Knitting -- twin set

Classic twin sweater sets were always in cashmere. 
They were expensive.
You had maybe one in a color that suited you and you wore it to special event that didn't need formal wear.
Then you cleaned it and put it in a special storage pouch to keep the moths away.
Now that you can make pullovers with short or long sleeves and a cardigan, you can make yourself a twin set.
You can get 100% cashmere yarn in DK (double knit) weight which is heavier than Perly Perle.
The label on the ball will show you how many stitches should make an inch, depending on the size of needles you use.
So you will have to do some arithmetic to figure out your stitch counts, but you had to do that anyway if you don't have a 40-inch chest.
Cashmere yarn is expensive.
Palette Peruvian yarn in fingering weight uses the same stitch count as Perly Perle and is much cheaper and comes in more colors than cashmere usually does.
Wool of the Andes Peruvian sport weight yarn uses a different stitch count but is much cheaper than real cashmere and comes in more colors.
It all depends on what you want to go for.
But if you bought the sweater guard/chain I talked about in March, you still don't have to make those pesky button holes.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- the gang's all here

Last Thursday the catbird mewed for the first time.
Last Friday the swallows twittered high over the Co-op grocery parking lot.
The cardinals are quiet -- that must mean they've got a nest they're minding.
The woodpeckers have announced themselves.
The mockingbirds are beating up on squirrels so their eggs must be near hatching.
All that's missing is the goldfinches and they are slow to appear because they like wild seeds.
High spring indeed.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Quoting out of Verbal Context

Logic, logic, I’m sick to death of your logic.

OK, now that I have the Trekker in me out of the way, let’s talk about logic.

I watched some online lectures on a particular field of Judaism and afterward I emailed the teacher.  I got some interesting ideas out of the course.  But the field strongly relied on a fallacy.  Since 1998 it has become increasingly clear to me that fallacies are at the basis of the urban legends about Torah.

When it comes to Jewish law, the main fallacy is quoting out of context.  There are three layers to the context, and each plays its role.

One layer is the simple verbage context.  You saw right off the bat that the urban legend of lex talionis comes from using two verses of Torah but ignoring related verbage.

You also saw that the issue of “thou shalt not kill” ignored the textual requirement for execution by the court under specific conditions (as well as being mistranslated, which is a subject for much later).

And so on and so forth.

Those legal experts I talked about who run Jewish courts know Torah backwards and forwards.  They also know Mishnah backwards and forwards, and Gemara, and Mishneh Torah, and Shulchan Arukh, and all the legal decisions made since then.

They can't look things up like an American lawyer.  That is so much easier now with digital systems like Westlaw and Lexis, that it isn’t even funny.  In Jewish law, the experts know everything by heart.  They still do their homework because the human memory is a funny thing and they don’t want to bring on ill-repute by doing a sloppy job.  But it’s not like American law where you don’t dare walk into court without doing your homework because yesterday’s superior court decision may have invalidated part of your argument.

The verbage on Jewish law extends to 30,000 pages or more.  And the experts know it all.  Through years and decades of study.  The person who isn’t willing to study all of that material will never become expert enough to participate in a Jewish court.

I’m not that expert.  All I know is that every time somebody comes up with a question that reveals an urban legend about Torah, the single most important step in answering it is to look at the verbage.  And usually, the answer is right next to it.  A rabbi said that 19 centuries ago, and it’s still true today.  Samuel Levine found that every time a missionary used what was supposedly a supporting quote, examination of the context “right next to it” showed that the verbage actually meant exactly the opposite.  This will also come up again much later.

Everybody knows about the problem of quoting out of context, if they know anything about sound bytes and how they lead to arguments because they don’t accurately reflect what the person really meant.  It’s time to remember that the same thing applies to the Bible.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:5-6

Genesis 3:5-6

 

ה כִּי יֹדֵעַ אֱלֹהִים כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְכֶם מִמֶּנּוּ וְנִפְקְחוּ עֵינֵיכֶם וִהְיִיתֶם כֵּאלֹהִים יֹדְעֵי טוֹב וָרָע:

ו וַתֵּרֶא הָאִשָּׁה כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל וְכִי תַאֲוָה־הוּא לָעֵינַיִם וְנֶחְמָד הָעֵץ לְהַשְׂכִּיל וַתִּקַּח מִפִּרְיוֹ וַתֹּאכַל וַתִּתֵּן גַּם־לְאִישָׁהּ עִמָּהּ וַיֹּאכַל:

 

Translation:    For Gd knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like Gd, knowing good and evil.  The woman saw that the tree was good for food and a desire to the eyes and the tree was pleasant for enlightenment and she took some of its fruit and the woman also gave to her husband with her and he ate.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

נִפְקְחוּ	Shall be opened
עֵינֵיכֶם	Your eyes
עֵינַיִם	eyes
תַאֲוָה	Desire
נֶחְמָד	pleasant
לְהַשְׂכִּיל	To enlighten

 

“Opened” has two features.  One is that the nun at the start shows that it is the passive nifil which goes with the paal.  The binyanim work like this:

 

	Active	Passive
Simple	paal or qal	nifil
Habitual/repetitive	piel	pual
Causative	hifil	hufal
Reflexive/repetitive	hitpael

 

The second thing about this word is that the root is pe qof chet  and that root not only means “to open,” it also means sharp of senses or in one’s right mind.  Once she saw that she hadn’t died, she was ready to keep listening.

