Lent Reflection 6 - The Prayer of the Tides

Sunday 10th April 

The Lent Course I am following this year (as in previous years) is written by Rev Andrew Dotchin and published daily on his blog 

On Wednesday last week he included this prayer from St Mary's Church on Holy Island; follow the link for some beautiful photographs.

Here is the Prayer of the Tides;

https://suffolkvicarhomes.com/2022/04/05/with-a-song-in-my-heart-day-31/

It took me a moment to spot the very beautiful difference between the first two and the last two lines.

For more Lent Reflections, please visit Tracing Rainbows where you will find links to the other contributers.  

 

Saturday 9th April - Drawing again - playing the piano again

 I'm back to drawing every day again - just a small picture to record a moment of the day. I was given a small sketchbook a couple of years ago, about 5" by 8" at a rough guess, with space to draw two sketches on every page to create a visual journal.

I made SUCH a hash of the first few pages that I put the book away. However, I decided to cut the first few pages out and start again;

This is after a family zoom discussing a forth-coming mad-cap trip to Cornwall that some are going on later this year;

My cold frame sits on a battered garden table to I can reach into it without bending down. I planted up quite a few pots with tulips, crocuses and daffodils last Autumn and am now seeing the rewards of that cold November afternoon. 

We had another small family zoom; just us, son and daughter. Daughter has only just moved into her new flat so the walls are still bare.  

The pictures for the 6th and 7th April will have to wait, as I roughly sketched the designs on the postcard project cloth, which has not yet been posted.

I tend to do the drawing when we have gone to bed, before I write the daily page in my diary of events, thoughts, happening of the day. I have a packet of water-colouring pencils, a brush, a tiny bottle of water to activate the pencils and a cloth for minor disasters by the bed. I need a light touch with the water; firstly because the paper is thin, and secondly because the pen is my ordinary fountain pen with washable blue ink!

I broke my Lent Resolution again the other day, ordering a book by Andrew Eales called 'How to Practise Music'. My excuse is that I have several students who are at the point of needing to know how to practise in a more thoughtful, focussed way, and this book seemed like an excellent summary. I'm only partway through, but it has inspired me to get started again.

I'm playing 'In the Bay' as an 'easy win', and exercise in memorising, the Chopin Nocturne 'for work' as I am teaching it but can't really play it (1) and the Impromptu is an old friend that I first played over 40 years ago.  

Studying the Chopin today was useful; I emailed this photo to a student to advise on playing an awkward bar in the LH (by the yellow sticker) a misprint (those red annotations) and a suggested fingering change (heavy pencil markings). "If a picture paints a thousand words..."

We'll see how this goes - the number of times I've tried to get a daily practice routing going is beyond counting.

  

Noah's Ark;

yesterday, leopards 

"can leopards change their spots?" Jeremiah 13 23

Today, gazelles or wild does

"I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or wild does:

do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!"     excellent advice from Song of Songs, 2:7

Not many windows left.

  

Thursday 7th April - Blustery Day

We've spent this afternoon 'wind-proofing' the garden; himself went out for a walk in the afternoon and found himself being gusted along by the wind. I don't know how that has affected his walking speed and distance; I suspect the going with the wind and against the wind may have evened themselves out.

I chased after the empty buckets roistering down the path and shut them into the shed, we've got the lid of the cold frame fastened tight, and have been out once again already to sort a wheelie bin that has got a bit over excited. 

Now dusk is falling, and great grey-pink clouds are racing across from north to south. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

I've spent most of yesterday and today sewing for the postcard project. Today I finished the stamp and stuck stitched it to the card, and this afternoon decided to add another small item. Pictures to follow after I'm sure that Ang has received it. That won't be very soon, as it needs to be packed up and posted first!

My orchids have all come into flower again, in spite of my very inexpert care. I'm fairly sure they should be re-potted and given orchid feed, but so far they have received nothing more than neglect and occasional watering.

 The pink and white orchids originally belonged to my godmother. She never really liked being given cut flowers 'they belong in the garden' or house plants 'I always kill them', but the orchids were a great success. Once we convinced her not to water them during the week, but to wait until we came at the weekend, they seemed to thrive. When the first one stopped flowering I took it home and replaced it with another, both bought from M and S. I think they brought her a lot of pleasure.

The yellow one came from a piano student. The first year it was very pale, almost greenish, but has transformed since then into this golden beauty.

They are all on the windowsill at the top of the stairs, so I see them every morning. I'm pleased to see there are so many buds still to open.

Noah's ark

yesterday; Sparrows;

Psalm 84 3 "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts.

Today - The Lion of Judah

"Do not weep. See the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered.

Yesterday; all about gentleness and care and safety, today, about strength and power.

Tuesday 5th April - Genius knitting techniques

Ok, this bit is all technical knitty stuff. Scroll to the bottom for Noah's Ark, and the mysterious door handles.

I have a definite antipathy towards sewing up the seams of my knitting. So, this jumper has been created without any sewing (apart from weaving in ends and sorting out the occasional dropped stitch or other weirdo stitch that appeared along the way).

Yesterday I finished the shoulders with a - wait for it - drum roll - 3-needle bind off - and was able to try on the completed body;

I've just pulled it on over the guernsey I was wearing because I was feeling too lazy to remove it first. I was mainly concerned that the neck was a good size. It is still on two circular needles, one for the front, and one for the back, and there's a long dangly bit of yarn draped down the side as well.

Here is a close-up of the shoulder seam.

I've done a sort of Norwegian stand neck, where you bind off the front stitches, and then knit an an inch extra at the back before binding off and sort of sewing the edges to the front. The thing is, I did an I-cord bind-off for the front and back stitches, and it has made such a great edge! I did test out the concept on a swatch first.

 How neat is that!

I started off wanting to knit this Elizabeth Zimmerman 'wishbone' pattern from 'The Knitter's Almanac', but soon realised that the yarn and needles I had were never going to match the pattern instructions for stitches per inch, whatever I did. 

So I turned to my Elizabeth 'Knitting Workshop' and started modifying as I went along...

In the end, following her 'recipe' (she's not one for precise patterns!) I knitted 'in the round' to the armholes, split the front and back and continued separately in garter stitch for the length of the armholes. The sleeves have been knitted 'in the round' and still have the needles in (luckily I found I had two circular needles of the right size and length!)

The instructions for the Norwegian neck, I-cord and 3-needle bind-off are all in 'Knitting Workshop';

here's the Norwegian neck from the book;

 The other techniques are freely available  on the internet, but I couldn't find anything about this type of neck..

The next task is to fathom out how to join the sleeves into the armholes - I can see another 3-needle bind off  event, and I have done a couple of trials. The end is in sight - I should be able to wear this thick, warm woollen jumper around the time Spring arrives for real! Apart 

I can recommend 'Knitting Workshop'

It is expensive (around £25 new) but full of interesting ideas, techniques and patterns included how to knit a jumper without a pattern, and also how to knit the famous 'Baby Surprise Jacket', knitted entirely in one piece and then folded and sewn across the shoulders. I have made two of them so far, one over 33 years ago for my son, and one for a friend's grand daughter. 

by StarKnits  Flickr
picture from 'Baby Suprise' link above

The original new sheet style publication

Noah's Ark today

'The wolves shall lay down with the lamb'- Isaiah 11 6. 

The door handles? Daughter moved into her first bought, not rented, flat at the weekend. There have been some surprising discoveries since moving in; but that none of the internal doors had the latch fitted (the sticky out bit that protrudes into the door frame and holds the door closed) but only the handles screwed to the sides of the door was probably the most unexpected.

Oh, were you expecting a connection to Noah's Ark? I did put a comma in the statement at the top of the blog... 

Monday 4th April - Chaotic, or creative?

For such a small picture, the stamp is taking a lot of sewing! It has been an interesting little project from start to finish; finding the subject, and working out how to recreate it. I've a couple more decisions to make before I take it out the of ring, press it, cut it out and sew it on to the 'postcard'. (I'm fairly sure I am not giving anything away by showing the reverse!)

I took the picture to show how quickly a small amount of embroidery sewing can overflow out of its box. I've already moved up a size once. The purple felt on the right holds all the part used lengths in different colours. As long as I am gentle I can ease out the colour that I want without worsening the tangle. I have found that the felt is just fuzzy enough to hold the threads securely when I fold it over. 

I think it took less than a week for the neatly arranged items in the box to become and apparent muddle of threads, pens, bits of cloth and notes.

Mind you, I do tend to work in a cluttered environment. This is what the piano looks like;

The laptop is open ready for the next zoom, and I also have a cheap Kindle fire to the right, out of shot, in a clamp, so that the students can see me in one screen, and my hands on the keyboard in the other. Although they can glimpse a little of the chaos on the dining room table right behind me, and the cat asleep on the chair even further behind me, they overall impression  they receive is more orderly than the reality!. The pink stickers stuck along the piano lid, above the metronome, are invaluable; I use them to mark up my copy of the music as they are playing so that I can go back and ask about the F# in bar 6, or sort out a rhythm problem, or comment on how neatly they managed that tricky bit at the top of the second page...

The state of the dining room table appeared frequently in the days when I was teaching about 10 or more class lessons a week, on clarinet, ukulele, recorder, djembe drums, samba drums and keyboards as well as upwards of 30 piano pupils. Within a few weeks of term starting I used to give up trying to clear the accumulation of lesson plans and song books and administration folders and let it all pile up until the next break.

Somehow, I was nearly always at the right school on the right day with the right instruments, equipment and lesson plans; there were a few narrow squeaks; for example the first five miles of the journey for two schools were the same, but on Wednesdays I had to remember to turn right at the roundabout, but on Thursdays go left. Then, for some reason, they would swap days...

Noah's ark

yesterday - worms

Job 21;23-26 

One dies in full prosperity, being wholly at ease and secure...

Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of good.

They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.

These worms look remarkably athletic. Do you think they may have been 'charmed'?

    Video of the UK worm charming championships from Willaston in Cheshire

today

Isaiah 51;8 - Moths

For the moth will eat them up like a garment,

and the worm will eat them like wool;

but my deliverance will be forever,

and my salvation to all generations. 

Lent Reflection 5 - A Lent Reflection!

 I follow a number of blogs They form a kind of 'made-to-measure' magazine with the kind of content that I am interested in, and very few advertisements to clutter up the pages. I have joined feedly.com, which lets me manage the blogs, save posts, sort them under headings and so on.   

So, most mornings, over coffee, I bring up my 'feedly magazine' and have a read. 

A few days ago, a knitting blogger I follow wrote that she came across a Lent reflection, which I thought I would share with you today;

if a stranger were to take charge of your life, what is the first thing they would do?

We are assuming a 'benevolent' stranger, one with wisdom, insight, and your well-being at heart.

In her case, she came to the conclusion that they would take steps to do something about a problem that has been causing discomfort for some time. by seeing the relevant professional.  So that's what she is planning to do.

So, if a stranger were to come and take charge of my life, what is the first thing they would do? 

I'm good at handing out advice, and knowing the right course of action for others. So now, what will the stranger advise me to do?

For a start, I shall stir my stumps and plant those anenome corms that have been sitting around for months, and soaking ready for planting since yesterday afternoon. That will be one thing cleared, done, dusted, off the list, leaving head space for other things.

More Lent reflections over at Tracing Rainbows