Knitting -- sweaters

Huh? Ain't I been teachin' you how to knit sweaters?

This is where us Yanks differ from the British. I taught you a pullover; the British call that a jumper a lot of times.  When they talk "sweater", they mean what Yanks mean by "cardigan". Which isn't really accurate either because you can make a sweater or cardigan with raglan sleeves.

A sweater or cardigan buttons up the front, usually in the middle although I think I've seen designs that button up off-center.

Anyway. There are two ways to do this. One is to do steeking up the front Fair-Isle fashion and attach a separate button band. I like to do as little sewing as possible and the shoulders fill my quota. YMMV.

I knitted some sweaters a long time ago and I stopped because I didn't like how the buttonholes turned out. They were too stretchy. But I found a video online which shows how to make nice neat sturdy buttonholes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEgiHQrrg-k

What it does is basically the same thing you do if you make buttonholes in woven fabric. There, you stitch bars at the end to make them sturdy; here, we're going to wrap yarn like we did with the argyle pattern.

1. Your hem is the usual except -- add six stitches, four of them to overlap and center the buttonhole and two so that the ribbing comes out the same on both ends. You will not be joining them and working in the round, you will work rows, probably in stockinette.
2. Work 4 rows of rib.
3.  Buttonholes are usually on the right side in ladies' wear. When you start to work row 5, which is on the RIGHT SIDE, work the first 5 stitches of rib and then start the first buttonhole.
4.  You are going to wrap the ends of the buttonhole to stabilize them.
    Bring the yarn to the front, slip the next stitch purlwise to the righthand needle, take the yarn to the back, and slip the stitch back to the lefthand needle.
5. Now bind off 4 stitches: slip the next stitch purlwise and pass the previous stitch over it. When you have slipped 4 times, put the last stitch that has a slipped stitch over it onto the lefthand needle and do the next step.
6.   Your working yarn has been left back where you wrapped stitches and you have to go back and get it.
      Turn to the wrong side and do a cable cast on for the top of the buttonhole. Put the needle between the last two stitches on the lefthand needle and knit the working yarn through the gap between those stitches, then put it back on the lefthand needle. Do that four more times for the top of the buttonhole, total of 5 stitches cast on.
7.   Turn the work back to the right side. Slip 1 stitch purlwise from the left to the right needle, pass the last (5th) of your cable-on stitches over it, and return it to the left needle.  Now you have the working yarn back at the body of the knitting and can finish the ribbing in that row.
Now work the other four rows of ribbing.

Make sure you are on the side with the buttonhole. Now do the following at that end to start the buttonhole placket: K2/P2/K2/P2/K2 and then P1, a total of 11 stitches.
Knit to the end of the row.
Turn to the wrong side, K2 and purl to the placket, K1/P2/K2/P2/K2/P2.
Repeat these two instructions to the next row where you need a buttonhole, then repeat the above steps to make the buttonhole.
Finish the buttonhole placket, then knit. Work this sweater in stockinette.

Four rows below the last buttonhole, stop working the buttonhole placket and work k2/p2 rib to the shoulder. Turn inside out and knit it together, then work to the other shoulder and do the same, then finish the row.

Now work in rib for 3 rows. Your next row after that will be worked on the rightside; make your last buttonhole, and then do 5 more rows of rib, binding off the last row.

Do your sleeves and sew on your buttons, and you're done. Imagine this in a multicolor yarn with 10 different buttons and you have something eye-catching.

Here are the rules.
a.  Usually there are 10 buttonholes up a sweater. The last one will have 5 rows of neck ribbing above it. Calculate how many rows to work between buttonholes so they are evenly spaced.
b.  How large a button you can use depends on the yarn weight. For fingering weight yarn like Palette wool or Lindy Chain linen/cotton blend, binding off 4 stitches will give you room for a 3/8 to 9/16 inch button. The heavier the yarn, the larger the button that the hole will fit, as well as the larger the button you probably want.
c.  If you want a larger button than 4 stitches will allow, bind off more stitches. In step 5, bind off that number and in step 6, when you cable on, cable on the number of stitches you bound off plus 1. So if you bound off 5 stitches, cable on 6.

