Tuesday, September 09, 2008

It never rains but…

You guessed it – Wh*te H*at and VK in the same post yesterday.

The book is intensely irritating, but I am tackling it bravely. I’m going for the set pieces. One of the big things about Higginson – perhaps the big thing – is that he and a hot number named Mabel Loomis Todd edited the first (posthumous) edition of Dickenson’s poetry. The punctuation is simplified, rhymes and meters smoothed to Victorian taste.

This was long regarded as a considerable failure on Higginson’s part. My mother exonerates him – perhaps for the first time; I’m no Dickenson scholar -- putting the blame squarely on Todd. Higginson had made his considerable name and position available to get the poems into print – publishers weren’t keen. He wanted to oblige the family, to which he vaguely thought Todd belonged.

W*neapple comes to the same conclusion; she’s welcome to it, as long as she doesn’t suppose she got there first. So that’s the part I’m reading, switching back and forth between the books.

VK is wonderful. Why has Trisha Malcolm popped up again as editor? What happened to Adina Klein? Gossip, please.

I like:

Kaffe’s reworking of an old idea of his, using his new Colorscape yarn. As intarsia goes, it would be pretty easy, too.

Jared’s mittens.

Mari Muinonen’s hoodie -- everybody’s knitting it over on Ravelry.

And I’m seriously interested in several others – the great thing about this issue is that one doesn’t recoil in horror from the extreme designs.

Miscellaneous

I found this pattern for a Monmouth cap. Rather tempting. Tamar, thank you for the detail. (Knitting08816, we lived in West Allenhurst, Monmouth County, NJ. I went to Asbury Park High School made relatively famous somewhat later when Bruce Springsteen attended it. Your latter hypothesis is the right one – I am a transplanted Yank.)

And meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The swallowtail coat is finished. Here it is in its rough state. Maybe it doesn’t need buttons. I’m really rather proud of it, speaking as one who had never knit a swallowtail coat before.













So today I hope I will resume the Princess. It seems a particularly appropriate way to spend my last day on earth – I am assuming here that we will all be sucked into the man-made black hole when they turn on the experiment at CERN tomorrow.

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:35 AM

    The monmouth cap with the brim turned back looks like Jughead's cap! It was the mention of the button that made me think of it. But I thought that his had wedges of color. I will research.

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  2. Anonymous10:49 AM

    Okay, I'm having a memory problem. In the later cartoons, Jughead wears a cap with exaggerated points like a jester's crown. I did find a version that looks very like a monmouth cap with a button on top that is made of felt wedges with a very small saw tooth edge. This is the one I remember. It was a promotion for Jack Sprat cereals, came free in the box, and claims to be Jughead's cap. It's a long shot, bo borry to jump to conclusions.

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  3. Anonymous10:50 AM

    That's "so sorry". I'm having typing problems as well.

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  4. Jean, a day late but I, too, have problems with which bump to use when trying the crochet chain provisional cast on. I prefer the crochet cast on, good description here on Eunny Jang's old blog http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/2006/03/majoring_in_lace_part_iv.html or if you have the Sally Melville knit or purl books, i think it's in there.

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  5. I have spent my last day on Earth defrosting the freezer. I do hope you're wrong about this!

    Very cute little coat! I've lost the tread of the story behind this, but it will make someone's favorite bear very happy I expect.

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  6. Anonymous4:38 PM

    I can't recall the correct procedure but I just used your blog's link to the Obama campaign contribuitons. I don't want him distracted by money worries and there is starting to be concern in his camp, since he gave up the public dollars.

    Great coat! It is fun to do a project like that, small, more freedom.

    I suppose if you are going back to the Princess, I have to go back to Lucy Neatby's Maple Leaf Shawl, http://www.tradewindknits.com/tmhold2.html Fun once you're back into it.

    I'm going to think about this being the possible last day when I decide what to eat for lunch!

    Gerrie in St Paul

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  7. Anonymous6:52 PM

    The thing that amuses me about that pattern is that she actually made it more authentic by knitting the little tag on top; the so-called "button" in the original's description was just a little knitted tag. Monmouth caps were sold commercially for over 400 years so there were plenty of variations; most of them seem to have been made with very thick yarn. "The" Monmouth cap is the one found in an attic in Monmouth itself, made circa 1600. Today I think it would be called a "bucket hat."

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  8. Oh, I was so GRATEFUL when I saw Trish was back. I mean, just pathetically grateful.

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