Finished Color Affection

My finished shawl for June is Color Affection.  I really like this pattern by Veera Valimaki, and almost every single one of the thousands of examples on Ravelry.  I don't believe it's possible to have an ugly color combination for this shawl.  And it's big... 93 inches long, and an estimated 900 yards of yarn!  I kept my New Year's resolution not to buy any new yarn until I had knitted my stash down a little bit; the green and blue yarns are both reclaimed from thrift store sweaters (and have both featured in fair-isle sweaters I've knit in the past), and the charcoal is alpaca that I purchased at an estate sale last year (and used in my previous shawl of the 12-in-12 challenge).  I have actually worn this one already, even before the ends were sewn in. Just the thing for stylishly keeping warm when it's still in the low 60's and raining at the end of June!

The bright flowers are rose campion, and you can see a little Jupiter's beard at the right of the top photo.  We like flowers that reseed themselves, take care of themselves, and still look pretty!  In fact, our gardening philosophy could pretty much be summed up as "turn your weeds into assets."

At Starbucks last night I cast on for a new shawl, Summer Flies, and I'm still slogging along on Lady MacBeth, but no pictures of either for the yarn-along.  I've also tentatively chosen a pattern for my blue handpun Wensleydale, but I really shouldn't have more than 2 shawls going at once, don't you think?

Source: ebooknetworking.net via Katherine on Pinterest

Speaking of Jupiter, here's one of the books I'm reading while working on several epic knitting (and soon to be spinning) projects.  I highly recommend it.  Steve and I enjoy reading bedtime stories, and since we both love history, this is perfect.  The one of us least likely to fall asleep while reading (usually me, although not always... I come up with some pretty funny word substitutions when I'm sleep-reading) reads aloud to the other, and we usually make it through a chapter -- fortunately in this book, they're short.  The book is organized very nicely, with duelling timelines at the end of each chapter so you can review what the Egyptians were doing while the Assyrians were doing something else.

The most recent chapter, "Conquest and Tyranny," features Greece, Sparta vs. Athens.  In light of my recent blog posts, I was highly entertained the other night to read about the transition of the first kings in Athens (archons) into annually elected rulers.  The practice was more of an aristocracy or oligarchy than democracy, though:

"The first annual archon," Eusebius writes, "was Creon, in the year of the 24th Olympiad" -- in other words, 684 B.C. ...

In 632, though, the seams of the semi-democratic practice gaped wide open.  An Olympic champion named Cylon (he shows up in Eusebius's lists as the winner of the diaulos, or "double-race," the 400-metre foot race, in the Olympic Games eight years previously) made a bid to turn the archonship into something else.

"Cylon," Thucydides writes, "was inquiring at Delphi when he was told by the god to seize the Acropolis of Athens on the grand festival of Zeus." ...Cylon ... decided that the "grand festival of Zeus" must refer to the upcoming Olympic Games.  What more appropriate time for an Olympic victor to seize power?  And so he ... occupied the Acropolis, announcing "the intention of making himself tyrant."

...But Cylon had chosen the wrong "grand festival of Zeus."  The oracle had apparently been talking about a later festival which took place well outside the city ... Rather than rolling over, the Athenians grew indignant."
                       - The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer, pp. 425-426

 And it continues, describing yet another power-grab that did not end well for its instigator.