Author Archives: Autumn

Orchestra Video

I debated about posting this, but why not.

Someone made a video recording of about half of the recent LCO fall concert. It’s broken into approximately eight-minute long sections, so you can see the first and second part of the three-movement Mozart Divertimento (the second part covers the second and third movements), the lovely Adagio for Clarinet and Strings (the so-called “Wagner adagio”, which has some nice close-ups of Martine’s hands for you clarinet players out there), and the Haydn Symphony 104 in D major (first part, second part, third part, and fourth part). I wish I could say each part actually corresponds to a movement, but they don’t. The first part is most of the first movement, the second part is the end of the first and most of the second, the third is the rest of the second and the full minuet/trio, and the fourth is the fourth movement in its entirety.

Why did I consider not posting this? Well, mainly due to the fact that the sound is awful. It’s very flat and quite distorted. (Although I recognise that not all the distortion is due to the recording. Ahem.) The balance is completely off, and things are very muddy. Hand-held video cameras just aren’t designed to record such a wide range of sound level, especially from that distance in a very echoey venue. And as such, it isn’t particularly complimentary. But it’s an idea of what went on. Also, it’s fun to see what the audience members are doing while we play. (I was amused by the people nodding and tapping their programmes during the minuet, and by the kids.)

And yes, I am cleverly hidden by my teacher’s scroll most of the time through the Mozart and the Adagio! Although the videographer seems to have moved forward for the first two-thirds of the symphony and therefore there is a better view of me from a three-quarter back angle in those recordings. (And thus my pathological avoidance of vibrato has been preserved for prosperity. I’m working on that now in my lessons.) Also, good gods, does my left hand always look that spidery?

This is the first half of the programme. I wonder if the videographer recorded the last half, and if it will be posted.

Success!

Another freelance assignment turned in! Once it’s approved, I can invoice for it and the previous one and the cheque may arrive before Christmas. Every little bit helps. Of course, we are generally in need of money just as my cheques come in, so my little bit goes toward a bill instead of into my 7/8 cello fund, but still.

And now, I will go knit. Yes, I should write. In fact I’m going to post a brief update on the writing community I’m in first. But I am fed up with the computer thing, so knitting it will be. I probably can’t handle purling at the moment, though, so I shall cast on Mousme’s Hat v2.0!

Hmm. I seem to have missed posting my month-end book roundup. Tomorrow.

Argh!

The bread machine is dead.

Good thing I asked for a stand mixer for Yule, because that whole fibro thing, where I don’t have enough power in my hands to, you know, knead bread as long as is necessary? Yeah. That.

I think we’ve lost a bit of metal from the bottom of the mixing pan. The motor turns, but it’s not engaging with the bit that turns the blade inside the pan; it just scrapes across the bottom. I seem to remember a ring or something on the bottom of the pan that’s no longer there.

The loss of the breadmaker isn’t the end of the world. I’ve made at least one loaf of bread a week with it since I bought it over a year ago, more often two or three. The main reason I use it is because I can’t knead. Often I use it to knead the bread and the first rise, then I take it out and use a regular loaf pan in the oven. So as I paid under fifty dollars for it, if it’s not salvageable I’ve still saved money over the past thirteen months, even taking into account the cost of the breadmaker, the ingredients, and the electricity. Plus the bread has been awesome.

I’ll look into repair. I’d hate to toss it in landfill somewhere.

In Which She Admits A Growing Fascination

Merino superwash for the win!

Oh, it is so soft. So lovely and soft. It slips through the fingers and strokes them. It rewards you for knitting with it with pats. It practically purrs. I am serious.

I had a lovely morning and lunch out with Pasley yesterday. We wandered all over Pointe-Claire Village. There was a rogue flake or two in the air, but apart from that the snow was the only thing missing from a perfect Christmas shopping trip. Apart from the not really buying anything, that is. It was more of an appreciative viewing of all the lovely things out there. I did pick up fudge as a treat and a pair of secondhand boots for the boy, and a very inexpensive hand-held milk frother for our hot chocolate, but I was very good indeed and did not buy any of the other stuff I sighed over, including piles of gorgeous ornaments, smoked Cheddar, and Green Mountain coffee.