So I was working in a fingering weight wool using size 3 needles, and I cabled on 286 stitches. Then
10 rows of hem rib with a buttonhole in row 5,
110 rows and the armpits in row 111,
bound off a total of 14 stitches at the underarms and cast on steeking.
I started the neck rib and knitted the shoulders together (30 stitches) in row 90. (Yes, that's a purl row.)
10 rows of neck rib with 5 rows above  the last buttonhole, which was in row 195.
The other buttonholes go in rows 27, 49, 71, 93, 115, 135, 155, and 175.

Notice that there are only 20 rows between the last 5 buttonholes. That's because I only worked buttonholes in knit rows. The video also gives you hints on putting them in purl rows, which should allow you to have them exactly evenly spaced.

Here are the top two buttonholes, marked with darker pink yarn bows. 




It will take you only a little longer to do a sweater than it does to work a pullover and so the dreaded "curse of the sweater" goes away now that you are an experienced knitter.

Lindy Chain will be comfortable in warmer temperatures, Palette in cooler ones. You can add lace inserts in either yarn or do Fair Isle color work in Palette's gorgeous 150 colors. The possibilities are endless, especially when you realize that you can embroider in duplicate stitch. Your wallet may curse me, but your friends will envy your gorgeous new clothes.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- the Great Oral Divide

The fact that Torah has the same high-level features as Talmud, renowned for its oral origin, and the same fine-level structure as Olrik found in his studies and codified in the Epic Laws, strongly suggests that Torah had an oral origin instead of a written origin.

Why?

I hinted at it earlier. Oral tradition studies grew up at the end of the 19^th century CE with Olrik’s mentor, Grundtvig, and studies of ballads, preserved in great number and variety in Denmark. What Grundtvig discovered for ballads, Olrik also found in his study of Saxo Grammaticus compared to another broad and deep field, Danish oral narratives. (The work of the Grimm brothers before their time, was mostly dismissed and the tales they collected were classed as fairy tales, strictly entertainment and more suitable to children than adults.)

One result is that, over the millennia prior to Olrik’s work, nobody knew how to imitate oral narratives in the terms he used They might imitate the choice of words, such as copying proverbs into their work, but they could not reproduce the traditional attitudes. People who do not read much, even if they can read, relate differently to the history of their culture and to its activities, than do those who can read, and who read regularly for data gathering or formation of artistic taste.

The two groups can hardly communicate clearly. I saw this illustrated in the Beilis trial transcript. People who could not or did not read had only a hazy idea of the passage of time. When they gave depositions or testified in court, they remembered the timing of what happened as it related to church holidays. But some of those are moveable feasts, and in court it was important for the literate authorities to nail events to actual calendar dates. The prosecution spent hours trying to hammer illiterate witnesses into agreeing that certain things happened on certain dates. It never worked.

Olrik’s principles codify that the structure of oral material is almost diametrically opposed to the format or formulation of written material. He describes this difference as so well-defined and pervasive that it is hardly necessary to find a narrative still being transmitted orally, to distinguish its recorded version from something invented in writing. The difference between Norse tales and Hans Christian Anderson’s tales is not just the difference between pagan and Victorian cultures. It is the difference between non-writing and writing cultures.

Torah can be transmitted orally. Talmud can be transmitted orally. It occurs now, every day. I believe that both were recorded from people who could recite them, and not edited together from people’s personal notes, both because this is how Talmud was recorded, and because of the long millennia of Jewish culture preceding the first writing system for Hebrew.

The great oral divide has consequences for material flow between the two reservoirs.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- ayin yod verbs

Genesis 2:7-8

 

ז וַיִּ֩יצֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֗ם עָפָר֙ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה וַיִּפַּ֥ח בְּאַפָּ֖יו נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים וַיְהִ֥י הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְנֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה:

ח וַיִּטַּ֞ע יְהוָֹ֧ה אֱלֹהִ֛ים גַּ֥ן־בְּעֵ֖דֶן מִקֶּ֑דֶם וַיָּ֣שֶׂם שָׁ֔ם אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָצָֽר:

Translation: **** Gd formed the man dust, from the earth, He breathed into his nose the soul of life; he must have become a living soul.

**** Gd planted a garden in Eden toward the east; He placed there the man whom He had formed.

 

The verb yita is unusual in that, like nagash, the qal and nifal are alike. The nun assimilates and disappears, and the middle letter takes dagesh. While Gd might decree this, He might also do the work himself.

 

Make sure you understand that this means to plant something. There is another verb, natah which is peh nun and lamed heh, and it means to set up a tent or spread something out. In English you might sometimes see “plant a tent” but that only uses “plant” in the meaning of “set up”. In BH they are two different verbs.

 

And now our first ayin yod verb, sim, “put, place”. LEARN THIS VERB. It is fairly common and a good paradigm for the other ayin yod verbs.

 

The aspectless gerundive is the same no matter how you use it.

שִׂים

This is the imperfect aspect.
 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָשִׂים	נָשִׂים	First
תָּשִׂים	תָּשִׂימוּ	Second/masculine
תָּשִׂימִי	תָּשֵׂמְנָה	Second/feminine
יָשִׂים	יָשִׂימוּ	Third/masculine
תָּשִׂים	תָּשֵׂמְנָה	Third/feminine

 

This is the perfect aspect.

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
שַׂמָתִּי	שַׂמְנוּ	First
שַׂמְתָּ	שַׂמְתֶּם	Second/masculine
שַׂמְתְּ	שַׂמְתֶּן	Second/feminine
שָׂם	שַׂמוּ	Third/masculine
שָׂמָה		Third/feminine

This is progressive aspect.

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
שָׂם	שָׂמִים	First
שָׂמָה	שָׂמוֹת	Second/masculine

Oh man. What is going on with the masculine and feminine singular?

 

If you were a morphological grammarian, you would be in hot water. Even experts complain they can’t tell the progressive from the perfect. (If they use that terminology….)

 

What’s worse is that the normal word order is the same for both aspects, SVO.

 

Here is where functionality comes in. Progressive is always used differently from perfect aspect. When you know how the verb is functioning in the sentence, then you know which aspect you have. This is something morphologists always ignore, if they know it, and then they can argue  over it until the cows come home. Next week I’ll show you how to bring those cows home.

Garden -- wasps

Been there, done that twice.

Any time you have something sit out for a long time that provides good cover, wasps will build nests there. Concrete blocks, an old drop cloth, whatever. If it will hide them and their colony, they will take it over. They will build nests in the ground, too, and they get very nasty toward the end of the summer.

Mike McGrath, my go-to guy, has ways of fixing this on his YBYG website. GO THERE AND FIND OUT.

It wouldn't have worked in my case, but what I can do is pour horticultural oil on the stuff that they nested in. Of course, it only kills the ones it touches, but enough got touched to break up the colony.

Then I had to deal with the ones floating around where the colony had been, foragers who came home and found that everything was gone. Here's a helpful site.

https://plantcaretoday.com/natural-ways-get-rid-wasps.html

I had two of the essential oils they talked about because I mix them with rubbing alcohol and witch hazel for bug repellent that I put on before doing work in my back yard.

I also had borax and a recipe for boric acid.

So I sprinkled the porch brick with essential oil to drive off the last homeless wasps, and then I loaded my water gun with boric acid and sprayed it all over the brick to poison it for new wasps -- and also ants. The homeless wasps will die in less than three weeks. No other colony will take them in and they are workers, not royalty who can start a new colony.

You do not want to spray boric acid into wasp nests in the ground. It does not wash out of the soil. Use McGrath's solution instead.

And by the way, ice poultices do a good job of stopping wasp stings from burning. Just don't get too courageous, because the effects are additive and the next sting you get could create an allergic reaction that can be deadly. It happened to a woman within 100 miles of where I live who pruned her azaleas at the wrong time of year, not knowing that she was at the tipping point.

And let this be a lesson to you to keep your property clean, to shift everything and groom around it at least once a year, to put stuff in the trash as soon as you know you're not going to need it any more, or to shut it up where wasps and other things can't get at it, and to do your landscape maintenance at the correct time for the plants instead of when it's convenient for you.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Olrik's Epic Laws

The only thing that most people know about Olrik’s principles, is the Epic Laws, which were published in German in 1908.  So far I’ve only identified a few of the Epic Laws as having examples in Torah. Twenty sections of Olrik’s work express these principles.  Section numbers are according to the English translation of Olrik’s work.

§58, Clarity. Focus, focus, focus. Spin off sidebars that concentrate on important issues, then return to concentrate on the main line of the narrative.

§59, Two to a scene. Yosef always addresses his brothers as a group. Qorach’s 250 elders are never treated as anything but a group.

§60, Schematization. No depth to characters, sketchy reports of incidents.

§61, Lack of description. Verbosity requires vivid actions or words, not descriptions. (This is also one reason “passives” have relatively few examples in oral material in a source document.)

§62, Repeated episodes to approach the goal, reflecting its importance. This goes along with the Law of Last Stress and Law of Ascents.

§63, Actions, not descriptions, demonstrate a character’s nature or motives. Another reason for verbs that are not “passive”.

§64, Unity in which actions and motives agree, and form a contrast to every day life. While living people have conflicting impulses and motives, characters in oral narratives never do. What’s more, protagonists almost never deal with their counterparts at a distance, they are united in location. Paro had to have Yosef brought into his presence to interpret his dreams.

§65, Internal logic. Nothing in an oral narrative is useless, but its contribution is not necessarily direct. The outcome of sexual situations in the Yosef saga is legal trouble in every case, as stated in the action. Each situation is crucial to the culture, but only one actually contributes to the denouement.

§66, Unity of plot and goal, and omission of extraneous details. The plot always contributes to reaching the goal and leaves out material that would distract from that unless and until it becomes important. We don’t even realize that Reuven has children until he offers them to his father as hostages to his success bringing Benjamin back from Egypt.

§67, Epic and ideal unity of plot. The first incident that contributes to resolution of the plot telegraphs how other incidents will contribute. Yosef’s first pair of dreams telegraphs that dreams will be important to his fate.

§68, Single-stranded plot. This is crucial to all three types of narrative. However, sagas will often have what I call sidebar narratives that finish up before the goal is reached, and that contribute to the goal. Without Yehudah’s sons from Tamar, there never would have been a Kalev to back Yehoshua up in arguing against the slanderers.

§69, Concentration on the leading character. There is a Yosef saga because the narrative focuses on him, not on Reuven, the eldest and son of the first wife, although Reuven plays a role in Yosef’s fate.

§70, Two main characters, or a secondary character almost as important as the main character. Yehudah has this secondary importance, combined with his echo in Reuven.

§71, Contrast between paired characters. Reuven and his pair Yehudah get different outcomes from their illegal liaisons (it is illegal in Jewish law for a man to have sex with his daughter-in-law).

§72, Law of contrast. All the other characters contrast with the main one, having some of the same characteristics in lesser degrees. Reuven and Yehudah’s sexual escapades contrast with Yosef’s, although Yosef’s is the one that moves the narrative to its goal.

§73, Law of twins. Two characters who must work together to accomplish their goals because individually they are too weak to do so. Shimon and Levi have to sack Shchem together.

§74, Law of Three. This is actually a “Law of Magic Numbers.” Three is the most common. Five is the magic number for – well, magic and mystery; seven is the magic number for religion (seven days of creation, not six); twelve is the magic number for people linked by a common factor (sons of Yaaqov). Qorach’s 250 don’t (at first glance) relate to any magic numbers and may reflect a historical situation, as does much else about that narrative.

