Category Archives: Words Words Words

Weekend Roundup

After being sick for a whole week, I’m grateful for a fabulous weekend. Friday was good; I ate bland food cautiously, but did a whole editing pass on the cello manual, got an hour and a half of practice in, yogaed, and even played some Wii sports that night after the boy went to bed (had the achy muscles the next day to prove it, too).

Saturday morning I had my first cello lesson of the year, and it went well. This may have had something to do with the hour and a half of work I did on Friday reacquainting myself with book 3, or the beautiful weather (cold, but sunny and still) but whatever the reason, I was in a terrific mood, and pulled off a decent Gavotte. We then filled my slate with working on the musicality of the Gavotte, the 3rd pos Ruined Castle tonalisation, and the Boccherini minuet. (Good grief, what is the Boccherini doing so early in book 3?) And with the pile of work we have to do for orchestra, that’s going to be plenty. When one’s teacher shakes her head over the orchestra material and says, “This is going to be a challenging programme,” you know you’re in for it. I’ve been very afraid to look at the orchestra material. As much as I love it all, it’s hard, and I know that means I will love it less very soon, and least of all right before the concert. It will take a couple of months before I enjoy it again.

I also have to keep reminding myself that the work I’m doing in the Suzuki material is supplementing my orchestral development in particular, and my musicality in general. It’s not like I’ve never used third position, or extended shifts, or seen these keys before. I’ve reviewing things I’ve learned elsewhere, and using simpler pieces to work bits of technique and provide a relatively easy environment to play with musical expression. I need to get past the oddness of telling people that I’m on book three, but I’ve been playing for fifteen years. (Whoa; I just checked, and I started in July 1994. That means we’re rapidly coming up on sixteen years.)

I’d intended to run a couple of errands on the way home but I’d forgotten that I’d have a cello in the car, so I rescheduled them for later in the day and made a cake when I got home instead. After the boy’s nap we all headed out for the errands and checked a couple of shops for a Star Wars action figure the boy has been hunting for, I made a pile of photocopies at the office supply shop (and picked up some tags for my skeins, although I forgot the larger binder I needed for my cello lesson material, grr), and then we went to the library. I scored a pile of books, among them a new Timothy Findley collection. One stops watching for new books to be published when an author dies, so this one slipped past my radar when it came out in 2004. Hurrah for libraries that actually keep up on Canadian lit! This is called Journeyman, and is a collection of articles and personal journal entries by Findley and edited by his partner, Bill Whitehead. It’s a nice companion to In Memory and From Stone Orchard.

The boy and I mixed a rub for the pork roast when we got home (dijon, flour, salt and pepper, various herbs) and the boy painted it on very intently. Then we made icing for the cake and frosted it (with an icing-sugar rescue from the upstairs neighbours, bless them). The boy put sugar sprinkles shaped like yellow baby chicks on the top (part of an animal set we’d bought to decorate one of his birthday cakes; the set had fish, dinosaurs, pigs, and chicks) and was delighted with the effect. The roast was fabulous, but the potatoes not so much; they’re a floury potato instead of a waxy kind, so I didn’t get the texture I was going for at all. And the gravy separated when I put the cold juices in, almost curdling, and it never got back to what I wanted it to be, either. It all tasted fine, of course. The cake was delicious, and was 95% gone twenty-four hours later.

Sunday morning we made pancakes for brunch, and then Ceri picked the boy and I up and we went to Ariadne Knits, our favourite local yarn shop, to play. I registered for the Spinning 102 class at the end of the month (exotic fibres, open to wheel spinners, not just spindlers, hurrah!), petted the Hound spindles but was steadfast in my resolution to not try one (the fifty dollars can go other places, like towards that workshop, or fibre, or, you know, groceries), and got most of the order I’d placed in November! My tencel and oatmeal BFL came in, as did the BFL/silk blend (soft, soft, soft!), but they’d been sent the wrong size of high-speed bobbin, alas, so the one thing I was really, really hoping for was not there.

