Not Your Grandmother's Cross Stitch

Say "cross stitch" to people who don't do needlework, and their first thoughts are "antique samplers" and/or "ersatz early American decor." Say the same words to a person who does needlework and they're likely to picture elaborate, multicolor scenes that are stunningly beautiful, but take months to complete or a variety of needlepoint that's extremely tough and long-wearing but also takes time and a strong frame to complete.

And then there's this book I just found called Stitch Graffiti (by Heather Holland Daly, published in 2008) which turns all those notions on their lovely, complicated heads. Ms. H-D says things like, "try stitching this design on nylon screening" instead of traditional cloth and "change the colors if you don't like mine." She then tells you a simple way to balance the colors when you do change them so the design looks like it was planned that way, not arbitrarily altered.

Like most needlework designers, she includes an alphabet, but hers really does look like something some school drop out might have spray painted on a city wall.

All of her designs look like they'd be fun to do, and, to make the creation as relaxing as possible, she offers suggestions about the appropriate music to play while you stitch.

Creation "Science"

For the past week, I've been listening to an unabridged audio recording of Johnathan Wells' "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Dawinism and Intelligent Design." And any reader can guess my opinion of Mr. Wells book from the quotation marks around the word "science" in the title of this post. I'm no scientist, but even I could see some flaws in Mr. Wells' book, only two of which I'm going to mention.

Wells writes about Darwin and his supporters "ignoring the work of Gregor Mendl" (the man who discovered the laws of heredity) when a glance at an encyclopedia would show him that Brother Mendl's work was only published in a very obscure German/Austrian journal and lost to the scientific community for decades because the editor of that journal didn't know what a treasure he had on his hands.

And then there is his constant reference to "the Designer" who Wells protests isn't God but never says who/what (s)he may be. He reminds me very much of our Victorian grandparents who couldn't say the words "pregnant" or "sex" though they spent hours talking about how their children and grandchildren resembled this or that relative.

As for my own opinion--since "a day to God is as a thousand years," I don't have a problem with the idea that the world we have today took several billion years to build, or the idea that we humans aren't the be-all and end-all of life. I'm only sorry I won't be around to see what comes next.

Crows

We had a visitor in church this morning in the person of our organist's father. Mr. B. is a very hale gentleman with a powerful voice who enthusiastically joined in the hymns although he's somewhat deaf--at least he's tone deaf--and wasn't gifted with sense of rhythm. Nevertheless, his joy at being with us was so obvious, no one even considered dropping a discrete word in his ear to sing just a little softer.

Mr. B. reminded me that the

crow's spring canticle

off key from the other birds'

is just as joyous

from Haiku at 3 a. m.

Cats III

birds and the cat sing

"Reveille" before it's light

they know it's morning

occasionally

cats do Teddy Bear Duty

when they see the need

from Haiku at 3 a. m.

Courage

River runs fastest

just before it dives. Is it

afraid of falling?

Does it hide its fear with speed

so it has no time to think?

from Haiku at 3 a. m.

Crossword Puzzles or Tricks My Father Taught Me

There are a couple of tricks to doing crossword puzzles.

My dad, who did the New York Times Crossword in ink for most of his life, taught me some. Like most people, I started by doing all clues going across, then the ones going down, then back to those going across, then down, etc. Dad told me, "What you want to do is work in blocks. Try answering all the questions in one section, then move on to the next. If you fill in a couple of letters when the question is still fresh in your head, you have a better chance of remembering the answer."

It took me a few weeks of getting lost and filling answers in the wrong boxes, but he was right--the "block system" made things a lot easier.

Another trick isn't really a trick at all--it's just learning to recognize the designer's tricks and shortcuts. Like "awn" means the bristles on a head of wheat, while "seta" is the proper term for the bristles on a pig. Or that some designers use puns and some like slang--the more obscure, the better.

Dad said he learned the block system from his Uncle Henry, my grandmother's brother. He also passed on another piece of advice from Uncle Henry, who was a college professor of English: "When you're taking a test and you come to a question you can't answer, leave it and go on to the next one. By sitting on the question, not only do you waste your valuable time, but you may find a related question you can answer, which will trigger your memory." That one earned me a respectable GPA through high school.

It's also good advice for doing crossword puzzles. If you can't figure out a clue, leave it and come back to it later--you'll usually find the answer.

And yes, I do the NYC Times crossword in ink. Most days. Saturdays are a bear.

Children's Middle Names

When I was a kid, I didn't give much thought to the custom of giving children second names. I did know that mine, Lee, was my grandfather's first name (I was the first grandchild--for both Mother's and Dad's families) and that some of my friends had either a collection of names between their first and last, or some real doozers that they only shared after I'd taken blood oaths of secrecy.

I didn't know that my best friend went by her middle name, Anne, until her wedding day. I nearly fell over when the J. P. asked "Do you, Dorothy Anne, take..." She hated her first name so much, she'd pretended it didn't exist.

Then, when I was pregnant with my first child, first and middle names suddenly became very important. If we had a son, William was the traditional first name in my husband's familyand had been for at least four generations. We automatically went with Richard, my father's name, for the second.

But what would we name a girl?

I liked my mother's name, Esther, but loathed my mother-in-law's name, Bessie. (She did, too, and wasn't particularly happy with its diminutive, Bess.) I'd have been happy to give our daughter her middle name, Irene, but my husband insisted on Bessie or nothing if I chose Esther. He wouldn't even compromise on Elizabeth, of which Bessie is a diminutive--he said it sounded too much like we were aping the royals.

Back to the dictionary of baby names.

The Lord of the Rings was just coming into mainstream consciousness and there were some interesting names that might work. My husband's middle name was Warren, which, with a little rearrangement, could become Arwen. Arwen it was.

But what about a middle name? We went through every name we could think of, but nothing sounded right to either of us. And then I saw Veronica Tennant dance The Sleeping Beauty and thought the name went well with Arwen (the woman being tall, blonde and beautiful didn't hurt, either). Later that evening, I broached the subject of middle names again. He said he'd just been reminded of the Archie comics and what did I think of Veronica, one of Archie's girl friends, as a possible girl's name?

Bingo.

I don't know what we'd have done if we'd had two boys or two girls, but we had a son followed by a daughter two years later. William Richard and Arwen Veronica.