January 24, 2005

• Yesterday morning I sang in an anthem at my own church (terrible) and enjoyed a sermon by our associate pastor. I then headed out to the country Presbyterian church, where I sang along with some praise choruses, heard their anthem (also fairly terrible), enjoyed another sermon on the same text, and had a chance to see some folks I hadn't seen in a while. Our text (preached in all Presbyterian churches that morning) was about the importance of unity in the church. The first pastor pointed out that without some disunity, she wouldn't be standing in the pulpit, and we Protestants wouldn't have been there at all, which was an indisputable point which hadn't previously occurred to me. The second one cautioned us not to confuse unity with uniformity. It was interesting to hear two intelligent viewpoints on a single text. I was also reminded of the P.G. Wodehouse story "The Great Sermon Handicap." I did not learn anything about other denominations today, although the abstract topic of denominations came up in both sermons, so I had a chance to contemplate the subject.

  
  

  I ordered this pattern for #1 son's quilt. I am hoping that the instructions with the pattern will be clear enough that I will be able to succeed with the stained-glass bit. It seems that you simply do ordinary applique, and then outline everything with black bias tape. If so, then I should be able to do the borders with Celtic knots from other sources and a bit of math. I could even use some Viking cable patterns.

  
  

  But I am getting ahead of myself here. I must wait for the pattern to arrive. I tried to find it locally, but had no luck. I did, in the process, discover somethng I found startling: If you link to an Amazon book from a Brit's blog, you end up at amazon UK, where they have prices in pounds and "dispatch" things rather than send them. Okay, I was way too excited by that, but it felt as though I had gone through a magical cupboard or something.

  
  

  Then I caught up on my scrapbooking, so I can show #1 daughter what we did in 2004. I made a big pot of lentil soup and a batch of whole wheat rolls and packed them all up in single servings in the freezer so I can easily grab a healthy lunch on my way to work. That was enough for one day -- back to my knitting while the guys watched football. Apparently the outcome of the games yesterday determines who will play in the Superbowl.

  
  

  Hopkins is getting bigger. I like the fretwork. It makes the variegation more tolerable, and from a distance is quite nice. It occurs to me that I have not given the details about the patterns. Who knows, there may be someone out there who wants to recreate this sweater in spite of my continual badmouthing of it.

  
  

  The shaping is that of Siv, from E. Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting. The colorwork is from charts in A. Starmore's Celtic Collection. The large band at the bottom is from Erin, which I plan to make according to the pattern (or pretty close, for me) for my next big project. The fretwork is from Roscrea. Both were designed with bright colors in mind, and you can see Erin in even brighter colors on this blog: http://tricofolk.free.fr/blog.htm

  • 7:19 am
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