Memes, Yoinked

First, something Txanne has been doing for a while now: today's farmers' market haul! Adam and I hit the U District Farmers' Market on a whim, which meant I had neither cash nor bags, but I did have a three-year-old. This not an ideal combination, but everyone was very nice and took my checks, and many of them offered me big paper bags. Adam doesn't quite get that "samples" are not the same as "snacks," but I think we kept our rudeness to a minimum.

Port Madison Farm: a lump of plain chevre and a wedge of spring cheese. (Attention Annie: I think this is the same stuff we got from the meat-and-cheese-lady in Rome - remember, the stuff that looks like Havarti, but with a milder flavor? This was their last one for the year, what with spring being a long while back, and I grabbed it like a crazy person, but keep an eye out.)

Billy's: four peaches (unknown variety; Adam picked them), two wee artichokes, a bunch of basil, a basket of heirloom cherry tomatoes, and a basket of very late, super-sweet strawberries

Toboton Creek Farm: goat meat for stew - I've never tried goat before; I'm very excited.

Appel Farms: squeaky cheese curds (because Adam kept coming back for samples-onna-stick) and quark

Foraged & Found: chanterelles! We loves them, precious!

La Pasta: sage gnocchi, smoked salmon pasta, and a red sauce with cream

Sea Breeze Farm: Pesto, eggs, ricotta saltata, and a pound of Coopworth wool (very dirty)

A lot of people are selling peaches and tomatoes as seconds right now; I may go back next week and try to score some for sauce and jam. I didn't have a free set of hands this time. Plus, they seem to come in the cute wooden fruit crates!

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And, on a totally different note, a quiz from Arguchik:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Apparently I'm in ur quiz, skewing ur statistics.

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And, because it's neat: The Ampersand

Surrealist Knock-Knock Jokes

Adam: Knock knock who's there!
Me: Umm... Who?
A: Banana! (giggle)
M: Banana who?
A: Knock knock who's there?
M: Who?
A: Banana! (more giggling)
M: Banana who?
A: Knock knock who's there?
M: Who?
A: Orange! (even more giggling)
M: Orange who?
A: (giggling obscures words) Banana! (pause) Mommy, you say "knock knock!"
M: Okay. Knock-knock, who's there?
A: Who?
M: (unable to think of a single knock-knock joke) Umm... Banana?
A: No! How about tomato?
M: Tomato.
A: No! How about motorcycle?
M: Motorcycle.
A: (immoderate giggling)

How about motorcycle, indeed.

In Soviet Russia, Diggers Dig You!

A collection of quotes from the kid:

(While reading a book about construction) "That's a digger, but diggers don't dig people."

(After discussing his wet diaper) "But not a stinky diaper with brown poop!"

(singsong) "Daddy monster, don't eat my burrito anymore. And if you will stay and not eat it, then you will eat your own."

My Pants? They Are Smart.

My smartitude has been certified by an officially-recognized and accredited testing agency. By which I mean, the GRE is in critical condition, because I kinda kicked its ass.

Never have to do that again, then.

Revelation

Blasting Nazi Punks, Fuck Off when you have all the windows and doors open to cool the house down is perhaps not the done thing in my staid little suburban neighborhood.

But maybe it ought to be.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Pretty much the best birthday ever, even without balloons and ponies. I took the day off work, lounged around, read Persuasion, drank iced coffee and ate fancy-shmancy pastries, and then we got a babysitter for the evening and Matt and I went to see Emmylou Harris at the zoo. There were fabulous presents as well (photos sometime, maybe). Also, sleeping late.

I'm pretty easy to please in my old age, aren't I?

You know, the really nice thing about being blonde is that you don't ever go grey, you just get blonde-er. I remember when I was working in theatre, how difficult it was to do age makeup on blondes and redheads; the face makeup never read properly because their hair just didn't take the grey paint. You wound up with people who looked like they were wearing old-age masks, whereas the grey on the brunettes brought everything together and actually read as "old" to the audience.

Bonus math geek fun: For the next five months, for the only time in my life, I will be half my father's age.

Happy birthday to Casey, and to Janet, wherever she is.

Looming Deadlines

The GRE is breathing down my neck, and I ought to have finished my writing sample by now, so of course I spent the weekend playing with fiber!

