The sun is at last shining today, after a week of sometimes quite heavy showery rain. When I was at the museum, it was pelting down so hard I could hear it as I sat at the reception desk. As they say up here, “It was dancin’”.
The rain has kept me indoors more than I’d like, but as a consequence I’ve caught up on various admin tasks, particularly e-mails that needed to be written but had been put off. Some were regarding a bamboo pipes short course in the autumn and some related to my brother-in-law’s estate. Most of his cars have sold at auction and another two privately, with two cars are left. He’d bought these for parts and sat in the yard covered in tarps. They’ll go in July. We’re still trying to sell the family home. The feedback we’re getting from the auction house is that it’s too unique!
Last year: Summer Rain
I’ve been doing a bit of sewing too and working on a Celtic knotwork design for a friend. This last has been an unexpected time drain, mostly due to setting up the underlying grid in a graphics program. Then the grid is printed and the knotwork itself drawn by hand. However, it’s now nearly done, and hopefully the final iteration will be ‘the one’.
As it’s been such a quiet week, I’ll need to fall back on the old standbys of ‘what happened today’. Of interest to textile historians, on 6 June the first nylon parachute was tested in 1942, by parachute tester Adeline Gray, near Hartford, CT. Dupont developed the fabric in partnership with a parachute company. In 1944, Operation Overlord began. More commonly known as ‘D-Day’, 156,000 troops landed in Normandy. This operation led to the end of World War II a year later. Finally, today is World Ocean Day, which “catalyzes collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate, working in collaboration with youth leaders and a wide range of organizations in nearly 200 countries.”
Plumlet
The word of the week is ‘servant’, for I wondered if it were related to ‘serf’. They are, both coming from the French ‘servir’, to serve. ‘Servant’ is the earlier usage and has roughly the same meaning in use today. ‘Serf’ is a later borrowing: “A person in a condition of servitude or modified slavery, distinguished from what is conventionally referred to as ‘slavery’ in that the services due to the master, and his power of disposal of his ‘serf’, are more or less limited by law or custom” (OED).
Last year: Armeria maritima
This week’s rain has of course proved beneficial for growing things, knitting included. The back is now finished, and the front is under way. The pattern exemplifies the best of traditional gansey patterning – simple, elegant, good to look at, and not too difficult to knit. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been making mistakes – there have been lots of those! Thankfully, they are usually spotted within a couple of rows, which means they’re time-consuming but not difficult to fix.
I would hope that someone would appreciate a non-cookie-cutter house. Best wishes for such a buyer.