In the eyes of the world, yesterday's Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh was entirely eclipsed by Bob G. and Live 8, but I gather it was a big success anyway. Margot phoned in the evening, exhilerated. We stayed away, and our part of town was pretty empty. There was the sound of helicopters overhead all day along, like living in Baghdad, I imagine.

Knitting

I'm on the 14th repeat of the Princess Shawl edging, and progressing well towards the finishing of the back of Thomas the Younger's striped Koigu. There's a substantial mistake in the pattern for the front, which I will have to figure out and correct before I can go much further.

Non-Knit

Rachel phoned -- they clearly had a wonderful time at Thomas the Elder's graduation on Friday. She took digital pictures but we can't see them until somebody teaches her how to squirt them into her computer and from thence to the ether.

I could write about plastic eyes, or free trade with Africa, or even mice, but will today instead concentrate on...

...Boustrophedon.

Some background: when I was a Knitlist moderator I used to read Knitflame sometimes, to see what aspects of us they were laughing at, and thus got involved in a row with Margaret Velard about the plural of "virus". She was sticking up for "virii" and even asked of me, "Where did you learn your Latin?"

Now, it's all right to make fun of my knitting (I'm not in fact, technically, very good) but that was an insult too far. I came out roaring, and Margaret Velard hasn't been heard of since. A nice person named Calantha -- isn't that a beautiful name? -- stepped in, and guided me to a website from which I learned that there was actually some justice in Margaret Velard's point of view: "virii" is abominable Latin, but is acceptable in computer circles as a jargon word for the plural of "virus".

And yesterday, after a long gap, I heard from Calantha again, sending me a Knitlist post which she thought I'd like:

"Knitting charts are one of the few examples of boustrophedon reading
left in the world. Boustrophedon is a reading- / writing- style that alternates
direction every line.

So the right side rows are read from right to left, and the wrong side
rows from left to right."

I was actually walking along the passge to look it up for its etymology, when my long-distant education supplied it from the depths of my subconscious: the reference is to plowing. In ancient Greece, as in modern Strathardle, one plows a furrow and then turns and plows the next one back again in the opposite direction. "bous" is an ox, and the rest of the word comes from a verb meaning "to turn".

Isn't that nice?