translations

It takes having a quiet evening on a cottage vacation to finally get a photo of this cardigan (photos are my biggest hurdle lately - especially when I have to be the model. It's much easier when I'm making clothes for the kids, but I've been an especially selfish maker for a while). This is my third in a series of cardigans, and the pattern is finally perfect (here is the first and second attempt). I have a fourth waiting to be blocked and photographed and then I will post the pattern here. It's a simple design that really suits my favourite yarn - Debbie Bliss Luxury Donegal Tweed. I haven't translated it into other sizes, but it's such a basic top-down recipe that I think most knitters could easily size up.

On the reading front, The Douglas Notebooks: A Fable is my first Canadian novel for this year's challenge. Written by Christine Eddie, and translated into English by Sheila Fischman, it is a lyrical, contemplative tale of love, family and nature. Translating must be such a fascinating art. This is actually the third novel I've read that's been translated by Fischman and it gives me the feeling that there is something inherently lyrical about French prose. Trees are central to this story and even this small passage illustrates the rhythm the translation captures: "When they opened the door in the morning, they would take a few steps in the clearing, examining the vegetable garden, and enter a theatre devoted to beauty, inhabited by a crowd of giants that opened up towards the light." Needless to say I was thoroughly charmed by the novel, making me love the Canadian Book Challenge all over again.

For more musings on reading and knitting, visit Small Things for this week's Yarnalong.