Rays of Sunshine: Year-End 2020

My husband remarked sometime this fall that future historians of our era will have to microspecialize in 2020, as in, "I'm an expert on October 8, 2020."  It has been a year in which we lived a century.  Here are some (not-so) quick takes from an epic year.

1. We survived Covid in the early days of the pandemic.  My infection was brutal (but not hospital-inducing); the rest of my family less so.  

2. My kids learned to get along with each other during the six-month lockdown in this tiny house, and continue to develop their relationships with each other in unexpected ways.  Yes, they still fight, still annoy each other, still know how to push each other's buttons, but on the whole, the four of them can rub along okay, which is something I never thought I'd be able to say.  We did many puzzles and played lots of Scrabble and other word games this year.

3. The kitchen garden was a source of delight to me all summer and fall, and I'm looking forward to digging in the dirt in the late spring.

4. While I wrote less this year, my final Slezkine essay remains my favorite, although my latest Crawford tribute comes close.

 

5. I'm pleased to announce that my novel, All This Without You, will be published in mid-February.  I'm working through the final formatting and galley proofs now.  Pre-order will be available in a few days.  My first novel, Deliverance, finally got the cover I wanted from the start.

6. The kids discovered shchi, kuleyabaka, and pirog this year, and my fasting menus got a bit easier as a result (if more labor-intensive).  

 

At the same time, I crossed some kind of culinary Rubicon this year, and have enjoyed making some nice-looking meat, fish, and cabbage pies (with pre-made crust; I'm not that invested).  

 

The food shortages of the spring put my long-neglected bread maker to work. 

After 8 months of heavy use, it went to the Great Appliance Store in the Sky.  RIP, you served us well.

 

7. I fell down a few crafting rabbit holes this summer and fall, including jewelry-making, which I completely enjoy, and dyeing, which I do not. 

 

 

I also returned to making art this spring and summer, and am holding these new creative endeavors under the broad umbrella of This Living Hand Designs. 

 8. After stalking various listings for used pairs, I finally found a pair of Blundstones on ebay for a great bargain, and they are pretty much the best things ever. My transitional shoe crisis solved! So stompy.  

9. With hair salons closed for months, I learned how to cut both boys' hair, and have continued the practice since.  My husband had me trim his hair once in May in desperation, but has since returned to his barber, much to my relief.  I trimmed the girls' and my own hair once, since we don't need regular cuts.  It's not perfect, but it will do!

 

10. My sewing stalled out this year, but I made a few things I really loved, including my cropped linen Emerald tops, and a laundry cycle's worth of underwear.  

11. I dipped my toes into more challenging knitting, including lacework and colorwork, and find I have a an appetite for charted work. 

I also discovered some new-to-me designers and have enjoyed some new patterns.

12.  I discovered some truly enjoyable book series this year, including the All Souls Triology, The Court of Thorns and Roses series, and the Throne of Glass series.  The Throne of Glass series was an unexpected delight, and I binged all seven (rather large) books in about a month's time this fall.  I dipped back into the Court of Thorns and Roses series again this week in anticipation of the next book's release in February.  I guess I'm into supernatural fantasy now?

Wherever this year has taken you, and whatever difficulties you've experienced, I wish you peace and joy in the year ahead.

 

Happy New Year!

See ya on the flip side.

A Hidden Life

I can't let December get away from me without writing about Terrance Malick's masterpiece, A Hidden Life.  A beautifully shot and edited film about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who refused to swear loyalty to Hitler out of religious conviction and lost his life for it.  

 

I cannot convey enough how gorgeous this film is; shot in the Alps where the Jägerstätters lived in a small, close-knit rural community.  The farm work is hard and unrelenting, but it is a good life, and they are a happy family.  Malick's unhurried pace provides plenty of time to sink into it.  (In that respect, it reminded me of another WW2 film I love: Želary).  

The cinematography is stunning.  The Tyrolean landscape is wonderful, but Jörg Widmer's framing and long shots of the landscape as well as the tight shots of the characters going about their days paint a detailed and granular picture.  I keep thinking about a long shot down a dark hallway in the prison where Franz is taken, with light spearing down from a stairwell above, just a small point of light in the darkness.  The analogy is obvious, but it is so beautiful and silent.  

We finished the film yesterday and I spent today listening to the gorgeous soundtrack; it is a wistful kind of melancholy that carries the seeds of hope that has stayed with me. As the violin solo resounded in my ears, I realized how little dialogue there is in the film.  

Malick uses voice-overs taken from Franz and Fani's letters to provide context and move the film along, but overall there is little that is said except for a few spare conversations as Franz and Fani discern what is morally right.  Instead, it is the families working together in the fields, moving through the seasons of the year in rhythm with the land and the liturgical cycle; those small quiet ways that most of us live our lives, not in heavy dialogue.  

It could also have been a film that showed a lot of violence, but Malick chose to keep the focus on the quietness of their lives, on the prayerful stillness that Franz and Fani cultivated to survive the isolation of prison and the pressures of everyone around them to take the oath.  An excellent film, worthy of all its accolades and awards.  It is a long film (clocking just under three hours), so we watched it in 1-hour blocks over three nights.  I think breaking up the viewing allowed me to meditate on each hour more deeply, and to take this beautiful film into my soul.

Yarn Along: Picking up the Pieces of December

Along with vastly increased coronavirus restrictions, our state essentially closed its borders just before Thanksgiving, seemingly unconcerned with the large number of people who commute in or out of the tri-state area for work or school.  

For the most part, we have inhabited a square mile this year, rather than traversing hundreds of miles toing and froing.  While I desperately miss my family, who live far away, and am still disappointed my mom couldn't visit in October as planned, I find I am more settled and grounded in this smaller life. 

But enough about that.  On to fiber and books, m'kay?

~knitting~

After a quick start on my Stripes! Stashbuster sweater, I stalled out while the kids have been home for the past two and a half weeks, remote schooling and having an extra long Thanksgiving break due to some Covid concerns.  I will say that the knitting itself is fairly speedy so far, as you don't spend more than 7 full rows on a color, so my interest level remains high.  I'm pushing my gauge on that light mint color, as it is heavy fingering weight and I'm a tight knitter, but my yarn weights are all over the place on this thing, so I think I just have to lean into the wonk.  

I've made zero progress on my Footfall shawl I showed last month, after casting on and completing the initial chart plus a full repeat (including ripping it all back numerous times before I got the stitch counts right.  I seem to gravitate to the Stripes! piece before this one, but I'm sure it will call to me again sooner or later. 

~reading~

I finished re-reading Sarah J. Maas' Court of Thorns and Roses series ahead of the next installment due in February, and decided to stick with the author and have a go at her better-known series, The Throne of Glass.  The universes are completely different, and I find the female protagonist slightly unlikeable, but I'm four books in, so I guess I'm on for another three?  These books are all a big departure from my usual genre, but I suppose this is the year of trying new things.

I did set it aside this week to again pick up We Two, which I've been reading in little snatches of delight since it arrived.  The narrative is quite riveting and I'm learning so much about how the European royal houses were connected and how the 18th century slid into the 19th at a dynastic level.  My brain has exploded with all the connections.  There was an explanation of genealogy in the section on Albert's upbringing that helped me understand the familial ties of the current royal family better, although right now I can't call the specifics to mind.  (Remote schooling + extra long Thanksgiving break=brain mush).

~crafting~

 Since I get palpitations every time I consider sewing something (or even attacking the sewing machine-necessary mending pile), I've continued on with my beading and jewelry adventures.  It turned out to be the perfect thing to do while supervising the girls' remote schooling this week.  (Piglet is totally independent with his stuff).  It is creatively satisfying, easy to set down and pick up, pleasingly tactile, and generally diverting from the news of the world.  

