I wore the Cherry Bomb sweater yesterday, finally, so I can give you a proper report on it. Well, it is a worsted-weight tank top, so there is the essential oddity of wearing a heavy garment with no sleeves. It is cotton, so it flares at the hem, even though I added ribbing. And even in the smallest size, it is a bit looser than it was probably designed to be (not the fault of the pattern). But the short-row dart trick does in fact give a nice fit at the bust. The book containing the pattern, Big Girls Knits, explains how to add this feature to other patterns, and how to calculate it to your own measurements.

So there I was, dressed in red, white, and blue in order to sing patriotic songs in church yesterday. We are not robing for the summer, in an effort to keep air conditioning costs and fossil fuel use down. The pastor exhorted members to give up their ties for the sake of good stewardship, and we'll see how that goes. A lot of the ladies have given up pantyhose, but I guess that's not the kind of thing you can encourage from the pulpit.

Anyway, we were singing "America the Beautiful," and The Chemist was poking me and singing the words with great emphasis, preparatory to a few between-hymn comments on how Mr. Bush ought to pay attention to those words. The verse she had in mind was

"God mend thine every flaw [being sung here to America]
Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

Our scofflaw president needs a bit of self-control, she felt.

And it struck me, as it has many people I am sure, that "America the Beautiful" would make a much better national anthem than "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is a poem about the War of 1812, set to an old drinking song whose words included "and besides I will teach you like me to entwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine," it being a song about how a man might be capable of performing his marital duties, shall we say, while drunk. It became the National Anthem in 1931, which means that there are people alive who could remember when it wasn't our national anthem.

It is a very militaristic song, focusses on the flag rather than on the nation and its people and ideals (as "America the Beautiful" does), and requires a range of an octave and a half to sing. Its performance at sporting events is treated as though it were a feat of strength, most of our citizens cannot sing it, and it is very difficult to choose a key to suit any group of people who can sing it.

"America the Beautiful" is the strongest contender for a new anthem. There are objections out there to this song because it has some religious words in it -- well, "God shed His grace on thee" is right there in the first verse, so it would be hard to avoid the religious overtones.

The other serious choice for a new national anthem is Woody Guthrie's "This Land is My Land." This song celebrates the beauty of the nation and has a distinctly egalitarian feel. I have two problems with this choice. First, it has a well-known schoolyard parody that goes "This land is my land, it isn't your land, if you don't get off, I'll blow your head off." Why have that in the back of people's minds? Second, it isn't suited, musically, to the kinds of events at which we sing national anthems. Ball games excepted. We couldn't rise and listen in respectful silence. We would have to link arms and all sing together, swaying in time.

That could be okay, actually.

What we must avoid at all costs is following Mr. Reagan's suggestion that we replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" with the horrible Lee Greenwood tune, "I'm Proud to be an American." If anyone starts singing that at your Independence Day barbecue, take them aside and ask them to leave.

After church, and grocery shopping, I did get a couple of things sewn up. Here are two tunics with their main seams done.

Tunics look like nothing at all on the hanger, don't they?

The one on the left is Simplicity 3786. I did a muslin of this in a tropical rayon and I wear it all the time. I changed this one slightly to make it more modest, and it is slightly less becoming, but I think that is a fair trade-off. The one on the right is Simplicity 4220, a style which was very popular last year.

#2 daughter told me at the time that it was too young a style for me, and she may be right. The ties in the back have a girlish air, and altogether it gives me that milkmaid look which is so much more charming on a young girl than on a matron. We should have moved on from being milkmaids by now, you have to think, and have our own farm or something.

The solid blue fabric is a plain broadcloth off the dollar a yard table, and that may be partially to blame for the fact that I don't like this tunic that well.

I am still trying to avoid agreeing with #2 daughter, as you see.

The print is a wonderful cotton lawn from The Fashion Fabrics Club. A really good cotton can be just as wonderful as silk or wool, though we rarely encounter such good cottons, so it is easy to forget that. This fabric is so lovely and perfect and feels so good to sew that I intend to do all the handwork on it today. I may add pintucks or something, just for the sake of the pleasure of sewing it.

This is a day off for me, now that I have done my paying-job computer work, and I intend to loll around quite a bit. Housework and gardening must also be done.

I may not have my own farm,but I do have some nice vegetables.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a beautiful book. The language is delicious. You are allowed, at this point, to say scornfully, "Well, yeah. It was written by Willa Cather!"

But the landscape is what has been most striking to me, and in particular the contrast with that of My Antonia. I read that last year, and felt that the prairie was almost a character in the book, and that it was malevolent. In Death Comes for the Archbishop the fact that people are often nearly dying in the desert does not prevent me from experiencing the beauty of the desert. The smell of it, in particular, is always with me as I read.

Granted that I don't care much for prairies and love the desert, it still seems to me that Cather is in control of the impression made by her landscapes.

Our landscapes are looking pretty good here. We have entered the stage of garden swapping. I took some cukes, yellow zucchini, and cayenne peppers to The Empress and That Man. The Empress brought watermelon to me and The Poster Queen. JJ brought me crookneck squash, zucchini, and a habanera pepper that someone had brought to her.

Tomatoes rarely feature in these exchanges. It's almost impossible to have too many tomatoes, isn't it? Our heirloom tomato plants, my husband says, are only going to bear one set of fruit and then die. They are that kind of tomato. I hope he's wrong, but he rarely is wrong about plants. If I had known this, I would have planted some other varieties as well.

Today, with the deadline having passed at midnight, I will have to email in my encyclopedia entry with a note saying I couldn't find out anything reliable about race relations in that county. Sigh. Then is church, and then I hope to do some sewing. I have cut out the remaining three pieces of my SWAP Part II and might conceivably get them all sewn up this weekend, my weekend now being Sunday and Monday.

However, grocery shopping and housework are also on the docket, so ... probably not. I must decide whether to strive to complete one piece entirely, or to do all the main seams and leave the finishing for evenings. I am more likely to do handwork in the evenings than to get to the machine.

The other book I am reading is Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, in which I have now reached the beginning of life. I am irritating my family by reading out all the best parts. One of my favorite sentences, though, is in the section where Bryson is detailing the various implausible theories about how life actually got going. He has pointed out that getting from the presence of various amino acids to actual life is equivalent to having all the ingredients sitting in your kitchen get themselves together to make cakes... that can actually replicate themselves into other cakes.He then runs through the sequences posited by various people, and sums it up thus: "If so: wow."

........

It is now 8:37. I did my level best to finish up the encyclopedia entry and sent it off with a note explaining that I had done my best. Since that time -- at least an hour -- I have been sitting here in my silk pajamas reading blogs and drinking tea and listening to birds and failing to accomplish anything at all. I am shocked with myself. It is gray and soft and lovely outside, with raindrops still glistening on the flowers, and it seems like a perfect day to loll around in a gentle fog, but that was not at all my plan for the day. I feel like Dexter. Could I skip church and leave the alto section small and pitiful for the schmaltzy arrangement of "America the Beautiful"? Could I skip the grocery and feed my menfolks squash for lunch? Could I ignore the messy house?

Of course not. I will now endeavor to Snap Out of It.

Maybe one more cup of tea.....