Shakespeare Lovers, Rejoice!

For Antony and Cleopatra is available to watch at home!  I recently discovered that the National Theater in London has an At-Home rental option, so you can watch shows that were staged there over the past few years.  The filming is professionally done and with a live audience, so you feel like you are in the room with the production.

This production of Antony and Cleopatra was staged in 2018 with Ralph Fiennes in the title role of Antony and Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra. Ralph Fiennes (pronounced Rafe) is a particular long-time favorite of mine; it is a joy to watch that man work. Also, I admire that he taught himself Russian and now speaks it well enough to have done two films in the language!

Antony and Cleopatra features electric performances by both actors, and the production is amazing.  The actors deliver the lines in a naturalistic way (much like the amazing Henry IV/V triology in the The Hollow Crown).  Once your ear accustoms to the rhythm, it is very easy to follow what is happening.  

The sets are clever, placed on a rotating wheel that allows for different central sets to rise from the floor, including a shallow pool with real water in it!  Fiennes has a particular passion for Shakespeare staged in modern dress, and this production does that very well. (I don't always love this approach with Shakespeare, because it can get campy or be distracting).  The costumes are wonderful!  There is surprising humor in the show, and unexpected moments (there is a collective gasp from the audience toward the end that I found affecting).  

Let me know what you think if you watch it!  I'm hip-deep in costume alterations/fittings for the Upper School musical at my kids' school, and this was the perfect accompaniment to my sewing. 

Hats!

I've mentioned before in this space about how thin my hair has gotten over the past decade or so, and especially on the crown.  I've been taking some medication since the fall that is supposed to help, but I'm not noticing a huge difference yet (just less shedding, perhaps).  I have about half the hair I used to.

In any case, the back of my head is often cold in the winter, so I've been making hats to keep my wig warm!  I prefer to wear my hats on the back of my head, and I think I've cracked the sizing and style.  My previous attempts at berets all ended up too floppy and big (and that is saying something, given the size of my noggin!)  

It seems like a basic beanie is a better fit for the style I like, and I think I've got the right length figured out too.  I usually anchor the hat with a bobby pin in the middle at the top and that seems to keep it in place during the day.  

The first is a blossom heather hat, using KnitPicks Wool of the Andes DK weight yarn.  I've really come around to Wool of the Andes over the past year.  I used to think it was unbearably rustic, but I'm finding that a good soak with a little conditioner in the water softens it nicely, and it wears like iron.  Plus the price is nice. I used a stitch pattern called Lozenges and Triangles from a stitch pattern book I have, together with a basic beanie pattern that had the correct multiple of stitches for the gauge.

The next is a companion to my Footfall shawl, which has gotten a lot of wear this fall and winter and I wanted a hat to match.  I used the same lace pattern for the hat, although it came out differently because the hat is straight whereas the shawl ends up staggered because of the increases. 

(I should add that I redid the border on my Footfall to make it wider, since the original was constantly flipping up and the size was borderline for my preference. So the garter border is wider and the overall size slightly larger and I'm much happier with it!)

Finally, I finished an Easwas hat yesterday and am quite chuffed with the result. 

I used some stashed Jamieson and Smith yarn, which I really like and want to work with more in the future.  My crazy eyes in this picture should tell you the truth of my enthusiasm!  (Ha!)

J&S is a pretty "sticky" yarn, but for this project, that was just fine. I made this hat after making a Gruggle cowl (that I still have to blog about!) but found it much more enjoyable to knit, even though the twisted stitch pattern is similar.

There's also a little sneaky peak of a sweater I just finished and will also blog about soon!  

I'm giving a presentation on medieval music at my kids' school this afternoon, so I'm a bit nervous.  I've done it before as a two-parter, but this is a combined presentation and I have to cover a LOT of ground.  And sing a bit.  I just started taking voice lessons from our very talented choir director at church, so my voice confidence is pretty low at the moment.  Nothing like singing in and directing choirs for most of your adult life only to discover in your mid-40s you're doing it all wrong.  I probably just need to get out of my own way, to be honest.  

My trial run earlier this week came in just at time, so hopefully it all works out as planned!  

Fast Car

This morning I saw a video of Tracy Chapman and Luke Coombs' duet of Fast Car at the Grammys last night and it was perfect.  It was so fun to see people in the audience rocking out to the song, and also to see the obvious professional respect between Chapman and Coombs.  

Enjoy!

