etc.

Feast day of Jutta (Ivetta) of Huy, 12th century mystic and anchoress, whose work with lepers was not ascetic enough, so she had herself walled into a spartan little space, close to the lepers. When I was young, I wanted to be an anchoress. Lepers, however, never did make it to my radar.

Do you recieve the Bloglines Newsletter? The January issue spotlights a user who has this to say about his Bloglines subscription & feeds:

It’s like having a world-class reference librarian send me
daily citations and articles for our research targets.

Oh dear. I won’t rant (I won’t rant, I won’t rant), but I suspect reference librarians everywhere are none too pleased with him.

Also, no mopping yet this week. Hip hip!

I’ve been a busy site-owning bee for the past 24 hours, ever since I found this WordPress plugin that creates static pages based on your template/layout. To wit: about, images, contact, book index, and site design archive. There will be others before long, oh you betcha.

Also, along with eating one’s leafy vegetables and cleaning out one’s eavestroughs, one would do well to read The Morning News on a regular basis. There, to-day, I read a lovely piece on a tantalizing project, whereby the author collects discarded photographs and compiles them in a charming, if somewhat haunting, gallery.

Do you leaf through discarded photographs at flea markets? I do. And postcards. Preferably ones with correspondence on the back. It makes me wonder at the people in the pictures, and about the lives of the travellers and the ones they leave behind (“The weather is here, wish you were beautiful”). And why didn’t someone save those pictures and postcards? It is, somehow, a strange indignity for a 5¢ tag to be affixed to someone’s memories.

Later that day (when the author recalls wanting to post this link days ago, and almost decides against posting it to-day due to waning outrage, but then has said outrage rekindled by re-reading the article): no doubt you are as shocked and horrified by this as I am.

I listened to The Best of Roxy Music on my drive in to work this morning, and it put me in a right good mood. Does anyone else imagine that Brian Ferry smells like cigarettes and musk? I always have.

If I were a planner of library conferences, I would plan a library conference right, smack in the dead of winter, and if you think I am being facetious, I am not. Some of you probably know that the American Library Association’s Mid-Winter conference starts this week, and in a couple of weeks, there is the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference. I have never been to Mid-Winter (as it is called; the big annual conference in June is called, unconfusingly, Annual), but I have been to the Super Conference for the past 4 years, and it is something I very much look forward to.

I have a profoundly bad relationship with the months of January and February, both personally and professionally. Personally, I find myself wallowing in a morass of glum days and dark nights, wishing that the first couple of months of the year were more about newness, creativity, productivity, and less about waiting for that third month of the year (Spring! Crisp Air! Things blooming! and this year, A Garden!). Professionally, there’s a steady amount of cantakerous wheel-spinning, at least until the Super Conference, when three days of library talk with colleagues and friends, old & new, usually rekindles the librarian fire within me, keeping me going well into April, when everything comes up roses, because April is the best month ever.

So, it seems then, that what I really need is a Mid-Winter Super Conference for the soul.

Such kind words for Clapotis, thank you!

Today is the feast day of William of Bourges, an austere gentleman who, in 1200, was selected as Archbishop of Bourges by the very sacrosanct method of, not divine intervention, but the picking up of lots. That’s right, the writing of names on bits of parchment. How very secular!

Did you clean out your eavestroughs and downspouts last Fall? We didn’t. And, as a result, we had a little puddle in the basement last week. You see, there is a catchment area in the corner of our house, a great little catchment area, as catchment areas go, that fills with a great, big body of water when there is no where for thawing snow to run off to. And so, when we had the thaw last week, some of that great, big body of water made its way into the basement, and so there was sopping and mopping of water with towels and mops, and the whole thing took us about 4 hours to drain, and the only reason I’m mentioning this is because it has since snowed again, and to-morrow, another great thaw comes our way. If you need me, I’ll be in the basement with a bucket.

One would do well to eat all one’s leafy vegetables and clean out one’s eavestroughs.

Well, I dare say, I have never photographed a single piece of knitting as much as I have photographed Clapotis. Would you like to see a close-up? Or how about an extreme close-up? Or how about an extreme close-up that turned out a little fuzzy but is still a pretty interesting picture?

Then there’s the picture of Clapotis in an odd pinkish light, and also the picture of Clapotis being modelled by a stairway post, and let’s not forget the picture of Clapotis reclining on the back of the rocking chair.

There isn’t much I can say about the pattern that hasn’t already been said. And there isn’t much I can say about this yarn that I haven’t already said. You might recognize it from a few other failed projects (a poncho, a cardi), but we both knew that it was only a matter of time before this yarn found its true purpose. I’d say it finally has.

Pardon me, for at the moment I am somewhat bleary-eyed. It is 4 pm, this Saturday, and I am on the couch in my pajamas, where I have been since roughly 9:30 am this morning, knitting away gladly on my Clapotis. I will not say just how frequent these Saturdays are (the couch-warming, pajama-wearing ones), for it would make me seem terribly slothful, and I try to maintain a general air of slothlessness here, truth notwithstanding.

I will show you pictures of clapotis tomorrow, even though I have, in the past, promised against making such promises. There you are then, a promise. I promise it won’t be empty.

Why replace a dead PDA with another PDA when you can replace it with a Moleskine? My Palm Zire mysteriously cashed in its chips on December 22nd, right in the middle of a mad rush to download everything on my work desktop to my handheld before taking off for the holidays. I should be more upset that the insignificant little slip of plastic, chips, and data only lasted a year and a half, but I’m not. Truth be told, I’m a paper and pen devotee to the end. I am that person who can’t walk by a stationers or fine paper place without stopping in to fawn over a fancy nib, sample a pen that cost about as much as my education, finger a delicate leaf of paper, or hold up fine stationery to marvel at a watermark. So when my PDA gave over, I squealed a little squeal of joy, and sighed a little sigh of relief at the prospect of holding that relic of antiquated technology in my hands again.

The pocket 2005 Moleskine is lovely. Everytime I pull it out to jot down a note, add to a to-do list, pencil in a new meeting time, or just doodle, it’s sheer rhapsody (I’m not alone in this, you know). BUT, is all that sacred history/legend stuff pompous and elitist, or artful and quaint? I just can’t decide.

I feel obliged to tell you, since this blog is part knit-blog, that my holiday knitting hiatus served well to rest the digits and strengthen my enthusiasm for the craft (something about absense and a fonder heart, & c.) To that end, I am knitting again, and on the needles at the moment is one of these, knit in this. In fact, I have a two-generation knit-along on the go, my mum is also knitting the same pattern (with the same yarn), and oh boy! The fun.

Also on the needles is a Cabin Fever top-down roll-neck sweater that I am all but out of patience with (not that anything has gone wrong. Things are well on track with this sweater, as far as I can tell, I just find the top-down knitting experience a bit, what can I say, holistic?) Even the mister hates it when I pull out this sweater, he who is indifferent to most things knit-related has developed an aversion to the very sight of it. The whole experience has me feeling somewhat aggrieved.

And, also also on the needles is the second sock of a pair that I gave my sister for Christmas. That’s right, the second sock. I am a terrible giver of knitted-gifts and an unworthy sister.

The Gryphon, Alexandria, and The Morning Star, Nick Bantock

More tactile loveliness! This second trilogy picks up where the first left of, continuing the story of Griffin and Sabine through the correspondence of Matthew and Isabelle, with whom Griffin and Sabine are mystically and inextricably linked. While I didn’t enjoy these three books nearly as much as the first three (it felt, at times, like a bit of a con; like Bantock knew he was on to a good thing and was determined to milk it for all its worth), I still took trite delight out of reading the postcards and pulling letters out of envelopes! Is this a new literary genre? Is anyone else writing books like these? I shall seek them out and read every last one!

The other impact the six volumes have had on me (positive or other remains to be seen) is that they have rekindled my longstanding urge to make my own postcards. I have a bit of a fascination with this wierd little form of ephemera, and I had meant to make postcards as Christmas greetings this year, but I ran out of time and had to resort to boxed greetings once again. Next year, then.

What I really need is a set of decent oil paints.

There is a canvas in our dining room, and upon it is painted a white picket fence. The mister wanted a house with a white picket fence, but since we bought and moved into this house, which does not have a white picket fence, I decided to paint one for him. And I did, in acrylic. And the canvas is hanging in our dining room, and has been for a year and a half. And, frankly, I’m a bit weary from looking at it for the past year and a half. I’d like to hang it in the spare bedroom, above the bed, and start on a new canvas for the dining room. I have in mind good material for the new canvas, I’ve done some sketches, and I’m ready to have a go at it (on my easel! The mister found me an easel at a garage sale last year (odd, it is, to say that) and I haven’t used it yet). But first I need a set of decent oil paints.

I promise I’ll show it to you when it is done. The canvas, that is, not the paints.