§75, Law of Ascents and Final Stress. It should be obvious that a narrative will end after the last episode, and for that the goal has to be reached in the last episode. This law also results in the youngest child accomplishing the goal and the exaggerated features of the last incident compared to the prior versions of it.

§76, Law of opening where a narrative begins calmly in the real world with one character. As the narrative progresses things get more emotional or strange and characters multiply because they are needed to help the main character reach the goal.

§77, Law of closing. The fantastic elements drop off as soon as their contribution to the goal is done and the narrative ends with one character returning to the real world.

If you go through the Yosef saga, you will find illustrations of almost all of the Epic Laws.  But they exist throughout Torah and give the fine-structure evidence that Torah originated orally and not in writing. It's not the only evidence.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:7-8, from (?)

Genesis 2:7-8

 

ז וַיִּ֩יצֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֗ם עָפָר֙ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה וַיִּפַּ֥ח בְּאַפָּ֖יו נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים וַיְהִ֥י הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְנֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה:

ח וַיִּטַּ֞ע יְהוָֹ֧ה אֱלֹהִ֛ים גַּ֥ן־בְּעֵ֖דֶן מִקֶּ֑דֶם וַיָּ֣שֶׂם שָׁ֔ם אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָצָֽר:

 

Translation:     **** Gd formed the man dust, from the earth, He breathed into his nose the soul of life; he must have become a living soul.

**** Gd planted a garden in Eden toward the east; He placed there the man whom He had formed.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

וַיִּיצֶר	He formed
עָפָר	dust
מִן	From – (?)
וַיִּפַּח	He breathed
יִּטַּע	plant
גַּן	garden
מִקֶּדֶם	To the east
קֶּדֶם	east
יָּשֶׂם	Placed, positioned
שָׁם	there
יָצָר	Had formed

 

Mi (miqedem) has several meanings, especially “toward” and “from”. In some places it is debatable which it means. It can also mean “beyond,” “than”, and in a few cases “because of”, “out of”, “as a result of”.

 

When mi takes an object suffix, things happen. You saw this in the creation story when Gd said “the man has become like one of us…”

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
מִמֶּנִּי	מִמֶּנּוּ	First
מִמְּךָ, מִמֶּךָּ	מִכֶּם	Second/masculine
מִמֵּךְ		Second/feminine
מִמֶּנּוּ	מֵהֶם	Third/masculine
מִמֶּנָּה	מֵהֵן	Third/feminine

 

Notice the dagesh in the second mem. What is going on?

 

Well, there’s a full-up version of this preposition, min. It’s in verse 7.

                                                                                       

For some reason, a mem has to go between that and the suffix. We’ll see that again with another preposition.

 

The final nun of min changes to “m” for euphony, then the two mems contract and one takes dagesh.

 

When the suffix requires nun before it, apparently there is also a nun intervening. Apparently in some forms, the suffix is understood to carry a nun at the front, the two contract, and the one that remains gets dagesh. The second person doesn’t have this restriction.

 

Finally, notice that only the feminine singular 2^nd person has tseire under the middle mem. All the others have segol. Segol is a short vowel. I’m not sure what’s going on here.

 

The missing form is not attested in Tannakh but obviously it would be miken by analogy with all the verbs in 2^nd feminine plural. Take a look back and you’ll see it.

DIY -- jammin'

This summer I'm trying to eat more fresh fruit in season and leave the dried fruit for winter when all I can get fresh are apples and oranges.

Except.

I have a recipe for jam with no water and no pectin.

Basically you sugar the fruit down. Remember to take the stones out of cherries. Mash up your grapes, berries, or cherries.

For apricots and peaches, you need to take the skin off. There's a neat way to do this. Cut an X at the top and bottom of every apricot or peach, or cut the top and bottom off the tomato. Leave potatoes alone.  Put them in a large bowl and boil enough water to fill the bowl up. Pour that over your stuff and let it sit at least a minute, up to 5 minutes. Now pour it off and fill the bowl with ice and water. It's called an "ice shock".  Now use a paring knife to scrape the skin off.  Cut them up, throw away apricot and peach stones, and continue.

