Yarn and Easter Egg Dyes

One of the lovely things about being a liturgical Christian is that you don't need to get all your holiday done on one day. Easter is fifty days long, and if you don't get all your celebrating done on Easter Sunday itself, it's fine.

We didn't dye our eggs till yesterday. And when we were done, there was, of course, dye leftover.

And I had this yarn:

Pretty, but I'm not really a peach person. I bought it along with something else I really wanted once upon a time on Etsy. So I cut off a couple of pieces and test-dyed them. Here are the little dyed bits sitting on the unaltered yarn:

Blue! Green! Much more me. So I started the dye process, assisted by a little girl with pretty Easter-egg colored nail polish on:

I ended up with this:
Turning it over, I found that I'd been overly-ambitious and that it wasn't such a good idea to stuff three skeins of yarn into one Corningware dish - see the undyed peachy stuff underneath?

So I added some food coloring and heated it again. I got most of the peach stuff out, though there's still a bit here and there. Here it is when I was re-skeining it over the backs of two dining room chairs:

The cool thing is, I did get the long color changes I wanted. Instead of being variegated, it actually has a long length of green and then a long length of blue and then a long length of purple.

Here it is all pretty and dry:

I admit that it's not quite the color I was hoping for, and still a little too pink to be perfect, but for a first try I'm pretty pleased!

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

"Is this a purely hypothetical question?"

Jess: hey, you know what would make the twins really easy to tell apart?
Jess: If one of them had bangs
Jess: isn't that a good idea?
Adam: um...
Adam: I suppose.
Jess: well
Adam: Is this a purely hypothetical question?
Jess: LUCY thought it was a good idea.
Jess: And, no,
Jess: no, it isn't.
Adam: hehehehe

the Lord is risen!

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.

-from Easter, by George Herbert

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

just in the nick of time! Gamgee's Easter vest

It is so bright. So very bright. But the boy likes it, and I figure a bright color is just right for Bright Week:

If you think of it, please keep him in your prayers, as he's being baptized tomorrow.

A good Holy Saturday to you all,

Jessica Snell

Links! Hobbit holes, Lars Walker, the sexual revolution, and more!

Do you want your very own hobbit hole? Check this one out!

I think I might have my husband hooked on Lars Walker's books. Here's his review of The Year of the Warrior. Given his reaction, may I suggest that if you're looking for a Father's Day gift, this might be a good one?

Anthony Esolen's essay, "Sexual Revolution: Defend It, If You Can", can be found here and is well worth reading. An excerpt:

Sex—both the distinction between man and woman, and the act that unites man and woman in the embrace that is essentially oriented towards the future—is a foundational consideration for every people. When we ask, “Will a man be allowed to have more than one wife?” or “Will husbands and wives be allowed to divorce at will?” or “Will unmarried people be encouraged to behave as if they were married?”, we are asking, whether we understand it fully or not, “What kind of culture, if any, do we want to share?”

Last week I mentioned that we'd enjoyed a great new vegetarian recipe this Lent, but then I didn't give you a link to the recipe. I'm sorry! Here it is, the super-yummy black-bean pizza. (I leave off the avocados, but that's just because I - heretic Californian that I am! - don't like them that much.)

"Dear Auntie Leila: I don't know what to do for Easter." Good stuff.

Also good: "Men of Easter: John".

Semantic Drift: "Prevent"

There are some old words that no one uses anymore that I love, but there are even more old words that everyone uses, but uses without the old meanings, and I miss those old meanings.

"Prevent" is a great word that has come to mean only "stop from happening". But it used to mean something more like "came before" or "went around in front of".

You can see it in the King James version of the Bible, in verses like Psalm 79:8: O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.

The Psalmist is not asking God's mercies to stop him, but rather to go before him. When it comes to etymology, "pre" is obviously "before" and I'm guessing that "vent" means "come" (like the Spanish "venir").

Isn't that a great word? I know there's no real fighting against semantic drift - well, no really fighting-and-winning - but I am tempted when it comes to this word.

Especially because it seems like it would be such a useful word in prayer - just see how many times it's used in the older translations of the Psalms! How many times a day do I want the Lord to prevent me? As many times a day as there are times in a day.

Lord, prevent me as I go. Go before me. Let me abide in your footsteps, moving behind you as you go.

It's a good word.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Looking back on this Lent

My favorite part of this Lent has been the Bible memorization. I’ve not gotten nearly through as much scripture as I’d hoped – I’d hope to memorize all of John 14-17. But I have got chapter 14 almost all the way down. And it’s been really, really good. That passage of scripture is so dense, it’s almost like I can’t pay enough attention to it to get what it’s saying unless I memorize it. It takes that level of attention. It’s that dense, that packed with meaning.

Anyway, one of my most precious memories from this Lent is when my son – who’s being baptized on Easter – asked me why we couldn’t see Jesus. And as I started answering him, I found that I knew exactly what to say. I hardly ever know exactly what to say! But, you know what? Why we can’t see Jesus is exactly what John 14 is about. I’m going, He says, to the Father. But I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. I’m going to send you the Spirit, and He will remind you of everything I’ve told you . . . I would never have had all of that right in my hands, ready to answer my son, if I hadn’t memorized it. The grace of God to me, and to Gamgee.

Pastor Kang was right. Scripture memorization makes it easier for the Holy Spirit to guide us and instruct us. I experienced that this Lent. It is something I don’t want to give up when Lent is over.

Where Lent Meets Ordinary Time

Have you noticed that, by the way? That your Lenten disciplines tend to spill over into your Ordinary Time life? It seems like every Lent I take on at least one discipline which I totally bomb (this Lent, that would be reading Dante), a few that are good, but that I just don’t get at as deep a level as I eventually ought (food fasting, this Lent), and at least one that I was ready for, that I don’t ever give up again. I always remember my first Lent, when we went vegetarian for the first time. We’ve been eating vegetarian regularly (not exclusively, but as a regular part of our lives) ever since. It was a good that lasted. I think scripture memorization is going to be the one that sticks for me, this year, please God.

I love Lent. I rarely enjoy Lent. But I do love it. It is such a good tool in God’s hands. I always learn, I always grow. I often think I learn more from the places where I fail than the places where I succeed. (I’m thinking hard about why it’s been so hard for me to read the Purgatorio, why I dislike food fasting so heartily . . . no hard conclusions yet, but lots of grass to ruminate.)

Some Conclusions Anyways

I sometimes think the purpose of fasting is to make it clear to us what sinners we really are. Not in a defeating, accusing way (the way the Enemy likes to make it clear to us), but more the way tiredness reveals the two-year-old-ness of two-year-olds. The voice you hear isn’t the diabolical, “well what did you think you were, you scum?” but the fatherly, “you really are tired, aren’t you small one? Come and rest.”

As Lewis pointed out, our good moods often aren’t, as we’d like to suppose, evidence of our virtue, but evidence of our full bellies and our health. Take away food or health or rest and you can see how weak you really are. But fasting, in its orderliness, reveals that to us in a way that we can stand. It doesn’t destroy us because it is intrinsically linked to prayer, and so as soon as our weakness is revealed, there we are in the presence of our Father. And there our weakness isn’t despair, it’s joy, because He is ever ready to supply our lack. Praise God!

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell