Quote of the Day, the uses of imagination

Quote from an essay On Fantasy and Science Fiction, in The Language of the Night

I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child that survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child, and that if these faculties are encouraged in youth they will act well and wisely in the adult, but if they are repressed and denied in the child they will stunt and cripple the adult personality. And finally, I believe that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination: so that it is our pleasant duty, as librarians, or teachers, or parents, or writers, or simply as grownups, to encourage that faculty of imagination in our children, to encourage it to grow freely, to flourish like the green bay tree, by giving it the best, absolutely the best and purest, nourishment that it can absorb. And never, under any circumstances, to squelch it, or sneer at it, or imply that it is childish, or unmanly, or untrue.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Phoney seam

Last night I did the row that splits the sweater into five sections - the two front yoke pieces, which are sitting on spare circular needles, the underarm sections which are sitting on spare yarn, and the back yoke piece, which is on the main needle and I'm working on it now.

When I did that, and came around to the underarm section, I got to do the phoney seam. This is a knit stitch at the center of the underarm, which when I got there I then dropped the stitch - allllllll the way to the very bottom. A formidably disturbing prospect, that. Then I take a crochet hook and pick it back up, but instead of one bar each time, you hook TWO bars through, then one, then two again, etc, all the way back up to the top. The purpose of this is to help the sweater hang straight and fold properly.

And it works. The whole sweater now wants to fold neatly along that line. It's really cool. And I figured I would have to post about it, because anyone seeing the sweater, unless I told you and had you look or you were an experienced knitter looking in detail, you'd never see it. It's subtle.

One exciting thing - now that the sweater is on three needles and two sections of yarn, I can stretch it out to its complete width. (Well, excepting the width of the button and buttonhole band I'll add later.) It fits around me nicely.

I'm GOING to complete this sweater!

Paul Alexander Guillory!

As bkseiver posted in a comment on my last post about him, my nephew has been named. Paul Alexander Guillory.

And now I have PICTURES!( quick, come see! )

Dad's email said he's a very contented baby, likes to be swaddled and held, only fusses if he needs a diaper change and then calms back down afterwards. He also says

Major success this afternoon with breast-feeding. Robyn kept him happy and full from about 1 PM to after 5 PM, without resorting to the bottles at all. She was ready to feed him again after we left, as soon as she finished her own supper, and you could tell that he was just beginning to be ready, too. She got assertive with the nurses, and they've agreed to bring him to her each time that he needs to be fed tonight. Looks like she's well on her way.

WOOO! My sister ROCKS. Go her. Dad called me just now, too, and said yeah, she seems to have convinced the nurses he's to be a breastfed-ONLY baby. Woo!

Makes me feel like I've been a good role model.

I am so looking forward to meeting him in person.