title: Parsing Joda-Time Partials
body: <p>I'd like to produce Partials from Strings, but can't find anything in the API that supports that.  Obviously, I can write my own parser outside of the Joda-Time framework and create the Partials, but I can't imagine that the API doesn't already have the ability to do this.</p>
  
  <p>Use of threeten (JSR-310) would be an acceptable solution, but it doesn't seem to support Partials.  I don't know whether that is due to its alpha status, or whether the Partial concept is handled in a different manner, which I haven't discovered.</p>
  
  <p>What is the best way to convert a String (2011, 02/11, etc) into a Partial?</p>