praying, mending and reading

I am working on mending a favorite shirt of my brother's; he likes button-down collars and the button pulled away from where it was sewn to the shirt front, leaving a tear. I cut a small piece of fusible interfacing and ironed it onto the back, stabilizing the tear. 

But I feel it should have more support, not to mention it would be nice to cover the white patch on the inside. And if I sew something onto the back, the stitches will show on the front. Or will they? The button will then be attached, and the collar buttoned up. 

This is the front after interfacing it -

No matter what I do, it's not going to look perfect, but I think if I keep my stitches small, it won't show. And he'll be glad to extend the shirt's life.

I am still liking the book on Christina Rossetti. It tells of how the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began. I guess they were frowned upon by some for seeming to disparage Raphael. I have to say I like their style of art. The medieval flavor, the detail - much of it appeals to me. I came across this Annunciation recently

Click on it to enlarge - the purple wings! What a scene! Of course, it wasn't really like that, but neither was it like Giotto. Art is an interpretation. 

Anyway, to get back to Christina Rossetti, now I'm in a chapter which is including many excerpts from her poetry, and I think I'll have to get a book of some of them. 

I've also been moving through Shakespeare's Cymbeline, which I never read; I'm still trying to finish the Literary Life's reading challenge, and maybe I won't make it, but it's not a race, just a way to enlarge one's reading horizons. And for some reason, earlier today I was remembering the final Brother Cadfael mystery that Ellis Peters wrote before she had the stroke. I don't know if she was planning any more, but this was the twentieth, and I think any other kind of story would have been an anti-climax. I was remembering how beautiful the ending section was, so I took it off the shelf and read it, getting choked up. (no, he doesn't die) I don't want to spoil anything, but he had to leave the monastery for an extended period, and he returns in the middle of the night and goes into the church to pray and wait for morning and the abbot.

He lay down on his face, close, close, his overlong hair brushing the shallow step up into the choir, his brow against the chill of the tiles, the absurd bristles of his unshaven tonsure prickly as thorns. His arms he spread wide, clasping the uneven edges of the patterned paving as drowning men hold fast to drifting weed. He prayed without coherent words, for all those caught between right and expedient, between duty and conscience, between the affections of earth and the abnegations of heaven: for Jovetta de Montors, for her son, murdered quite practically and coldly to clear the way for a coup, for Robert Bossu and all those labouring for peace through repeated waves of disillusion and despair, for the young who had no clear guidance where to go, and the old, who had tried and discarded everything; for Olivier and Yves and their like, who in their scornful and ruthless purity despised the manipulations of subtler souls; for Cadfael, once a brother of the Benedictine house of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury, who had done what he had to do, and now waited to pay for it.

I guess maybe that is a bit of a spoiler. When the book came out years ago, I took it home and then got sick with something; I was in bed, with no obligations, no one expected me to do anything, and I was able to immerse myself in the story. And when it came to this ending, it was so moving to me, I still feel that emotion every time the memory returns. 

It's a good prayer list. Especially for "all those labouring for peace through repeated waves of disillusion and despair" and for the young, who have "no clear guidance where to go".