I still keep up with sock darning (although my darning pile grows ever larger--I did all the black socks this afternoon and this is still left!)  It's sort of a dogged determination at this point.

~watching~

Not that much, to be honest.  (I know, you are shocked.  I'll give you a minute to recover yourself).  I continue to meander through season 2 of Poldark, but in a rather desultory way.  Aidan Turner still doesn't do it for me and this season has not endeared Ross to me At.All.  (I'm largely in it for Eleanor Tomlinson's Demelza). Lately, I'd rather read or work on beading instead.  (Hence the rather large number of books read in the past month!) 

~life in general~

We started the Nativity Fast last weekend, and today celebrated the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Temple.  The breaded fish patties for sandwiches are in the oven along with tater tots that don't have sunflower oil (a December miracle!)  I am looking forward to some fried potato goodness for dinner.  With breaded fish sandwiches, natch.  There isn't much I can eat lately, and when I find something I can get down without zofran, it's cause for celebration!

 

Lastly, this one wins the Internet this week:

 

 

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Pottering About

I don't have anything pithy to share today; we have a short stretch of remote schooling, and my mind has turned to mush.  I also realized this weekend that I feel best when I'm doing stuff that is not computer- or phone-based, and so have tried to limit my time where I can.  (Yesterday was a complete disaster in that regard; turns out being off my phone and computer for more than 48 hours left me with a lot of loose ends that needed tying up).  Today has been more intermittent, so that's good.

I'm pottering with jewelry making, and made an orange bead necklace to match the earrings I showed earlier this month.  I've been wearing it with an orange jersey dress I thrifted last month.

The silver earrings below are a pair I bought last year on etsy (they are styled after Aethelflaed's earrings on The Last Kingdom) and I love them, but the original earring post was so thick that they hurt my ears.  I realized if I swapped the post out for an earwire, the earrings would be a lot more wearable.  It was a three-minute fix and I've worn them a bunch of times since then.

A while back I cleared out a bunch of jewelry I wasn't wearing any longer either because it was too heavy, not my style, or was broken, and I realized I can harvest them for parts for new pieces.  I have in mind to make some gifts as well. The owl charm (below) was a pair of earrings originally, and while I like the owls (it is our school mascot), they were too big for my face.  So I separated them from the earwires, added a jump ring and put one on a necklace chain.  I'm saving the other one for a possible teacher gift.  I made the earrings to coordinate.

On the Thanksgiving prep front, the turkey went into the crock pot last night and spent the night cooking.  The smell was disorienting in the night, but it looks pretty decent today.  I had ordered a breast and, much to my dismay, got "upgraded" to a full turkey for free.  The frozen turkey was bigger than the space in my freezer and I couldn't quite fit it in my 7 qt crock pot.  In a bit of a panic, I baked it frozen at a low temperature for two hours yesterday, covered with foil and sitting in a water bath, just to make it flexible enough to break the sternum and rib cage so that I could fit the thing into my crock pot.  It was a tight fit, but I made it!  

Today I roasted the sweet potatoes, and made one of the pies.  I need to take things in small bites, so I have a list of what I need to make each day, so hopefully on Thursday, I only have to reheat most of it.

We're nearly into the Nativity fast as well, so I'm also trying to have us eat down the non-fasting food in the freezer and fridge.  

 

Andrea Mowry came out with her Stripes pattern last week, and I immediately threw my knitting queue to the wind and dove into my stash to cast it on--I very rarely do this!  The picture above is from my attempts to figure out which colors to put where.  I think I have enough to make it, and in similar colors to her cropped version on the cover of the pattern (which I adore, by the way).  I was determined to make this a stash-buster sweater, so I am using light worsted superwash on a few stripes, but my tension is such that it works out okay.  I've just had to adjust my row count. The not-nice thing is having to swatch all the yarns for gauge, but at least three are the same yarn in different color ways, so that helps.  

