writing. I particularly remembered her account of a hippie type wedding on a hill near Newgrange, a world famous pre-historic site here in Ireland. Margaret remembered me for a particular item I wrote early on in the class. My piece was about our son James and Susan’s wedding in Seattle in Room 9 of the King County Courthouse on July 1, 2000. Now here we were 9 years later and I could tell my friends that James and Susan had 3 children and we were going to move to Seattle to be nearer them and other members of our family living across the pond.

I said earlier that the writing class was very sociable. Well, the term had actually finished a couple of weeks ago and the group today had just gathered for coffee and a chat. What fun to see them again.

Fabric words used metaphorically September 18, 2007

Fabric words used metaphorically – that’s the theme this week on Wordsmith.  So here’s another one – buckram.  Not a word I am terribly familiar with.  But according to Wordsmith,    

“buckram (BUK-ruhm) noun

   1. A stiff cotton fabric used in interlining garments, in bookbinding, etc.

   2. Stiffness; formality.

verb tr.

   1. To strengthen with buckram.

   2. To give a false appearance of strength, importance, etc.

[Of uncertain origin. Perhaps after Bukhara, Uzbekistan, a city noted for
textiles.]

  “Dick and his father were henceforth on terms of coldness. The upright
   old gentleman grew more upright when he met his son, buckramed with
   immortal anger.”
   Robert Louis Stevenson; The Story of a Lie; 1879.”

Now I’ll try to work it into a theme for today in connection with my knitting.  For me, the word buckram  conjures up an image of a horse and cart – like the surrey with the fringe on top in the hit musical Oklahoma.  But maybe I’m getting it confused with buckskin.  Looking up buckskin in the Oxford English Dictionary I see that one of the definitions is “a thick smooth cotton or woollen cloth”.  At least we’re still on the theme of fabric related words.

I’m working with fibre, but not to make cloth.  I’m combining my knitted and crocheted pieces and scraps to make an Eccentric Blanket.

 this shows the progress I have made as of Sept. 18, 2007

The Story of Ung; 1896 September 11, 2007

  “No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;
   No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.”
   Rudyard Kipling; The Story of Ung; 1896.

Is anyone familiar with this poem  by Rudyard Kipling and the quotation above?  I read the quote in today’s edition of Wordsmith. 

I was intrigued by the word “ouch” used as a noun.  According to Wordsmith and his sources, ouch or ouche  means “a brooch or buckle set with precious stones”.  This month’s workshop with the Online Guild is about embroidery and Indian elephants with some references to Kipling’s animals so there has been a lot of discussion about what fibres and materials and decorations to use for the embroidery images.   Hence I thought this word would be a good one to add to the discussion.   Now I have read the whole poem and I think the embroiderers’ heads would be reeling with more wonderful images.