Okay – here’s the story. I went to go visit my uncle in October. He’s definitely a nerdy fellow. He takes Latin classes for fun. Why, we can’t say. He’s completely obsessed with it (as in, he studies a couple hours a day). He’s in his third year of taking Latin, so they are now reading works of literature. This past semester they read something that caught his eye. When I was visiting, he mentioned something about this text and that he’d like a scarf that contains the text worked into the pattern.
Here it is:
nec varios discet mentiri lana colores,
ipse sed in pratis aries iam suave rubenti
murice, iam croceo mutabit vellera luto,
sponte sua sandyx pascentis vestiet agnos
It translates:
Nor will the wool learn to lie in many colors, but the ram himself in the fields will change his fleece, now to blushing purple, now to saffron yellow, vermilion of its own free will will cloak the grazing lambs.
It’s from Virgil’s Eclogues 4.
I smile.
I know you’re thinking that I should knit this for you, but really, um no.
A few days later, while I’m still out visiting him, he approaches me with the text and translation written out.
Ack – he’s serious?
Still, I’m not biting.
A week later, after I’ve left and gone home, I get this email:
“So you could use only the last line in my scarf. I know it wouldn’t be as good, but we do have to be practical. On the other hand, it really needs to have a lamb on it and the lamb needs to be vermilion. Preferably, it should be frisking.”
Okay, now I have to figure out an easy way of doing this scarf. So, here is it. I embroidered, using a chain stitch, a vermilion sheep and the last line of the text.
It was well received.