Talking Tuesday: Nigredo/Dark Night of the Soul

I've written a few times in this space about Rhyd Wildermuth's work; he has a unique voice and perspective that I find interesting and refreshing.  I don't agree with everything he writes, but he always gives me something to think about.

Rhyd's substack today was on what he calls nigredo, the part of the alchemy process where the elements are burned down to their most basic essence before being transformed into something else.  He writes:

"Nigredo isn’t a singular moment, however, but rather a repeating process. In alchemy, substances required multiple transformations, a repeating cycle from nigredo to rubedo and then back again. What we think we know and who we think we are likewise must be blackened repeatedly, “destroyed” (though never annihilated) and then reforged like the repeating seasons of the earth. We die, are born, and then die again so to be reborn, all the while still “living” and striving towards a time when the drives that defeat us and the drives that create us become lovers to each other." ~Rhyd Wildermuth, On Nigredo, FFrom the Forests of Arduinna Substack, 12/12/23

I love the imagery in that statement.  It's a different way of talking about theosis, even though Rhyd isn't talking about Christianity (indeed, he is a self-professed pagan).   I'm always interested in taking apart "churchy" words and phrases to get under what they really mean because sometimes words can be culturally drained of meaning by repetition.  Graham Pardun's Psalm translation project is very much after my heart in this way.

Later in the piece, he goes on to note that St. John of the Ladder describes this process at the Dark Night of the Soul.  As a fiction writer, this also resonated with me, since it is a key plot point in any good story.  The protagonist goes through a period where it seems all is lost, that everything they thought they knew is gone and they have to figure out how to go on from that.  

In stories, the Dark Night usually happens only once, but in life, Dark Nights are a feature, not a bug.  Something you thought you knew about yourself, or the world, or whatever, is blown to pieces and then you flounder like a fish on the bank of a stream, flopping about and gasping for air until you can work your way back into the water again to swim.  

Every year about this time, I start feeling a bit low.  I used to think it was because Christmas in my family is so special and I wasn't able to re-create it the same way with my own family.  I honestly felt like Christmas just got beat out of me at some point and it took me a while to find it again.  (Don't worry, I have plenty of lovely traditions with my kids and we have our own rhythm to things that is good, but it took a long time to get there).  

Lately, though I think it is really just part of the season.  I'm not much of one for podcasts because I'm a truly terrible aural learner; my brain wanders for a sec and I've lost the plot, but I've been listening to Spencer Klavan quite a bit this fall when I'm doing stuff around the house or running errands.  He's a very interesting and joyful guy who is so grounded and well-read.  I just finished his book and have very much enjoyed his Substack.  The podcast about C.S. Lewis and what he calls the Seven Loves was an amazing deep linguistic dive and The Ghosts of the Old Gods was also excellent.

Over the weekend, I listened to the podcast Spencer did with his sister about her new book, Christmas Karol, which is a creative retelling of Dickens' story.  Klavan's sister Faith is the keeper of Christmas in their family and loves the season.  She made the great observation that nostalgia and longing are baked in the cake of the holiday because it is the start of the march to the cross.  Even though it isn't explicitly in the holiday, it is in the underpainting, and I think most of us feel it on some level, even if we can't articulate what it is.  One of the gifts of the wise men is myrrh which is used to prepare a body for burial.  So it is there right at the start, pointing the way to where the journey to Bethlehem was going to end.  Of course, it ends in triumph with the resurrection on Pascha/Easter, but there is a long and lonely Dark Night of the Soul before we get there.  

I've thought a lot about longing lately.  It is the thing that propels us through life, really.  The cycle of nigredo and rubedo are the parts of our existence that make life worth living.  It is the striving, the yearning, the curiosity about the world and the people in it, the movement to the reforging of the self that gives meaning and makes us grow.  

So I think it is okay to sit in the darkness for a time, to see what it shows you.  Just don't make it a permanent dwelling place or, like Gollum, you'll forget how to live in the light.

Dark Moss

Another day, another pullover.  This one is the Dark Moss pullover by Teti Lutsak.  It is worsted weight so it initially was about a two week project.  But!  I ended up knitting the sleeves twice and the top half from the short rows up three times.  Yes, three!  Because I am nuts.

The problem is the decreases in the back, which are done while doing the short rows.  If you follow the pattern, the decreases happen too quickly and it is is too tight across the upper back.  If you omit the middle decreases and just do the raglan decreases, you end up with an extra repeat on the neckline that looks sloppy and wide.  I also sized up on the needles one of the iterations and didn't like the fabric.  I ended up knitting on the 8s (which were my gauge needles), omitting the middle decreases and just doing the raglan decreases on the short rows, and then added a couple of rows to decrease in the middle to bring the raglan line together and have the correct stitch count for the neckline.  Third time's a charm, as that seems to have fixed the fit problem across the upper back.