Measure your fruit in a cup measure and put it in your pan, then add the same measure of sugar.  Put the pan over 2 1/2 heat. The sugar will melt; stir so it mixes well with the fruit, which will release its juice. When all the sugar is melted, turn the heat up to #4 setting and get the mix to a rolling boil. Now use a digital candy thermometer and start testing the temperature on all sides and the middle of the pan. When it gets to 220 everywhere, turn the burner down to 2 and let it simmer about 10 minutes.

Now turn the heat back up and get it bubbling and boiling again, and stay with it because if it tries to burn over, you want to snatch it off the heat. When it's bubbling, turn the heat off, and let the pan cool on the stove.

Now put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, if the jam hasn't jelled, boil it again. Three times will do it.

Pour into sterilized glass jars and put on the lid. If you have a pressure canner, you can make this shelf-safe but if not, keep it in your fridge.

I know this is not what you want to be doing on a hot afternoon, so do it early in the morning if it will be hot. I watch the weather closely and so far I've managed to get it done in cool weather.

This will work with large dried fruit like apricots, peaches, apples and figs but not with dried berries or cherries; they dry up to more skin than fruit. Also, the larger fruit has already been skinned. Just make sure and simmer it a long time until you can fork-mash it, let the rest of the fluid cook off, and then put in the sugar.

Can you imagine anything more simple and delicious to use on homemade English muffin or bagels?

Fact-Checking the Torah -- anthropomorphisms

Here's my little homily on anthropomorphisms in Torah.  Most people take them as a sign of primitivism.

But remember, an oral narrative has to be vivid. 

I can imagine Torah narratives with anthropomorphisms originally saying something like “it was as if the hand of Gd did X.” But “it was as if” is extra words to remember, and as the story survived, it could have increased in vividness by dropping those words.  Olrik specifically states that narratives floresce as well as languish.  Think about it. 

What’s more, “the hand of Gd did X” is more fantastic than the original wording.  Gd is unseen but results are still attributed to Him because it takes a Supreme Being to make things happen at points in history crucial to Israelite survival and development.  Saying that His actual hand did it is more fantastic; rationalists down through time have recognized that.  It’s one basis for their objection to the anthropomorphisms.  But it’s what makes an oral narrative tick.

Anthropomorphisms are nothing more than a natural feature of a narrative that transmitted orally for some period before being recorded.  They were retained for reasons internal to the life and survival of oral narratives. 

This answers the idea of splitting P off because it is strictly legalistic material and doesn’t contain anthropomorphisms (if such a claim exists in DH, which I don’t know, and so this might be a strawman argument).  “P’s” legalistic material is fundamental to operating the Israelite culture, everyday happenings like which animals can be slaughtered for food, as well as requirements of avodah. People perform these actions; no anthropomorphisms needed.  But we can’t analyze it by Olrik’s principles specifically because it’s not strictly a set of narratives. (This feeds into my alternate explanation later.)

Now let’s look at a contrary example.  The “Aramaic” (Neo-Babylonian) version of Torah was written by Unqlus, a convert to Judaism who was sister’s son to Titus, destroyer of the Second Temple and Emperor of Rome.  The Targum, as it is known, comes from the time of R. Akiva and avoids anthropomorphisms.  It derives from a written version of Torah, but it’s not a translation because it doesn’t reproduce the meaning of the original.  

So in Exodus, when the elders eat in Gd’s presence at Sinai, that’s a sign of the fantastic in an oral narrative.  And later when Mosheh can only see Gd’s “back,” that’s an anthropomorphism typical of the verbosity of an oral narrative, as is the repeated phrase in Exodus, “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

Unqlus was one of the first who insisted on writing for literate people who did not require the fantastic to promote transmission. How the in-synagogue targumim (translators) handled the material, we don’t know, because it is not on record.  Can somebody build us that time machine, please?

