Fish-Scale Lace Panel

Why Bilbo Baggins? Saruman believes that it is only great power...that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I found it is the small things...every day deeds of ordinary folk...that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.  Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it is because I am afraid...and he gives me courage.

Zigzag Eyelet Panel

God grant us the serenity to accept 

the things we cannot change,

the courage to change the things we can,

and the wisdom to know

the difference.

Amen.

Slip-Stitch Ribbing

Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that hfair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breatyhe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives lifet to thee.

William Shakespeare

another chocolate bar

Slip-Stitch Stripes

Fortune in a Coffee Cup

Chapter 4 contains interpretations of the symbols and images you may find in your coffee grounds.  The first sentence or two of each meaning is printed in bold lettering.  Use this information for fast, simple readins that are not in depth--a morning readin in that commuter cup of coffee on the bus, a fast reading for a friend at work, or possibly a quick break-time reading about a specific question for yourself (how will that report I wrote be accepted? or will I have a weird or great blind date tonight?) for instance.  The balance of the interpretations for each image is more thorough, giving specifics on how the meaning changes with placement in the cup...
B R E A T H E . . .

Squares and Twists

Excerpt:
Romeo and Juliet

[Enter] Chorus.

Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,
   And young affection gapes to be his heir;
That fair for which love groaned for and would die,
   With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair.
Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,
   Alike bewitched by the charm of looks;
But to his foe supposed he must complain,
   And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks.
Being held a foe, he moy not have access
   To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,

Cable and Box Panel

Excerot:
Fortune in a Coffee Cup

and the person who is holding the cup, and therefore is always a key area to consider in a reading.  Anything near the handle of the cup, andy type of image at all, is in the area of strength and therefore is a strong image for the person getting the reading--one could even say intense.  Numbers, letters of the alphabet, or images tend to be stronger, and more pwerful here.  Look at it this way--like something you love with a passion--that is the difference between seeing something anywhere else in the cup and here in the place of strength.

Twisted Motif

KA-BLUEEEEYYYYY!  

Ridge Eyelet Border

In tatt'red weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples.  Meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuffed, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves  A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses Were thinly scattered, to make up a show. Noting this penurey, to myself I said, 'An if a man did need a poison now Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.' O, this same needy man must sell it me. As I remember, this should be the house. Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut. What, ho! Apothecary!
[enter Apothecary] Who calls so loud?
Romeo
Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.
Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse it self through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
Apothecary
Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law Is death to any he that utters them.
Romeo
Art thou nso bare and full of wretchedness And fearest to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back: The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law; The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it and take this.
Apothecary
My poverty but not my will consents.
Romeo
I pay thy poverty and not thy will. Apothecary Put this in any liquid thing you will And drink it off, and if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
Romeo
There is thy gold-worse poison to men's souls, Doin more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. Farewell. By food and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To JUliet's grave; for there must I use thee. Exeunt.

Ridged Openwork

PANDEMONIUM, n.  Litereally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escapted into politics and finance, and the place is now used asa lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.  When disturbed by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate repsonse most gratifying to his pride of distinction.

Banded Rib

PANTHEISM, n.  The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

Little Arrowhead

RELIGION, n.  A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
     "What is your religion my son?"  inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
     "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant;  "I am ashamed of it."
     "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
     "Impossible! I should be ashamed of atheism."
     "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."

Little Arrows

"So, this is the Hobbit.  Tell me, Mr. Baggins, have you done much fighting?
--Pardon me?
Ax or sword?  What's your weapon of choice?
--Well, I do have some skill at Conkers, if you must know...but I fail to see why that's relevant.
Thought as much.  He looks more like a grocer than a burglar."

Staghorn Cable 2

REFORM, n.  A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation.

Staghorn Cable 1

BRANDY, n.  A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.  Dose, a headful all the time.  Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes.  Only a hero will venture to drink it.

Medallion Cable

BONDSMAN, n.  A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to become responsible for that entrusted by another to a third.  Phillippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would be able to give.  "I need no bondsmen," he replied, "For I can give you my word of honor."  "And pray what may be the value of that?" inquired the amused Regent.  "Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold."

Diamond Pattern

Chocolate bar poem.

I have told my passion, my eyes have spoke it,

my tongue pronounced it and my pen declared it.

Now my heart is full of you, my head raves about you,

and my hand writes to you.

George Farquhar to Annie Oldfield.

M<3m's  Mother's Day 2013

Caterpillar Stitch

excerpt from Wind through the Keyhole by Stephen King:

He dreamed of throcken dancing in the moonlight.

He began to think of Daria as his companion, although she didn't speak much, and when she did, Tim didn't always understand why (or what in Na'ar she was talking about).  Once it was a series of numbers.  Once she told him she would be "off-line" because she was "searching for satellite" and suggested he stop.  He did, and for half an hour the plate seemed completely dead--no lights, no voice.  Just when he'd begun to believe she really had died, the green light came back on, the little stick reappeared, and Daria announce, "I have reestablished satellite link."
"Wish you joy of it, " Tim replied.
Several times, she offered to calculate a detour.  This Tim continued to decline.  And once, near the end of the second day after leaving the Fagonard, she recited a bit of verse:

See the Eagle's brilliant eye,

And wings on which he holds the sky!