The sleeves were my own fault really.  I should have sized up on the needles and didn't because I was away from home and just wanted to finish it.  So I frogged both to about 10 rows from the cast-on at the underarm and reknit.  I also made many fewer decreases, I think three?  I knit 56 rows from the intial 10 down and then decreased 2 stitches, then knit 15 rows, decrease, then 15, decrease, and then about 6 more rows before starting the ribbing and that seems about right.  

The cable sections at the bottom were fairly easy and enjoyable, especially since they were knit flat and then joined.  I sort of split the difference between the cropped and longer length and am pretty happy with how it came out length-wise.  

I know this light grey is maybe not the best color on me, but I wanted something that was a lighter neutral and liked the subtle variations in the heather on this one.  And anyway, it is warm and comfortable, which was the main point!  

I had another gum graft yesterday to deal with the failed graft from 2016 and am pretty wiped today.  I have to have another graft on my top teeth in January but need to wait for my palette to heal first.  The main problem, as with the previous graft, is that eating is so incredibly painful and tricky.  They gave me a surgical stent to cover the top of my mouth, which helps a lot with that part, but the graft site is very sore and swollen.  I'm taking Tylenol and Motrin around the clock at the moment.  So I'm trying to find liquid calories since I can't afford to lose any weight right now (not a problem I EVER thought I'd have, but here we are).  The stitches come out next Thursday, so hopefully it won't be too bad of a week.

Footfall

I'm trying to post these projects in more or less the order in which I finished them, but I seem to keep falling behind as I finished this scarf a month ago (and have worn it a lot since) and even photographed it then, but am just now getting around to posting!

This is the Footfall pattern from Kate Davies and it comes from her Bold Beginners book. I tried knitting this pattern some years back (before I was really grooving with lace charts) and made a complete hash of it and gave up. This time, however, it was fairly smooth sailing. In retrospect, I wish I had done a M1L/M1R at the center instead of a yarn over, but not enough to start over again.

I used some silk/wool mix yarn I got for Christmas last year.  My original idea was to use the yarn until I ran out but I got to a certain point and realized that the scarf would be VERY large if I did that, and I didn't want something too overwhelming.  

The upside is that I have enough left to make a hat (and possibly mitts).  My hair is really thin now and my head gets cold quickly!  So I think hats are going to be a fixture this winter.  I've been wearing fingerless gloves in the house for the past couple of weeks because the circulation in my hands and feet isn't stellar, hence the mitts.  Andrea Mowry's new mitts pattern looks interesting.

I finished a sweater this week (after reknitting half of it at least twice!) and am working on some smaller projects before casting on another sweater.  What can I say?  I likes what I likes.

Kazahana

Sometimes you have to frog a sweater that isn't working.  My Weekender from last winter was such a sweater.  I did wear it some but the neckline drove me crazy and it was always too big.  And the drape never seemed right.  

I know a zillion people have made that pattern and love it, but I'm realizing that a straight neck sits really weird on me.  There were a bunch of things about the fit I didn't like, so when it was absolutely miles too big this fall, I decided to pull it out and start fresh.  

I picked the Kazahana pattern since it has my go-to features--textured yoke, easy body and sleeves, and interest on the cuffs and hem.  I did a twisted rib on the cuffs since I ended up not liking how the pattern iteration looked or felt, and I made the sleeves full length that tapered to the wrist.  I did do the pattern on the hem, but honestly, it is so subtle, I think I could have got away with twisted rib there too.  Since the yarn was worsted weight, the knitting went extremely fast--I think I made the whole thing in under two weeks.  I've worn it a ton since finishing it, so it was a good call!  

The yarn is such a pretty heathered color; it is hard to capture on film, but there are flecks of turquoise, yellow, seafoam green, and a darker teal running through it. It is definitely a solid color for my wardrobe palette.

I used a gift certificate for a local yarn store recently and bought some Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in the Button Jar colorway.  It is more to the olive side of green, but the tweedy flecks are similarly toned, so I'm eager to knit that yarn up!  I'm nearing the end of another worsted weight sweater, so I think the Shelter will be next up.  It is looking to be a colder year this year, so I'll be glad of some heavier weight pieces to keep me warm--I'm feeling the cold a lot more these days.