a southern gal in the north

born Sunday mid day

and the proud mother

more anon…

Swallowtail Shawl
an imminent deadline (ASAP actually)

Sorry for the lack of real life on this blog in the last few days.   There have been a few distractions:

The most recent distraction was yesterday – and unless you don't watch tv or listen to the radio or read any newspapers or the Internet, you know what happened.

It was close! but She and We Did It! 

I was so nervous during the evening I couldn't even knit!

These last two weeks leading up to yesterday were nail biting to say the least – read my main blog (its the first one over on the right) if you are interested.   There has been so much on the 'nets about what's going on – let me just recommend ONE website – REAL CLEAR POLITICS.  Try em, you'll like em.

And so continuing on.

The other recent distraction was my sudden surrender to the stomach flu that has passed around here – I must have received it from my nephews who adorable as they are had it two weekends ago.  Wed when I was there some little bug obviously jumped on board my ship and by Thursday afternoon I was in quite a sad state.

That meant missing weekly knitting group – and moaning on the sofa all achy all night.  

By Friday evening I was able to eat some toast and drink tea (don't lecture me on tea, if I don't have at least one big cup at the first of the day I am not to be reckoned with – and yes even when sick I drink it).  Although I must have still looked bad as my upstairs neighbor asked how sick was I.  (um, not too much thanks).

Saturday morning was the monthly knitting group meeting for which I took up a kind friend's offer of a ride and put myself together as best I could.  Wobbly legged and fuzzy brained as I was, it was still good to be there with others… the 2+ hours always FLIES by – we have such a good group – varied and full of lively members with lots of interested projects and always good stories and laughs.

Feeling emboldened by my success at sitting up in a chair for a few hours, I decided to try some food – accompanying two knitters to the local diner where I was able to eat a grilled cheese sandwich.  Actually I was hungry – it had been two days since I had eaten.

By the time I returned home, I needed a little nap and was able to listen to the end of the MET Radio Broadcast of OTELLO – the last act wherein Desdemona is killed by Otello.  Renee Fleming sounded exquisite – the best I have heard her in years (although her Traviata at the MET of recent time was superb too ). None of the swooping and excessive portamento that she has exhibited often in the past. 

Then for the first time in days I was able to sit and read my email and catch up on blogs – and to one of the best PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION shows this year certainly.  The Wailin Jennys and The Boys from the Lough were both on – two of my favorite groups and the skits were of high order as well as the monologue.  ( I have tickets to two of the three PHC NYC Live April broadcast shows and can't wait – it's amazing to be a part of the audience during the live broadcasts).   You can listen on line to any of the shows from several years past.  They are usually up by the Monday after the live show.

And yes, I am a huge GK fan – I would love to meet him – but so would everyone else in the audience I am sure.

The yarn I needed to complete the Red Tomten Jacket arrived on Saturday – Oregon Trail Yarns on eBay.  She is great and always gets me what I need very quickly.

However it seems that I have TWO major projects on SLEEVE ISLAND and I am SO NOT inspired to finish them.  Its much more fun to read blogs and play on Ravelry you know?

UGH – so tonight I am going to buckle down and work on one of them – the other is the CPH Variation – its done EXCEPT for the sleeves.

The other distraction in this household is my pregnant cat: yes, Cordelia is pregnant. 

She is about 4-5 weeks I think judging from all the information on the websites that I read recently. 

Certainly she is much more loving . Thank goodness she is showing less interest in going out cause all the research says to keep queens in during the last three weeks which we are very close to being at if not already in.

Basically she wants to be near me no matter where I am. 

Tonight after about a half hour, she got up off the wool blanket on the sofa where she spends most of her days now, came to find me at the computer; jumped up on the desk and promptly fell asleep right in the middle of everything on the desk.

It's going to be an interesting experience – my nephew is excited about the little kitties that will be coming – and so am I. 

So today I did one of those marathon grocery expeditions – I managed to be out of a bunch of those big items – Olive Oil (I buy the big cans), cat litter and cat food.  My research says that queens need to be feed kitten food during the last few weeks – so I got that instead of the usual Iams cat food.  And then I need to find or buy a laundry basket (one site suggested that instead of a box) and some cheap blankets to line so C can start getting her nest ready. 

Knitting wise I am having startitis in the worst way – and crave some lace knitting .  Luckily two gifting projects are looming and both will be good for lace knitting. 

