This looks very like my Hamsa.
I have been working slowly on this as it takes some concentration.
I finished my Springtime Bandit.
Mine looks very similar to this but I did a picot bind off and blocked it with points. I also made a mistake in the center which makes it not lay real flat but doesn't affect it's wearablity in any way.
I finished a February Baby Sweater and booties which was not real well received at the Dodge County Fair but I thought it was nice. I have also knit a couple of baby hats for a friend at church. One of them is sort of a pointed hat with a tiny pom pom and the other is a Berry Hat.
I changed the patten slightly and did 1X1 ribbing as I don't like the look of a rolled brim as written in the pattern.
I have been reading some really large books. Not on purpose because these are hard to read in bed! They are uncomfortable on one's tummy! I am reading Drood by Dan Simmons. It is about Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and the ghoulish figure Drood.
It is 784 Pages long! Simmons brilliantly imagines a terrifying sequence of events as the inspiration for Dickens's last, uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in this unsettling and complex thriller. In the course of narrowly escaping death in an 1865 train wreck and trying to rescue fellow passengers, which really happened to him, Dickens encounters a ghoulish figure named Drood, who had apparently been traveling in a coffin. Along with his real-life novelist friend Wilkie Collins, who narrates the tale, Dickens pursues the elusive Drood, an effort that leads the pair to a nightmarish world beneath London's streets. Collins begins to wonder whether the object of their quest, if indeed the man exists, is merely a cover for his colleague's own murderous inclinations. Despite the book's length, you race through the pages, drawn by the intricate plot and the proliferation of intriguing psychological puzzles.
I am also reading about the Reformation. It goes together with and audio lecture series I am listening to about the Tudors and the Stewarts. Of course, Henry VIII helped cause the Reformation in England and I am reading to find out about John Calvin who celebrates his 500th year anniversary this year. Calvin has never been one of my favorite reformers but our Sunday School will be studying him so I wanted to get the whole picture before the class. I am reading Will and Ariel Durant's The Reformation, part of their ten volume History of Civilization (1000 pages in this volume alone) and The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch (over 750 pages).
In the West, religious conviction is generally viewed as a private matter, and tolerance is enshrined in our secular creed. So it may seem hard to understand that a few centuries ago Europeans enthusiastically slaughtered each other over what, today, seem trivial doctrinal differences.
MacCullouch, an Oxford University professor, makes clear in this comprehensive and superbly written history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation that men of the sixteenth century did not regard these differences as trivial. He seamlessly weaves his account of religious differences into the fabric of political disputes between German princes, the papacy, and monarchs of nation-states.
In his portraits of the major personalities, including Luther, Calvin, and Ignatius of Loyola, it is striking that most of them claimed to desire a return to a purer or more catholic Christianity as envisioned by the church fathers. This is an outstanding work that examines fairly and objectively a definitive epoch in the history and spiritual development of the Western world. And really very readable!
Well I guess this long winded post makes up for missing for a while!
Talk to you Later,
Lynda
Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and not to be constrained by force.
Flavius Josephus (37 AD - 100 AD), Life
