Well, that took a long time… This week I finally finished the XML haiku cross-stitch project that I started in July of last year. The corner parts were just a killer — of course I saved them till last, and since they’re all the same color (and not terribly different from the fabric color), they were not exactly stimulating to work on, so I went several whole plane trips without pulling out the project even once. With hindsight, I can say that the lettering and the boat were the most fun to implement, and the design process (done oh so long ago), especially getting the “O” to echo the sunset, was the most fun overall. Biggest lesson learned: If I pass up stitching on a plane for some reason, and I continue to have terrible lighting in my TV room, stitching will simply Not Happen.
Completed XML Haiku cross-stitch project
In case you’re having trouble reading that cool Asian-style font, yes, it does say:
Well-formed XML
Parsing is such sweet sorrow
Order but no gist
I’ve decided to try my hand at identity-stitching next, so stay tuned for more about that design process…
Glad you got to finish it between 2 panels :-)
Since English is not my mother tongue I had to look up the meaning of ‘gist’.
Did you know it actually comes from old French? It’s the third person singular present tense of the verb ‘gésir’ (to lie, as in laying on the floor).
I knew I liked your haiku for good reasons ;-)
Hubert
PS: If I were to do one myself (which will never happen given my skills) I’d write something like: Liberty, Equality, Centricity :-)
It’s also one of those words where the presence of a circumflex in modern French indicates the former presence of a letter “s”…
As in “Çi gist” (“Here lies…”) which has become “Çi gît’.
Other examples (for other vowels) are
Prestre : Prêtre (interestingly, in English there’s an archaic word “Prester”, as in ‘Prester John’, which has the same root, and of course ‘priest’, which still has the ‘s’).
Chastel : Chasteau : Château (which has clearly morphed a few times since its Latin beginnings as castellum. Again, there’s the English word ‘castle’… in which we still have both the ‘s’ and the ‘l’).
There you go… more than you could ever have wanted to know about circumflexes!
In my one and only French course, my teacher told us that the circumflex was a little tombstone to memorialize the “s” that used to be there…
Eve: The confluence of cultural ideas is amazing – cross-stitch, XML, oriental art and haiku! Great job!
Mark
Hi Mark– Thanks… Don’t forget the bad Shakespeare pun. :-)