I don't love short rows, but I found a little tutorial for picking up wraps that is better than anything else I've seen, so that helps.  I also figured out how to read on my kindle while knitting, so I've been enjoying Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass.  I just finished re-reading the Court of Roses and Thorns series (ahead of the next book's release in Feb) and was eager to stay with the author's style and genre.  I don't like Throne of Glass quite as much (and her writing has improved since that one), but it is a long series, so I can see sticking with it.

That's it for me today!  I'm off to knit a few more rows....

The Count of Monte Cristo Discussion Guide

 

We have our first reading group meeting tonight and as promised, here is the discussion guide I wrote for the evening.  I will read Iago's monologue from Act 2, Scene 1 of Othello, in which he plots his revenge, and my co-moderator will read William Blake's A Poison Tree to start us off! 

The Count of Monte Cristo Discussion Guide

 

Good literature is in a larger conversation we are having with ourselves about what it means to be human. As such, there are often echoes of other work or new bits of dialogue.

        What “echoes” in The Count of Monte Cristo for you?

        What new bit of dialogue is Dumas adding to this larger conversation?
 

If you were unjustly imprisoned, what would sustain you to survive (spiritually/emotionally)? How would you not give in to despair?
 

How much do you value your security and position? What would you do if those things were threatened? (vis a vie Villefort’s betrayal of Edmond)
 

If you knew you were going to be imprisoned, what sorts of things would you commit to memory to stay sane? (Father Faria clearly has committed vast stores of knowledge to memory in order to teach Edmond as much as he does)
 

How do you think you’d react to unjust imprisonment?
 

If you were reduced to a number, how would you hold on to who you are?
 

Why do you think Fr. Faria does not try to talk Edmond out of his schemes for revenge? Is he supporting Edmond by saying nothing? Do you think Fr. Faria agrees? Why or why not? (And how does that square with his role as a learned priest?)
 

If you were to find a secret treasure like Edmond, how do you think it would change you? How does the treasure change Edmond, for better or worse?
 

Think about Edmond’s death wish in chapter 5. How does that compare with Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech? How are they similar or different?
 

Why do you think Edmond rewarded Caderousse, even though Caderousse admitted to abetting Danglars, Villefort, and Fernand in their conspiracy?
 

What is Dumas trying to say about the power of money?
 

Are the Count’s actions justified by the ends? Why or why not?
 

Is it ever okay to do a bad thing for a good end, or does the bad thing leave such a spiritual stain that there can’t be a good end?
 

Does Edmond’s quest for revenge ultimately outweigh the original wrong done him? What would be a virtuous response?

Edmond ruins Villefort and Danglars by making a calculated assessment of their characters. Does the fact that Edmond’s revenge is enacted in a passive way relieve him of the moral responsibility? Is it better or worse than if he had done something more directly to ruin them?
 

What do you think of Villefort’s fate and Edmond’s response? What about Danglars? (p 206/212). Do you like Edmond? Is he a “good” guy or a hero? Why or why not?
 

Do you think Danglars’ repentance was real? What about Edmond’s forgiveness? What does it mean to forgive? What does it mean to seek redress of wrongs?

Is love of money the root of all evil?

What do you think of Edmond’s offer to sacrifice himself to save Albert for Mercedes’ sake?
 

Why do you think Mercedes married Fernand?
 

How do secrets poison a family?
 

Do you think Edmond’s repentance at the end made up for what he did? Was his revenge justified? Why or why not?
 

Did Fernand take the easy way out? What would have been the narrow path?
 

Do you think Edmond has developed any virtues or insight at the conclusion of the story? Gained new vices? Does his quest for revenge help or hinder him?

What do you think of the ending? Was there anything about this story that especially surprised you?
 

Bonus question: In the 2013 movie The Railway Man, a British army officer is tortured in a Japanese labor camp; many years later, he confronts his jailer about the torture. How does this confrontation compare to Dantes’ journey of revenge against his accusers?

 

Discuss amongst yourselves.  😉