I finished the quilt top I started at Jessica's sewing bee last weekend:

This is from a kit I got at The Quilting Loft a while back (no way could I match up colors and patterns that well - I'm a bit of a disaster that way). The pattern says it's 52" square, but I haven't measured to see how close I got. I can tell I'm getting better, since the corners aren't off by nearly as much as they were on my earlier quilts, but I still have a ways to go. I need to decide on a backing fabric and figure out how on earth to quilt this.

A few weekends back, I managed to stop in at the Kingston Quilt Shop during Shop Hop weekend (purely by accident - we were on our way back from camping on the peninsula), and picked up their block kit:

The corners are really good on this one; I'm very proud. I'm going to make it into a hot pad, since it's only one lonely block. I've got to remember to get the shop hop on my calendar for next year.

I also finally cut the last square for the Beatrix Potter quilt for Adam - can you believe I let it languish for months because I was too lazy to cut a 5" square?

It's fairly tiny, so I'm going to add a border in the dark green. I think if I make it ~4", that should bring it up to a respectable toddler size. I need to pick up some peach-y flannel for the back.

Yes, these are all tops; I'm still terrified of ruining them with the quilting phase. I'll get there.

The Tour de Fleece started this weekend as well - I have several skeins that I spun leading up to it, and a full bobbin to show for the first two days:

This is a terrible photo of my progress from Saturday and Sunday. It's a superwash merino from Funky Carolina that I'm going to make into a two-ply sock yarn.

Finished skeins (pre-tour training):

Wine-Dark Sea - a bunch of stuff I carded together, mostly wool


Abyssinian Maid - a merino/silk single


Each to Each - a merino/tencel single


Eat a Peach - Spinderella mixed batt plied with New Zealand wool


Do I Dare? - Spinderella mixed batt two-ply


And Do I Dare? - Spinderella mixed batt navajo-plied

I also read Wuthering Heights for the umpteenth time. Sigh. (Although I agree with Leila: Heathcliff is a prat.)

Toddler Logic

On the phone yesterday:
"I had a purple lunch box and I went to college and I drove my car to college and I opened my purple lunch box and it had macaroni and all kinds of food that was in my purple lunch box."

At dinner last night, after standing all his fusili up in a pile of pasta sauce:
"I'm putting candles on the cake. (Singing, hands waving toward face*) Happy birthday to dear mommy, bringing in the light, bringing in the light, bringing in the light for Shabbat."

*This is what you do when you light the Shabbat candles.

Sonnet 130

I was just listening (again) to Alan Rickman's recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, found via the Smart Bitches, and I was struck, as always, by how he can completely make me melt into a puddle for thirteen lines, and then completely lose me when he misreads the last one. Why, Alan? Why did you have to insert an invisible "whom" where no whom ought to be?

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Shall we walk through it? Yes, let's.

It's a Shakespearian sonnet (that's a formal designation, not an indication of the author), so the turn should be after the third quatrain - and there it is, at line thirteen. The first twelve lines are all inversions of standard Petrarchan similes describing the poet's lover, but even if you didn't know that, it's pretty obvious that he's rejecting common florid descriptions. Whether you want to read it as the poet acknowledging his mistress's imperfections and loving her regardless, or as a more calculating poet deciding that no woman could live up to the similes, so he may as well stick with the one he has, I don't think there's any way to read it as a celebration of the idealized woman.

So why, tell me, would anyone take the "she" in the final line as the subject of an unspoken "whom" clause, when it's quite clearly an example of synechdoche referring to all women?

Wrong
As {any} [she] belied |with false compare|
where: {direct object} [subject] verb |sub-clause|

Right
As [any she] belied \with false compare\
where: [subject] verb \agent of passive verb\

In other words, it's not the mistress doing the belying, it's the similes which set a standard no woman can possibly achieve. To say that your mistress walks like a goddess is to insult her, not only because real people just aren't like that, but because it implies that your love for her is based on a quality that she doesn't even possess.

And just for fun:

Happy Bloomsday

Jessica has tripped my overactive guilt reflex over the fact that I've never finished a single thing by James Joyce. So, to avoid having to hand my English degree back, I promise to give him another chance.

I'll keep you posted.


*grumble* stupid impenetrable modernists *grumble*