Monday, November 13, 2006

Alliteration and assonance

I have been referring to my next KAL as the short row bag. It's not called that actually. Short rows is the technique. The name of the bag is "Sunburst Sling."

Sunburst Sling is a great name. Why have I not been using it?

Sunburst Sling--it has both alliteration on the "S" and a lovely, subtle assonance.

SUnbUrst Sling.

The schwa is a humble phoneme. Linguists consider it neutral. Some consider it lazy. In the case of the Sunburst Sling, that's not the "uh-uh" of a toddler saying "No." The assonance gives propulsion, syncopation, like the guy vocalizing the beats behind a rap artist.

Why did I spend any time at all thinking about the vowels sounds in the name of a purse? Because yesterday I spent some of my hard-earned money (okay, it wasn't that hard-earned--I sold off a few vintage dance dresses Saturday night and made $71) on some yarn, solely because I loved the name.

At the Knitorious open house I bought 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces Bee Stripe Shepherd Sock yarn. I certainly don't need more sock yarn, let alone yellow & black striping sock yarn.

But I've been reading about Lorna's Laces online for about a year now. The yarn sounds luscious, luxurious, lavish. My feet will enjoy languishing or lolling in them. In short, the yarn sounds sensuaL.

Sockotta, Meilenweit, Wildfoote, Schachenmayr. They just don't ring the same way. Surely Lorna's Laces socks will caress my feet like no others.

Such is the power of a well-placed consonant or wisely chosen vowel.

Oh, and I also bought some Cascade Fixation in a Mardi Gras colorway. It's kind of freaking me out.

2 comments:

Cindy said...

I was at Knitorious that day also. It was the most crowded that I have ever seen any LYS.

I have yet to try Lorna's Laces. I'd love to hear what you think of the yarn once you start working with it.

7-letter Deborah, never a Deb said...

Rest assured it's in the queue. I seem to be on a sock kick at the moment.