For one of them (the earliest) after a long look around on Ravelry- want to have a go at the Shetland Triangle Shawl by Evelyn Clark – from Wrap Style.  But in looking at the book, see that's the only pattern I am interested in. 

At several friends' suggestions found a copy in the County Library system online and am now waiting for it be sent to my local library.  Upon asking them how long it would take, there was no idea so if its not here by Monday I may have to go with a back up pattern. 

Flowerbasket and Swallowtail are nice and have made both and they both knit up fairly quickly.

The last distraction has been my computer – which is dying a slow death.  ARGH!  

Today spent an hour just getting it to boot up.  Am currently researching replacement CPUs and hopefully will order something soon.  FINGERS CROSSED that it lasts.  (I have almost all of my important files on two external hard drives so only need to copy over a few).

It’s a pretty incredible feeling, isn’t it? After our victories tonight we have the momentum, thanks to your will, determination, and hard work.

Some people were ready to count us out. But you and I proved them wrong, just as we have every time they tried to declare this race over prematurely. And we’re going to keep showing them exactly what we can do.

We’re going to do it for everyone across America who’s been counted out — but refused to be knocked out. For everyone who’s stumbled — but stood rightback up. And for everyone who works hard — but never gives up.

I hope you enjoy our victories tonight as much as I am. We won this one together, and that makes it that much better. Thank you so very much for all you  have done for our campaign. Let’s build on this remarkable momentum.

Thank you for everything you did to make this night possible.

All the best,
Hillary

Want to Save a Coral Reef? Bring Along Your Crochet Needles

Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times – Margaret Wertheim with a crocheted form during a workshop at New York University. The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef will arrive in New York in April.

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: March 4, 2008

The exotically shaped creatures that began to sprout silently all over the cozy lecture hall were soon spilling onto empty chairs and into women’s laps and shopping bags. When fully grown, these curiously animate forms will find a home as part of a mammoth version of the Great Barrier Reef. But at the moment they were emerging at a remarkable pace from the rapidly flicking crochet hooks wielded by members of the audience.

Images of the The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

(LEFT) Part of the Crochet Coral Reef, which began 2 ½ years ago.

This environmental version of the AIDS quilt is meant to draw attention to how rising temperatures and pollution are destroying the reef, the world’s largest natural wonder, said Margaret Wertheim, an organizer of the project, who was in Manhattan last weekend to lecture, offer crocheting workshops and gather recruits. The reef is scheduled to arrive in New York City next month.

As she explained to the 40 people, nearly all women, who had gathered at New York University on Saturday, “This has grown from something that was a little object on our coffee table” to an exhibition that, so far, spreads over 3,000 square feet. And that was before the addition of that day’s catch.

Ms. Wertheim, a science writer, and her twin sister, Christine, who teaches at the California Institute for the Arts, came up with the idea of creating a woolly homage to the reef about two and a half years ago. The Wertheims, 49, grew up in Queensland in Australia, where the approximately 135,000-square-mile reef — and the billions of tiny organisms that it comprises — is located. But the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (more on that in a moment), is much more than a warning about global warming. It marks the intersection of the Wertheims’ various passions: science, mathematics, art, feminism, handicrafts and social activism.

For that reason the project has attracted a wide range of participants, including the Harlem Knitting Circle (which arrived with 10 members), a student from a Westchester high school’s environmental science club who had never crocheted before, a geoscientist and a former mathematics teacher and sheep farmer in Australia who creates algorithms to calculate the length of yarn she’ll need before spinning and dying the wool from her own sheep. In Chicago, where the exhibition appeared a few months ago, about 100 women contributed to the reef.

RTRH

Madonna della Seggiola (Sedia)
(Madonna of the Chair)
by Raphael Sanzio
1514, oil on wood, diameter 71 cm
Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Raphael’s Madonna della Seggiola (Sedia), also known as Madonna of the Chair, is one of Raphael’s most intimate Madonna paintings. The 1514 image of Italian Renaissance master Raphael’s Madonna is bathed in a warm, golden light. Raphael’s Madonna engages the viewer directly as she sits closely confined within the circular tondo format affectionately and protectively cuddling her young son, the infant Christ Child. On the right slightly behind the Madonna and Child, Raphael depicts the figure of Christ’s young cousin, the boy St. John the Baptist.

