With one thing and another, I've ended up listening to a lot of Beethoven lately, particularly the Ode to Joy (Beethoven is great music to code to). It's a beautiful piece of music, but it's the lyrics which make it absolutely stunning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_%28Beethoven%29#Text_of_the_fourth_movement
It's an incredible poem about the power of joy, bringing all people together as equals, touching on love, friendship, division, pain and longing for God. If you're not familiar with it please do read it (and listen!), it will absolutely be worth your time. It's also the anthem of the European Union, and if one piece of music can sum up all that's best and most noble about the EU project, it's this.
So, I'm a fan. And what better way to express that than with mittens? So my plan is to make a pair of flip-top mittens (because all mittens should have flip-tops), which will have a couplet from the Ode to Joy written across them. It's hard to pick out just two lines, there's so much in there, but for me these are the central ones:
"Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben
Und die Cherub steht vor Gott"
"The worm was given desire for life,
And the Cherub stands before God"
One other thing - rather than writing this across the backs, where it will be more visible, I want to write it across the palms.
I always feel that writing slogans on things is about how you present yourself to the world, how you would like other people to see you. What I want here is quite the opposite, it's about how you live inwardly.
This'll mean that they'll be outwardly fairly plain, with the text not visible most of the time - I think that's quite appropriate too.
Happy knitting!
Hugh.
