Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

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Well. The entire first half of that post, including my Ode to a Sock, dissappeared - and I am sure it's that )&^#$%!^$ blogger's fault, combined with my rickety dial-up internet and antiquated computer. This is a bitter blow since I didn't save that post even though I wrote it in word. Rats.

Jamestown Island is really worth the visit now - especially since Bill Kelso discovered the Real Fort. It didn't wash into the river the way you and I were taught in school.

In complete and total Southern fashion, there are two Jamestown places to visit and they're run by two different groups - just like two branches of the family at the reunion. The Jamestown settlement is also worth the visit - that's the one with the ships - but I prefer the island and its archaeology and romantic ruins.

By Blogger Bess, at 10:27 AM  

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Monday, July 11, 2005  

Openchancanough and hauled across Upper Tidewater VA. It’s an affecting story - with some deeply, powerfully sad moments, and some fascinating and thrilling twists and turns. Poor Smith has been thought more braggart than memoirist for so long. It wasn’t till the very end of the 19th century that the contemporary Zuniga map turned up in the Spanish court library, disclosing the capture route and lending verisimilitude to his tale. Of course, Disney gave us Smith as Beach Boy with Hair and some mountains and a water fall or two and cemented his fame forever in the hearts of 6-10 year old girls. All the more reason to give the curious, or those tourists with daughters visiting VA in 2007, (400 years of speaking English in America) something to really see.

BD is working with members of the MPNN tourist bureau to map out a drive on which one can visit the sites of the villages where these things took place. There’s been such a flurry of archaeology the past 5 years, making the quality of the history offered much more accurate. So - come to Virginia y’all. There’s lots to see and you can still get fried pork rinds here, too.

But the sock - ahh that is knit in Trekking (XXL) in a self stripe yarn of dull browns and purples with bands of dull gold and a pink and white speckle. It’s colorful but not vivid and I stupidly cast on 48 stitches and continued to knit wishing I’d cast on 52. But, like driving off the farm, when after the rubber hits pavement, one does NOT turn back, so after knitting the ribbing band of a sock that can fit over the heel, even if it is a bit of a stretch, one does not rip out. This means all the while I’m knitting this sock I am thinking - what would it feel like to knit the second sock at 52 stitches. Would it drive me crazy to have one loose sock and one tight one or would I grow used to it? But the anal virgo in me will never let me do so cavalier a thing as to knit a pair of socks of two different sizes for a pair of feet that are not also two different sizes.
I intended to knit my next pair of socks using the short row heel but I didn’t have the directions with me when I finished the ankle so I went ahead and knit a flap. Since I’ve stopped there and am off to work today (where several books with short row heel directions stand on shelves in the 746.43 section) I may be so bold as to rip out the flap. None of it matters anyway. What is important is that I actually knit real stitches at last.

The other important event of the weekend was that I cleaned the house. Really cleaned it as in unscrewing the fan (essential summertime equipment) and sucking/washing out all the dust accumulated over the past two years. Talk about a gross disgusting job - but when I was done, my bedroom sparkled. There were other equally repulsive places that received the attention of soap, water, dust cloth and vacuum. I have company scheduled to begin visiting the end of the month and I don’t want them to know just how slovenly I am willing to be.

The pristine bedroom ended up being the perfect place for BD and me to begin our next literary venture - the 15 minutes a day of reading the Harvard Classics. A patron donated their 1950’s edition and BD snapped it up from the sale table before it actually got onto the sale table - at the standard $5 a volume, of course. He spent yesterday building a shelf for it while I prepared its chapel. Yesterday’s reading was a selection from the Icelandic odes about Thorvald’s discovery of Vineland. We couldn’t resist reading the selections for July 9 and 8 as well - Bacon’s essays on truth - through parenting and Shelly’s creepy gothic horror play The Cenci.

And there is just enough time now to go read the selection for July 11 - so I am off!

posted by Bess | 7:47 AM
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