He spies the land and spies the sea 

And even spies a child like me.

     If he lived to be a hundred (which, given his current mad errand, Tim doubted was in the cards), he thought he would never forget the things he saw on the three days he and Daria trudged ever upward in continuing heat.  The path, once vague, became a clear lane, one that for several wheels was bordered by crumbling rock walls.  Once, for a space of almost an hour, the corridor in the sky above that lane was filled with thousands of huge red birds flying south, as if in migration.  But surely, Tim thought, they must come to rest in the Endless Forest.  For no birds like that had ever been seen above the village of Tree.  Once four blue deer less than two feet high crossed the path ahead of him, seeming to take no notice of the thunderstruck boy who stood staring at these mutie dwarfs.  And once they came to a field filled with giant yellow mushrooms standing four feet high, with caps the size of umbrellas.

"Are they good to eat, Daria?" Tim asked, for he was reaching the end of the goods in the hamper.  "Does thee know?"  "No, traveler," Daria replied.  "They are poison.  If you even brush their dust on your skin, you will die of seizures.  I advise extreme caution."  This was advice Tim took, even holding his breath until he was past that deadly grove filled with treacherous, sunshiny death.  Near the end of the third day, he emerged on the edge of a narrow chasm that fell away for a thousand feet or more.  He could not see the bottom, for it was filled with a drift of white flowers.  They were so thick that he at first mistook them for a cloud that had fallen eo earth.  The smell that wafted up to him was fantastically sweet.  A rock bridge spanned this...

Diagonals

Chocolate Bar poem.

From Venus and Adonis

Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love

That inward beauty and invisible;

Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move 

Each part in me that were but sensible.

Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,

Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me,

And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,

And nothing but the very smell were left me,

Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

For from the stillitory of thy face excelling

Come breath perfumed that breedeth love by smelling.

William Shakespeare

Evan's May 12'th 2013

Mother's Day Sunday

Branched Cable 1

Chocolate Bar poem.

The best and most beautiful things in 

the world cannot be seen or even touched.

They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Kellar

Brad's  May 12'th 2013 

Mother's Day Sunday

Double Cable

SAUCE, n.  The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment.  A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine.  For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.

He laughs best who laughs least.

Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.

Of two eveils choose to be the least.

Strike while your employer has a big contract.

Where there's a will there's a won't.

Claw Pattern 2

SLANG, n.  The grunt of the human hog  (Pignoramus intolerabilis)  with an audible memory.  The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot.  A means (under Providence)  of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.

Claw Pattern 1

RUM, n.  Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

Cell Stitch

 from the movie Rango            

..."it's just we got no hope without that water.

We got nothing left to believe in.

You see that sign up there?

As long as that sign says "Sheriff,"

You can believe that there's law and order in this town.

But without law and order ruminate on that."

Diagonal Openwork

FAITH, n.  Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Grand Eyelets

FELON, n.  A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

Raised Brick Stitch

EXPERIENCE, n.  The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

To one who, journeying through night and fog,

Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,

Experience, like the rising of the dawn,

Reveals the path that he should not have gone.

Joel Frad Bink.

Textured Ribbing

IMMORTALITY,  n.  

A toy which people cry for, 

And on their knees apply for,

Dispute, contend and lie for,

And if allowed 

Would be right proud

Eternally to die for.

G. J.

Sailor's Rib

SEINE, n.  A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of environment.  For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with small, cut stones.

The devil casting a seine of lace,

(With precious stones 'twas weighted)

Drew it into the landing place 

And its contents calculated.

All souls of women were in the sack--

A draft miraculous, precious!

Bet ere he could throw it across his back

They'd all escaped through the meshes.

Baruch de Loppis.

Three-Stitch Twisted Rib

K,  is a consonant that we get from the Greeks, but it can be traced away back beyond them to the Cerathians, a small commercial nation inhabiting the peninsula of Smero.  In their tongue it was call Klatch, which means, "destroyed."  The form of the letter was originally precisely that of our H, but the erudite Dr. Snedeker explains that it was altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of the great temple of Jarute by an earthquake, circa 730 B.C.  This building was famous for the two lofty columns of its portico, one of which was broken in half by the catastrophe, the other remaining intact.  As the earlier form of the letter is supposed to have been suggested by these pillars, so, it is thought by the great antiquary, its later was adopted as a simple and natural--not to say touching--means of keeping the calamity ever in the national memeory.  It is not known if the name of the letter was altered as an additional mnemonic, or if the name was always Klatch and the destruction one of nature's puns.  As each theory seems probable enough, I see no objection to believing both--and Dr. Snedeker arrayed himself on that side of the question.

Fishtail Lace Panel

TELESCOPE, n.  A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is umporvided with a bell sommoning us to the sacrifice.

Tulip Lace

TELEPHONE, n.  An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Vandyke Lace Panel 2

PERFECTION, n.  An imaginary state or quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.  The editor of an English magazine having received a letter pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed "Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter: "I don't agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.

Vandyke Lace Panel 1

T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks absurdly called tau.  In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone (which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified Tallegal, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, "tanglefoot."

Little Chevron Rib

IDLENESS, n.  A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.