After dropping Pasley off at home I realised that there was no point in going back home; I’d just have to turn around again to leave for the South Shore, fight through traffic, and collect the boys. So, having recently done a search online for the knitting shop Ceri and Mousme mentioned last time they were over, I knew it was a couple of minutes away from Pasley’s place. I’d stop by, poke around, see if I could find a good yarn to do Mousme’s Hat v2.0. And maybe something soft for my armwarmers, because the Berocco Geode is a bit too loose and I keep splitting my stitches.

I found Tricot Quartier no problem, and it’s just lovely. I’m so glad I put gift certificates from this shop on my wish list! I poked about for half an hour and ended up with the Mission Falls 1824 Wool 100% merino superwash in black for my armwarmers, a pair of size 10 straight needles for them (because I love the size 10 circulars I’ve just finished using with much love, and of course I am working with wooden needles), and I decided on a yarn for the hat. It’s a wool/silk blend, not as fun colour-wise as the acrylic I used for the trial run; more sedate, but still with a touch of whimsy.

And I got to HRH’s office in twelve minutes. Stupid non-existent traffic! Good gods, world, can you not even be consistent in your trafficky habits? Usually there is miles of traffic on the 15 south and around the bridge at that time! Good thing I’d bought yarn and a pair of needles to occupy myself while I sat in the office for an hour, otherwise I’d have gone spare. (No, I wouldn’t have; I’d have gone to the school supply shop and bought myself a notebook, and done some writing instead. Still.)

Anywhats, did several rows of the first armwarmer (v1.5) and realised that my straight needles weren’t creating the lovely stockinette stitch that the circulars had (duh). Which meant I had to teach myself to purl.

May I say right here and right now that I hate purling? Passionately, even. I mangled a length of test acrylic at home while watching television last night by casting on, trying to purl, ripping it out, and repeating the whole process. After ninety minutes of stabbing at it and lassoing needles, I got it. Sometimes I managed to do it. I could do it several times in a row, even. But when I tried to alternate with a knit stitch it all went to hell. Eventually I noticed that the yarn lies in front of the needle while purling, while knit stitches have it coming from behind. I pulled out my how-to-knit book and finally found, long after the how-to-alternate-knit-and-purl-stitches section, a sidebar that said, “Hey, you may have noticed that the yarn lies on opposite sides when you alternate knits and purls! You have to watch for that and move it to where it needs to be for your next stitch.” Gee, thanks. Maybe putting that information before or next to the how-to-alternate section would have been helpful? Instead of twenty pages and a chapter later?

Yes, this is one of the drawbacks to working from a book. Had I been sitting next to an experienced knitter they’d have taken one look at my laborious attempts and said, “Oh, hey, I see your problem: you need to have the yarn lying in front of the RH needle before a purl, and behind it for the knit. Just flip it over.” And a two-foot length of acrylic would have been saved from a horribly mangly torture and eventual death.

So now I know how to purl (go me! though I still don’t like the stitch as much as knit) and can produce rib! I personally like the look of seed stitches, so I suspect that’s what I’ll do the armwarmers in. Or even that may be too ambitious. I should probably do stockinette or 1×1 rib and be thankful that I don’t have to think about what comes next and what stitch starts each row.

This knitting thing is so interesting. It simultaneously engages my brain and lets it relax. And on top of that, it has tangible, visual reinforcement: look, the article I am knitting is getting bigger! This works! I am producing something moderately useful! And I can see how easy it is to start a yarn stash. I spent most of my time wandering around the shop petting the yarn. I want to bring piles of the merino home and cuddle it. I love working with chunky needles and yarns. Although I have absolutely no interest in knitting socks (she says, knowing it will horrify most of her knitting readers — too small! yarn too thin! DPNs of doom!) one of my next projects will be sock-based: I want to make slipper-socks and sew a suede-ish sole over the bottom. Nothing fancy; cables scare me and I want a single colour for them. No stripes or patterns. Just a really nice yarn.

And maybe seed stitch. And ribbing at the top.

In Which She Shares Her Knitting Triumph

Not only did I reach the double-pointed needles part of the project yesterday, I finished the hat. Go team me!

It is lumpy and somewhat misshapen and not quite long enough and the decreases happen in odd places, but I love it. I was so excited about it all working that I didn’t stop and rip out the place where the decreases started to go wrong.

If my excitement seems out of proportion I will tell you only this: I have hated knitting since a Brownie leader handed me a set of needles when I was tiny and told me that to obtain whatever badge it was I’d have to knit a 3 x 3 inch square. She eventually took pity on me and gave me the badge anyway. I’ve tried knitting once or twice since then and have given up. This time? I did it. It worked. And in the space of a day, too. And also? I didn’t work from a pattern. So yes, go team me!