 

Also notice that the serpent copies the verbage in the original commandment, using that intensive construction.  When somebody is trying to pervert how you think about things you have been told, copying the construction of the phrase disguises the fact that what follows is incorrect. 

 

“To enlighten” comes from a verb used in the 1700s as a movement for people to come up to date in culture with the nations of Europe while remaining Jews.  It was supposed to be rationalistic and to do away with European prejudices against Jews.  Unfortunately it seemed only to increase the assimilation rate and to confuse Jews about what Judaism really was.  At least that’s my opinion.  There’s no reason observant Jews shouldn’t know everything everybody else knows, because it can help defend Judaism against illogical and unfactual claims, but to change Judaism to conform to non-Jews isn’t really Jewish.  A century after the Haskalah movement, R. Samson Raphael Hirsch said the same thing.  Only he was criticizing Maimonides for insisting that you had to understand Aristotle's Physics to understand a mystical subject in Judaism; this was brought to my attention by a tweet from a Chabad Chassid I know from the internet.  And that's also the lesson of the snake; he was an outsider pretending to be an insider, and look what happened!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- that time

The sun came in my back window yesterday and made a streak of light on the back closet door.
The redbud is just going off, the dogwood is on.
The blue jay is nesting in the same tree as last year.
I think I know where the mockingbird is nesting -- SHHHHH.
I've seen my robin with nesting material in his beak.
The bees have been out for a couple of weeks now.
I spent some time snapping the flower ends off my daffodils so the leaves would send all that food into the bulb.
We've had our spring, it's time for summer now.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

DIY -- bedding

Because I post on knitting, you might wonder if I quilt.
Yes I do.
I'm finishing my 11th or 12th quilt.
According to colonial tradition, that means I'm eligible to marry.

A classic Amish quilt can run you $1000.
You can make one for $20 or something.
The simplest quilt is to buy exciting fabric at least 90 inches wide; buy a piece at least 2 yards long.
Remember that you're going to have to wash this quilt so I would recommend not using silk or satin, but there are cotton fabrics in sassy prints that would be perfect.
Buy batting the size of the fabric.  There are different thicknesses which give different levels of warmth.
Buy muslin or flannel the size of the fabric or a little bigger; you can cut off the extra.
Buy assorted buttons.
Buy quilt binding; measure the perimeter of your fabric and buy slightly more binding.
Buy needles and thread.
Put the muslin or flannel on the floor and smooth out the wrinkles.
Layer the batting on it and smooth it out.
Layer the cool fabric on top of that.
Use your needle and thread to baste them together with LONG stitches or they will crumple and the quilt won't look nice.
Use scissors to even up the edges and sew on the binding with mitred corners.
There are Youtube videos that demonstrate this.  Some of them misspell "mitre".
Now lay the quilt back on the floor and plan where to put the buttons.
Sew the buttons to the quilt through all three layers of fabric to keep them smooth.
Take out the basting stitches.
This is a button or tied quilt.
It's a great project to do with your kids.  Let them pick the top fabric if it's going on their beds.
Have fun and discover your artistic side!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Knitting -- sock test

I said I'd report on the socks I made in 100% Peruvian highland wool.
They're still soft after about six washes in cold water and castile soap.
They're still that soft pink color, meaning that the color is nice and fast (it doesn't wash out).
They're still warm.
A soft yarn sometimes wears out quickly.
One sign of wear in yarn is pilling where bits of rolled yarn stick out.
You get less pilling if you wash once before wearing but you'll still get it.
Most of the pilling will happen where there's friction -- underarms, elbows.
In socks, it's at the heels where you slide your foot in and out of shoes.
That's exactly where these sock are pilling, but they still look sturdy.
If you have a sock pattern you love, you might want to try one pair in Wool of the Andes worsted; they have almost 100 scrumptious colors.
My crew socks pattern takes 3 balls.  At $10 a pair, it might be more cost effective to make a new pair than darn the heels of the old pair.
That's because I would need yarn from the same dyelot, or the darned heels would be a slightly different shade from the rest of the socks.
You'll have to make your own decision: buy 4 balls so you have some of the same dyelot to darn with, or buy 3 balls and plan to make a new pair when the old ones wear out.
(BTW it takes 15 or 16 balls to make the pullover sweater pattern I posted so if you buy 20 balls you can make both socks and pullover, and have yarn leftover for darning.)
See how it works out!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved