11 June 25
Stricken auf Deutsch
I think I’ve said elsewhere on here that I got back into knitting after a 35-year-break because I was supporting a bike ride as a radio SAG and ran into a Davis Bike Club volunteer who was knitting a sock. This was back in 2008: Ravelry was still in invitation mode and the knitting craze was really revving up. Since then a lot has happened, a lot of drama, and the community is as fractured as the political landscape.
I’ve been able, however, to combine my hobbies a bit. There are at least 30 groups on Ravelry that are at least partly in German (Deutscher Stricktreff is a group I’m a member of). I’ve been watching a lot of German YouTube content and a new favorite is Sylvie Rausch of CraSy Creative Things.
This book was brought back from Germany last year by a friend of mine. She’s returning there on Sunday and has asked whether there’s anything I’d like her to bring back this time…
10 June 25
On Catalan and Occitan
As I mentioned a couple days ago, I’m now dabbling in Catalan. I think I got drawn into the language in the following way. Pica just related how she herself started dabbling in Catalan because of the arrival of our Catalan neighbors. At that point, I watched a couple videos from the YouTube channel Easy Catalan. Easy Catalan is part of the Easy Languages network of language learning content that is built around street interviews that are doubly-subtitled in English and in the target language. When listening to these street interviews in Catalan, I thought to myself “Oh, I really like the sound of this language! It sounds a good bit like Old Occitan.”
How on earth do I know what Old Occitan sounds like? I don’t, of course, but long ago I discovered troubadour song and became enamored of that 800-year-old world of music and poetry. I collected many recordings of modern performers interpreting troubadour songs. One of which that stands out is a 1991 recording by the Camerata Mediterranea entitled Lo Gai Saber. The salient feature of this recording is that the singers all had contact with modern Occitan in their youth and assimilated the sounds of the language. Modern Occitan is not the same as Old Occitan but this is probably as close as one can get to recreating the medieval language’s phonology. This recording is at the present moment streamable on YouTube.
Catalan and Occitan are very closely related languages, described in an article in a site on troubadours as being one diasystem, two languages. Here is a YouTube video showing their mutual intelligibility. In it Laura (aka Couch Polyglot) has a conversation with Gabrièu (aka Parpalhon Blau), with Laura speaking Catalan and Gabrièu speaking Occitan. Laura has had very little exposure to Occitan prior to this point.
9 June 25
Why Learn a Foreign Language?
As Numenius mentioned in his blog post yesterday, we’ve both been actively learning new languages. In my case this deep dive into German has now moved into its fifth year. But why? I don’t live in Germany, nor do I intend ever to move there; I haven’t even been there. Most people in Germany speak good English (at least in the cities) and will reportedly answer in English the second they get the sense your native language is English. No: my reason for learning German is to get a massive monkey off my back.
When I went to boarding school from Madrid at age 13, I was compelled to choose three of the four following subjects: history, Latin, geography and German. Latin and history were obvious choices to me; geography seemed like it would be a lot easier than German plus I still had a residual antipathy to German (it was the early 1970s and English war comics featuring hollering Nazi officers were a staple in our house.) In the event I got invited to leave my geography class only three weeks in because I kept correcting the teacher’s pronunciation of Spanish place names like a brat. I should have joined the German class but thought I’d never catch up. (I would have, of course: three weeks is nothing at beginner level.) The monkey? It settled in and looked forward to a lifetime of mischief.
I’ve started other languages in the interim (having taken Spanish and French at University): Italian A Level in Cambridge in 1982 because a friend had, Irish at Harvard so I could calligraph 18th century Irish poetry (this was too hard and I never made it very far), Hebrew so I could calligraph a ketubah for some friends (and read prayer book Hebrew, later), Catalan because our Catalan neighbors gave me a good excuse in 2024; Ukrainian because fuck Putin. (Keep your armchair neurodivergent diagnoses to yourselves, please.) But German? I am determined to reach a C1 level sometime and am finding Lingoda classes to be well-suited to my learning style. I practice daily (I find myself writing more postcards in German than in English through Postcrossing) and am now running the Advanced German Conversation sessions for International House on Zoom. (I also delved into writing Chinese script so I could write addresses in Chinese on postcards, though it turns out I send most of my postcards to Germany, the Germans are avid postcard writers.) Languages keep my brain a) active; b) distracted from the cacophony of political turmoil. But mostly: it’s stimulating and incredibly fun to do this.