Now that my trial hat is over (it is now officially a Trial Hat because I cannot give it to Mousme; she would heroically try to wear it and I would never do that to her) I know I can Do This. Actually, I started a different project first earlier in the fall. I bought some lovely yarn in shades of grey/silver/black with a touch of brown and started knitting myself armwarmers, but (a) Gryff tore the ball of yarn apart because it has real wool in it and rendered it knotty, and (b) it’s a loosely spun yarn, which means I keep splitting my damn stitches. Fighting with the yarn is not a good way to ease myself back into knitting. So when Mousme had her head shaved to raise money (over two thousand dollars, yay her!) for breast cancer research I asked her if I could knit her a hat to keep her newly bared scalp warm, and she said yes. (Because she is a Good Friend, she also said that didn’t I hate knitting, and was I sure I wanted to do this?)

I need more yarn now. I could rip out the hat but I knotted the end and besides it is my very first knitted thing and I love it with much love. Kind of like those trunk novels that will never ever see the light of day but I can’t bring myself to burn them.

What I Read This November

The Time Thief by Linda Buckley-Archer
Snake Agent by Liz Williams
Wizard Heir by Cinda Williams Chima
Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
Chalice by Robin McKinley
Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher
Free-Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
The Last Wife of Henry VIII by Carrolly Erickson
Palace Tiger by Barbara Cleverly
The Damascene Blade by Barbara Cleverly
L. M. Montgomery: Gift of Wings by Mary Rubio
Charlie Bone and the Shadow of Badlock by Jenny Nimmo
A Wood Engraver’s Alphabet by G. Brender à Brandis
Knitting for Dummies by Pam Allen
Things I Learned From Knitting by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Hello, World: A Rare Weekend Post

I just wanted to share this little fact with you: Life is okay. In fact, it is verging on Downright Good.

The gathering at the Fearsranch was much lower-key that initially advertised. First of all, there were three or four people missing, which made things so very much easier for me. And second, everyone was tired, it being the end of a week and after long amounts of travel on pretty much everyone’s part. The fact that every single individual I met in person for the first time was Made of Good Stuff helped immensely, too. Everyone was Made of Win. I expected this of Bodhifox, my main reason for being there, who felt exactly the same in-person as he does in his journal and over e-mail, but I didn’t have more than a passing familiarity with the others and no expectations whatsoever (beyond “eep people I do not know”). So Made of Win was a good thing. And my flatlining wasn’t as much of a handicap as I’d feared.

There was food. There was drumming. There was cask-strength Macallan. There was a lovely huge bonfire. There was good sleep. There was glorious sun, and breakfast, and discussions about house building (and oven-building and erecting mead halls and rebuilding the front porch), and sad goodbyes said. And there is photographic evidence plus summary and another decent summary the likes of which I don’t have the brainpower to pull off.

Pretty much the only bad thing that happened was I somehow flipped my knitting around and knit three or four rounds before realising it. I pulled the circular needles out and discovered that my swatch had lied to me (with great huge lies! I will never trust yarn again!) and if I had in fact finished the hat the way it was dear Mousme would be wearing it around her shoulders instead of her head. So I pulled the whole thing apart and cast on forty less stitches, and now I have five inches of hat and just made my first ever decrease! Had the Dreadful Thing occurred at home I would have gone ballistic, but the combination of being exhausted and happy and being elsewhere made everything all right.

We’re making pulled barbecue pork for dinner, and feeding a couple of friends whom we called on the off chance they were free (this will never work — you are? yay!). We came home from the Fearsranch with perry (pear cider, with which I am in love), and there is beer now too. I intend to bake Brie. No, I don’t understand it in the least. I’m exhausted. I should be comatose and unable to function. But somehow the night out with excellent people and the subsequent breakfast revived me. HRH and I are considering monthly or bi-monthly Friday night escapes, if they’re this good. And when you get home it’s only early Saturday afternoon, so you still have half a day plus another whole day of weekend.

And now I am going to go knit some more. I wonder if I’ll get to the double-pointed needles part of the project today. At this rate Mousme will certainly have the hat by Yule, and possibly much earlier. (Yes, I was worried about that before. But removing forty stitches from a round makes things progress so much faster.)