Another day of
great weakness, but Helen got me around the garden. She says the latest
sourdough loaf tastes good.
And Uradale Farm
on Shetland says that my hap-yarn order is on the way. So it behoves me to get
as much Evendoon done as possible before it turns up. I made some progress down
the second sleeve today.
Kate Davies has
sent us club-members a pattern for a cosy hoodie. It’s fastened, however, with a zipper,
which rules it out for me. That’s a skill I’ve never mastered, and by now I’ve
stopped trying. Didn’t Franklin once offer a class on fastenings? If so, it’s
slid out of his repertoire.
Miscellaneous
I’ve mentioned
that I sometimes re-read this blog, of an evening. Yesterday I discovered to my
surprise, in December, 2018, this reference
to an article about “Christmas past” on Shetland in which they celebrate not
Christmas but the solstice itself, starting a week beforehand (that would be
next Thursday); the celebration lasts a month. There are lots of trolls
about, this time of year, but the article has tips for warding them off.
I keep meaning to
mention that Arne and Carlos told us recently that, at home by themselves,
Carlos speaks Swedish and Arne speaks Norwegian. That scarcely sounds as if
they are two separate languages at all.
I’m sorry I missed
Melvin Bragg on Hopkins, Mary Lou. Maybe I can dig it out of the BBC web pages.
(I heard him last night, as I was falling asleep. His voice sounded funny, as
if his teeth didn’t fit, but I can’t remember what they were talking about.)
Hopkins was revered by students of literature when I was at Oberlin, so I knew
his name, at least. But I didn’t know he was a Roman Catholic, let alone a
Jesuit priest, until I got to Glasgow. His was a desperately sad – and heroic –
life.
Peggy, yes, that’s
a tape measure on the rail of the Aga. I don’t know quite how that happened.
That’s where the tape measure belongs, and I always know where it is. If only
things were so arranged for everything else in the house!
Franklin's course is called Snip and Zip: Steeks and Zippers and was still in his class list as of last Spring. It is a fun class where you learn how to knit a swatch where you learn to cut a steek, using several ways of securing the edges, and also to install a zipper.
ReplyDeleteYou could always add button bands to the front of the hoodie instead of the zipper.
ReplyDeleteHow clever of you to have a place for the tape measure - I have at least two of them in every room of the house, and I still cannot manage to put my hand on one when I need it!
ReplyDeleteOr you can pay someone to install it for you! I have done that when short on time, and it was absolutely worth it. I think the Hopkins Melvin Bragg show was an older one being repeated. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003clk
ReplyDeleteI have tape measures all over the house and yet can never lay hands on one when needed either!
Who can ever find a tape measure? No me!
ReplyDeleteYes, Swedish and Norwegian (possibly also Danish) are similar, and native speakers of one can often understand native speakers of the other, as I understand it. (I think they are more similar to each other than, for example, the Romance languages are, and my learning and understanding Italian was greatly aided by my existing knowledge of French. I imagine the effect is even greater among the Scandinavian languages.) I imagine this might be especially true if one has lived with the other speaker for some time. (My American family is of Swedish and Norwegian extraction and is fascinated by all of Scandinavia. I was fortunate to spend some time there years ago and learn a few words of Swedish.)
ReplyDeleteA German friend of us moved to Norway and leared to speak Norwegian quite well, and when he moved to Denmark after a few years, he couldn´t be bothered to learn Danish. So he continued speaking Norwegian, and he never had any problems with understanding or being understood.
ReplyDeleteHilde in Germany
It almost seems like those languages are merely dialects of each other, although not being a linguist nor ever having visited Scandinavia (Germany is as far as I got), this is just a vague theory. Chloe
ReplyDeleteI lived in Sweden long ago (my husband is Swedish), and for a time I had a Norwegian housemate. It was always nervewracking speaking with him because while I always felt I understood him, the meaning penetrated in a strange way. I couldn't really pick out the words only the meaning. But Danish, no one can reliably understand spoken Danish! Swedes say Danes speak as if they have potatoes in their mouths.
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