Next: the thing you're wondering why I didn't talk about before.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- intro to oblique modality

Genesis 2:6

 

וְאֵ֖ד יַֽעֲלֶ֣ה מִן־הָאָ֑רֶץ וְהִשְׁקָ֖ה אֶת־כָּל־פְּנֵ֥י הָֽאֲדָמָֽה:

 

Translation:     But a mist went up from the earth; it watered all the surface of the earth.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

אֵד	mist
יַעֲלֶה	Went up
הִשְׁקָה	Water (v)

 

“went up” is conjugated exactly like “to do, make”. These are both important words so learn this conjugation very well.  Alah is one of the verbs that show up as certainty epistemics just like asah.

 

Now an important point about vav. In the last verse as well as this one, I translated it “but”. As with Genesis 1:2, vav in these verses corrects a mistaken impression you might get from the preceding verse. So it has to be translated “but”, not “and”.

 

Now notice we have an imperfect aspect verb here. The noun splits it from the vav.

 

Remember that narrative past is vav plus the verb plus the subject. So this is not narrative past.

 

The other possibility with this verb conjugation, as you have been taught in older courses, is future.

 

But there’s no way this is future.

 

This is another classic use of imperfect, for something repeated or iterated. The mist went up over and over again.

 

Now find the etnach and notice what happens after it.

 

Hishqah is a perfect aspect verb in hifil. You would think, if the mist went up over and over again, the earth would be watered over and over again, so why perfect aspect?

 

This is a modality I haven’t discussed before called oblique modality.

 

The syntax is vav plus a perfect aspect verb plus the subject if expressed.

 

It never occurs alone; this is always a subordinate clause. The main clause may be in the same verse but sometimes it is in a separate verse.

 

It can indicate cause, effect, purpose or result. Dr. Cook says it can reflect a condition; this will be a resultative situation typical of perfect aspect verbs.

 

It is not a done deal. The audience is asked to believe this happened on the basis of something known to happen generally or specified in previous material. It tends to be restricted to narratives; vav plus perfect in legal material is something quite different.

Here the effect of the mist going up is to water the world. But like the certainty epistemic, it looks both ways. Everybody knows plants can’t survive without water.  We just said that there were plants. How did they survive without water, given that we just said Gd had not yet caused rain? So this verse explains that by means of a mist.

 

This is an example of how you can't understand any single thing in Torah without the rest of it. The meaning of this verse relies on everything surrounding it, and that will be true of the rest of this narrative.
 

Knitting -- toe up socks

So I was very frustrated with patterns posted online for this sock variety and started to create my own.

One of the frustrations was I tried doing the toe increases with an m1 as some patterns showed. It created a lacy effect. If you are making lacy summer socks, go for it.

But mostly I go barefoot in summer and I want warm socks in winter. The other way to do increases is to knit into both the front and back of the same loop. So I tried it with some leftover yarn. The effect is much less lacy than with the m1, and so it is going to be much easier for the yarn to hackle when you wash it the first time so that your foot keeps warm.

This is for a size 7 1/2 foot.

So cast on 16 stitches to your size 5 dps and divide them up 4 on N1, 8 on N2, and 4 on N3. Join and knit one round.
Knit 2 stitches of N1, KF/B on the next stitch, knit the last stitch.
K1 on N2, KF/B, knit across, KF/B, K1.
K1 on N3, KF/B, knit 2, k1.
Knit the next round.

Now you have 5 stitches on N1 and N3, and 10 on N2.
Next increase round on N1 you will K3, KF/B, K1; and on N3, K1, KF/B, K3, K1.
Then you knit a round.

Keep alternating increase and non-increase rounds until you have 10 stitches on N1, 20 on N2, and 10 on N3, and knit one more round.
Your increases will make a nice neat line, and there will be 2 knit stitches between them.

Now knit around for 32 rounds.
Now chart how many increases you need to fit around your leg, using your spreadsheet. I'm pretty heavy and so I need a lot of increases.

But before that, you have to do the heel. So watch this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVVveGqrUCI

The real action starts early, about minute 2. Once you finish your heel, start a marker thread in the middle of the heel to carry up the back of the leg.
When you increase on the legs, you will do K1, KF/B after this marker and KF/B, K1 before it.

