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Friday Unrelated Information
1. It’s that time again–it’s Open Barn Day at Blue Moon Ranch tomorrow. Come see the alpacas, buy some fiber from the herd, talk to Linda and Ed about their animals, and shiver (it’s going to be cold, unfortunately). I’ll be there in a semi-official capacity, too.
2. Here’s something to make up for the Virginia Woolf quotes:
Virginia Woolf Quote Of The Day, Day Two
From A Room of One’s Own again (yes, it’s a cop out, but at least it’s not a cat picture):
What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech—and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us…For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life.
Virginia Woolf Quote Of The Day
From “A Room of One’s Own”:
The whole structure, it is obvious, thinking back on any famous novel, is one of infinite complexity, because it is thus made up of so many different judgments, of so many different kinds of emotion. The wonder is that any book so composed holds together for more than a year or two, or can possibly mean to the English reader what it means for the Russian or the Chinese. But they do hold together occasionally very remarkably. And what holds them together in these rare instances of survival (I was thinking of War and Peace) is something that one calls integrity, though it has nothing to do with paying one’s bills or behaving honorably in an emergency. What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. Yes, one feels, I should never have thought that this could be so; I have never known people behaving like that. But you have convinced me that so it is, so it happens.
Tuesday Project Roundup: No Projects Are Finished Yet Edition
I’ve been jumping between projects this week: A chambray dress with long sleeves and a skirt out of the same free drapery fabric that I made the Bruce Lee girl dress out of (that one’s not for me; it’s for the lady who gave me the fabric). I’ve been mulling over a trial pair of pants after Saturday’s Pants Summit, too, and working on a knitting project, which will be this:(I will not, however, wear it in a wind tunnel with a skirt made of scarves, as the model seems to be doing.)
Of course, with all these projects to work on and a free evening last night, what did I do? Shopped for more fabric and patterns online.My friend just announced she’s getting married over Thanksgiving weekend, so that requires a dress out of this shiny silk plaid. I want to try to make a light wool jacket before it gets too cold. And who could resist the sleeves on this baby?I couldn’t. Look how delighted the pattern model is by hers.
Words Used In Recent Conversations That I Never Thought I Would Hear
1. pederast
2. logician
3. solipsistic
There’s a scene in The Garden of Eden where the female character uses the word “paramour,” and the male lead reacts thusly, which is how I felt hearing these, too:
“You really said it,” David told her. “I’d never heard that word pronounced and I had absolutely no hope of ever hearing it in this life. You’re really wonderful.”
“It’s a perfectly common word.”
“It is at that,” David said. “But to have the sheer, naked courage to use it in conversation.”
Friday Unrelated Information
1. I re-read “A Room of One’s Own” this week and found so many good Virginia Woolf quotes. Today’s resonates because it’s fall:
“It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in windowpanes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”
2. Speaking of fall, the autumnal equinox is Saturday. Druids and other pagan types celebrate with various harvest festivals; Christians celebrate with Michaelmas (well, British Christians, at least).
3. This is a long but fascinating article from the New Yorker about a man with nearly total amnesia–his recall is limited to just seconds–but who can remember his wife and how to play music (he was a musicologist before his brain was injured). It discusses the nature of music and emotion and memory, and makes one feel really, really grateful for one’s own brain function.
4. With the weather getting colder, I’ve decided I need to learn how to sew pants. So that odyssey starts tomorrow. It may not be pretty.
Another Birthday
My father and my brother have birthdays withing a month of each other, so now it’s my brother’s turn: Happy Birthday! He used to pull me around on the sled when we were little, and now I sometimes get driven around on “the wheeler.” He’s a good brother.Eddy is in training to go for rides on the wheeler, too.
Do You Know What Day It Is?
Yarr, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Here’s a list of piratical celebrations, online and otherwise, and if ye be a crafty pirate, here’s some embroidery patterns to do whilst sailing the seas, arrrrrrrr!
Tuesday Project Roundup: Metafashion Edition
Back when I thought I wanted to get an English minor, I took a critical theory class, where I first encountered the prefix “meta” attached to something–in this case metafiction, which the professor defined as fiction about fiction.
Given the print of this skirt, I think I could safely call it metafashion, or fashion about fashion. It’s too bad that in the print the ladies aren’t wearing skirts with that print, because that would be another mind-bending effect. But instead of thinking that one through, I could just twirl in my puffy new skirt: Also: Boo ya!
Also: Tomorrow is INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY. Get ready!