Raphael painted this Madonna while in Rome where it was soon acquired for the art collection of the Medici family. This depiction of Madonna and Child was painted during or shortly after Raphael’s work on the Vatican Stanza d’Eliodoro. Raphael’s Madonna  was taken by Napoleon’s troops in 1799, then it was returned to Florence in 1815. It appears that the model is the same one Raphael used for his Donna Velata portrait of 1514.

One of my most favorite paintings, if not my most favorite. I came across this in one of the galleries at the Palatine Gallery in the Pitti Palace in Florence the one August I was there (five glorious VERY HOT days).  I was walking thru the many galleries – stupified with the gloriousness and awed by the numbers of the incredible masterpieces – knowing that I was passing by so many that I couldn’t take in in my one long afternoon visit. 

Suddenly there was this painting.  Hung with dozens of other Raphaels in that room.  I can feel the start and shock today as physically as I did that hot August afternoon – with the drone of a lawnmower in the Boboli Gardens and the muffled traffic noises from the streets. 

No Art Historian me; yet how can any human not respond to this incredible masterpiece?

[a postcard reproduction hangs in my music room – a small token to view daily]

Just a sampling of the varied programmes scheduled this week:
[Note that times are London. All are available for seven days thru the new iPlayer]

An Englishman Abroad
Michael Gambon (pictured) and Penelope Wilton star in Alan Bennett’s play about Guy Burgess, the English spy exiled in Moscow in the 1950s, and his encounter with actress Coral Browne. Produced by Hilary Norrish, it was first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1994. Monday at 10.15am, 9.15pm and 2.15am

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The quiet village of King’s Abbot is shaken by widow Mrs Ferrars’s apparent suicide. Fortunately Hercule Poirot has retired to the village, with the aim of quietly growing vegetables. First published in 1926, this Hercule Poirot novel made Agatha Christie a household name. Starring John Moffat as Poirot, with Peter Gilmore, Deryck Guyler and John Woodvine, it was adapted for radio by Michael Bakewell.  Saturday at midday and 1am

Fatherland
This powerful and award winning drama, based on the bestselling thriller by Robert Harris, examines what would have happened if the Nazis had won the war. In a world where Germany is in control, Berlin policeman Xavier March discovers a chilling secret at the heart of the dictatorship. Dramatised and produced by John Dryden, it stars Anton Lesser (pictured) and Andrew Sachs. Monday to Friday at 9am, 8pm and 1am

Check it out at BBC7

I am not a conservative. Although I do like Mary Matalin (cause I know and respect James Carville and well, she can’t be all bad if he married her).

My memories of Buckley are limited to his introductions to BRIDESHEAD REVISITED which I watched on a very small B and W tv when it aired in the early 80s (think grad school poverty). I never followed FIRING LINE (regret that now).

However, I did watch the Charlie Rose tribute Wednesday night (you can see it here) and read many articles and obits. Rose spoke of the graciousness that Buckley showed CR when he first started his NY show… but that they really connected after CR’s near death health scare. Rose was clearly emotional at the end of the broadcast Friday night and stated that he regretted all the invitations he had been too busy to honor – concluding that you can’t count on there being another time (to get together etc).

Especially moving was David Brooks tribute to WFB on the NEWSHOUR Friday night – he spoke of a man who was impressed by a younger man’s intelligence and wit; hiring him and then introducing him to a world which Mr. Brooks says he would never had had an entree to if not for WFB. Brooks attributed his career to WFB. 

DAVID BROOKS: I was an editorial associate, writing small editorials and things like that. And when you work for him, even if you were 22, 23, 24, he welcomes you into his home. He takes you sailing; he asks your opinion; he really edits you hard, so he teaches you how to write.

And he brings you into this incredible lifestyle, which was overwhelming for any young person. And it was the big break of my life. I wouldn’t be sitting here today if he hadn’t done that.

And how many people of that stature take somebody who’s made fun of them and said, “I want to give you a job”? We know a lot of people who aren’t quite that secure who would never have done that.

But Buckley did that because, a, he was secure, but also because he had the capacity for friendship and bringing people in. And even if it wasn’t the politics, he didn’t care about it. He saw someone who might make a living as a journalist, and he wanted to hire me for that reason.

That reminded me of my first mentor – a man whom I recently discovered is working in the Hudson Valley – maybe I should get in touch, even if we haven’t spoken in years.