8 June 25
Journey Into Language Learning
Language study has become a major activity in our household. In common with many people, this is something we took up when the pandemic began early in 2020. Pica decided to rectify a lacuna in her prior language studies and began working her way through German in Duolingo. She has continued with her German studies to this day (she had a Lingoda lesson in German late this afternoon) but also had side excursions into several other languages. I followed in her path: soon after Pica started her German I decided to work my way through the Hebrew Duolingo tree. Having last studied Hebrew seriously as a child, I wanted to see what I retained and could pick up.
I completed the Hebrew tree in about two years, and settled upon Spanish as my subsequent Duolingo language. Previously, I had taken three quarters’ worth of Spanish at the local community college about 20 years ago. This is not the spot for a Duolingo rant, but I was quite glad I discovered the concept of comprehensible input before I got very far along in Spanish Duolingo, starting with the wonderful program Dreaming Spanish. (Dreaming Spanish has been a commercial success, and their team has just announced they will be launching Dreaming French very soon). Nowadays I try to get at least an hour of Spanish comprehensible input though Dreaming Spanish and other sources each day, and also do a bit of daily Duolingo, and participate in a weekly conversation group through Easy Spanish. Looking ahead, I’m also dabbling with Catalan right now, watching some of the comprehensible input videos mentioned here.
7 June 25
Good Night, and Good Luck
We had lunch a couple of weeks ago with Numenius’ family. His stepbrother is an actor and plays the part of cameraman in the George Clooney version of the above play on Broadway. This was streamed live today by CNN and we were able to watch it.
The media are very different now than they were in 1954… but scaremongering by those insatiably hungry for power is sadly still with us. Glad we saw it. And glad we saw Andy as Charlie on a screen seen by millions around the world!
6 June 25
Sheep on the Quad
At UC Davis a landscape architecture professor, Haven Kiers, has an ongoing project to bring sheep to the heart of campus in springtime to mow the lawns and to educate people about the benefits of this form of landscape management.. This project is called the UC Davis Sheepmowers, and has been underway since 2021.
These past three days the sheep have been in an enclosure on the main campus quad. They are always well-received by the student and campus community. I went on a walk this morning to do a few sheep sketches, as seen at left.
5 June 25
Knitting Socks for Summer
My knitworthy sister is the happy recipient of handknit winter socks for her birthday which falls in November: she lives in a cold place and nothing is better for keeping your feet cosy than wool socks. Our feet look very different than they did when we were in our 20s, and I’ve been able to modify her socks to fit perfectly without constricting the toes but also without bagging.
On a recent trip she informed me that she had plenty of wool socks, but was wondering if I could knit some cotton lace ones for summer like we used to buy in Spain? I found a bamboo/cotton blend yarn and have been working on a prototype for her. I’m going to send this single sock to her. If it fits I’l just match the second one; if it doesn’t, more work’s required.
I’ve never published a pattern before but if this is successful I might offer it to others.
Details: picot turned cuff, openwork lace, slip stitch short-row heel, slip stitch instep, roomy toe.
4 June 25
Daily Sketch - Plants Edition
As of this week I am semi-retired, though the degree of semi-ness is something that I will be working out for a while. It does mark a good occasion to return to blogging, so here I am.
I have been keeping a daily sketchbook for about 7 years now. The sketchbooks have been in a variety of formats and styles. Within this practice I have a subpractice of doing more extended sketches in the field on weekends. I did a series of these on local buildings, but after running out of interesting buildings in Davis I’ve lately switched to weekend tree sketches.
Trees call for a portrait format sketchbook, which means I’m always searching for portrait format subjects on non-tree days. Plants and flowers are filling a lot of the other pages of the sketchbook. So here is today’s sketch. This is a Matilija poppy (Romneya coutleri) from the alleyway by a neighbor’s yard.