Once you finish the heel, make sure you have 40 stitches for the ankle, and do 13 rounds of ankle.
Then increase 4 evenly around and do 8 rounds.
Now increase on both sides of the back seam, and follow your chart, doing all your increases at this back seam.
Switch to size 3 dps and do 10 rounds of k2/p2 rib, and bind off in rib.

Closing the toe means turning the sock inside out and grafting it closed. Wrap in the tail end of the yarn that you started with. 

I am not going to use this pattern. I don't like German short rows. The woman who did the video has a right to be proud of learning them because they're complicated; if you had trouble following her video that's why. It's complicated. But it's the best video out there so if you don't like it and you really really really want to do German short rows, see if you can find a good book or even a person who can teach you to do it live.

Personally I think knitting should be as easy as possible and still have a good result. I won't be knitting kneesocks because they aren't easy compared to crew socks and they take twice the time. I have other fish to fry and other designs to try.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- doublets, anybody?

Are there any doublets in Torah? I think there are possible candidates for derived doublets – or rather triplets – but again, the comparison to Olrik’s standards and definitions doesn’t necessarily confirm that.

The wife-stealing stories in Genesis are the candidates.

Avraham and Sarah in Egypt, due to a famine, turn Sarah over to Pharaoh, whose country immediately experiences a plague. Pharaoh finds out somehow that Sarah is Avraham’s wife, not his sister, and gives her back. Over 25 years later Yitschaq is born.

Avraham and Sarah in Grar, no famine involved, turn Sarah over to Avimelekh. Gd tells Avimelekh he’s done something wrong and he returns Sarah. The next episode is Yitschaq’s birth.

Yitschaq and Rivqah in Grar, due to a famine, turn Rivqah over to Avimelekh. We only find this out because Avimelekh looks out a window and sees Yitschaq and Rivqah m’tsacheq. Avimelekh calls in Yitschaq and complains, giving the first hint that he has taken Rivqah into his house. He returns Rivqah. Esav and Yaaqov are already born at this point in time.

The Avraham-in-Grar is the longest and most detailed form of the narrative, but it ignores the famine issue present in the other two. It also has the teasing denouement of whose son Yitschaq really is, Avraham’s or Avimelekh’s. Compared to that, the other two stories are tamer because there’s no suspicion that the king who took the wife fathered the child.

The most likely candidates for the pair of derived doublets are the Grar stories, because of one more detail. Both are followed by incidents in which the protagonist conflicts with Avimelekh and his general, Fikhol, about wells, and both end in a reason for the name Beer Sheva. But in this case the Yitschaq incident is the longest and most detailed, and it refers to wells (plural) that Avraham dug. That suggests that the Avraham episode is the derived doublet. Without considering this, it seems as if the Yitschaq episode of the wife swapping is the derived doublet.

The Grar episodes are also surrounded by a theme of laughter. Avraham laughs first, but not until after the Egyptian incident; Sarah laughs next, immediately after the angel announces that she will give birth. These are dual reasons for Yitschaq’s name. After they return from Grar and Yitschaq is not only born but weaned, the world laughs together with Sarah. But she sees Yishmael m’tsacheq, which can mean “joke around” but also “fight”, and as a result orders Avraham to throw him away. And in the Yitschaq story the marriage is discovered when the king sees him and his wife m’tsacheq, which can also mean “flirt”. It seems to me that from the annunciation to Avraham of Yitschaq’s birth, to the return of Rivqah, is a story cycle.

Olrik specifically states that there is no one path for how narratives change. They can languish and then re-floresce, with differences related to but not dictated by interim changes in the culture. One narrator can take a narrative in a rational direction and another can develop a subordinate character into the protagonist of a related but separate cycle. To know which of these stories were the originals and which were derived and how, we would have to have a time machine and go back and drop in on different periods to see when they arose and in what format. But they seem to be the best candidates in Torah for derived doublets.

And now for something completely different...