We knitted for a while and chatted with MA. I worked on the boy’s scarf; he did one whole stitch on his own and then bounded off to play with storage cones again. The boy played very well with the toys on the shelf and the books (“Can you read this to me, Mama?” “Um, it’s German.” “Oh. Then I’ll read it.”) and the games on his camera. When it was time to leave he reluctantly got dressed and packed to go, and when we were home we hauled Ceri in for tea and cake, and we all knitted some more. I have now knitted back all the stuff I’d frogged on Mum’s silk scarf and beyond. There’s only 0.2 of an oz left (which is what, five grams?) and while that sounds like nothing, it’s a pretty fine yarn and so there’s more than you’d think. That tiny ball of yarn feels like it hasn’t gone anywhere, though, which is understandable, I suppose; after knitting a couple of feet over Christmas I ignored it for a week, and then adding and frogging fiveish inches this past week means it’s stayed pretty static overall.

I decided to make spaghetti for last night’s dinner, and that was delicious, too. I have just discovered that crushing a final clove of garlic and stirring it in just before serving the sauce adds a very nice flavour. It was a very good weekend food-wise… no, it was a good weekend all around. I’m very thankful for it; I really needed one.

In Which She Rejoices And Admits A Puzzling Oversight

I just found 1.2 oz of yarn I’d spun for Devon’s wrap at the bottom of a box, all wound into a cake. I must have split the bigger of my two skeins into two balls, for a total of three balls, and when I got near the end of the second ball I must have remembered that I’d spun two skeins, so I thought I’d used up all my yarn.

I feel a wee bit like an idiot, but I’m so thrilled to have it that I’m not engaging in as much self-flagellation as I otherwise might.

I have yaaaaarn! I can finish the wrap!

(Yes, yes, I know I am ignoring the silk scarf, which ought to be finished first. Ssh. I will probably be responsible and finish the silk scarf anyway before powering through the final third of the wrap. Perhaps this will give me the added incentive to finish knitting it up. That is, if I stop making mistakes that requires frogging multiple inches at a time. *insert expression of irritation here*)

Mending

I feel so much better today than I have felt for the past four days. I spent the majority of yesterday on the couch watching a season’s worth of Slings & Arrows and not feeling guilty about it, which is testament to my state of illness. I didn’t even knit while I watched; I just lay there. When my work ethic doesn’t have the heart to lay a guilt trip on me, I know I’m really sick.

Today I’m going to do the text edit on the cello book and send it for approval, then set it all in the fonts Emily and I have chosen to see how it works. If that’s a go, then I can start resizing and placing photos and really playing with layout. (I love how I just toss off the text edit bit; in truth it will take all of today and possibly part of Monday, because it has to do with moving bits around and working out subheadings and things as well as line editing.)

I need to finish the laundry, and play the cello at some point today, too, as I have my first lesson of the year tomorrow morning.

Bah

It’s definitely gastro. Day four of no fun. I’m back on a liquid diet, as the pasta I tried last night made my system very unhappy. Apple juice and tea, hurrah. Beef broth for lunch.

I had to frog two inches of Mum’s scarf last night because I lost a stitch somewhere, and I couldn’t tink back clearly (stupid splitty thick and thin silk, who spun this yarn? … oh right, I did) so out came the circular needle and two inches of work were ripped out, because of course I hadn’t moved my lifeline recently. Grr.

And then I picked up the boy’s scarf to work on, because I needed HRH to hold Mum’s scarf by the lifeline so I could pick up the stitches and he wasn’t home yet, and knitted another two rounds on that before I realised that the resulting scarf was going to be (a) to heavy, and (b) too stiff to wrap around his neck. So I yanked that off the needle and frogged all seven inches of it back, too, and cast on for a single-thickness scarf instead. Which means that I’ll have to purl, and I haven’t purled in so long that I don’t remember how.

I didn’t sleep very well last night at all, so I think I’m taking today off as a sick day. I’m run down and achy and miserable, and on top of the gastro the fibro is acting up. I foresee a long, slow January fibro-wise, and a lot of being at home conserving what little energy I have.

Not the 2009 Retrospective Post

I’ve tried doing the 2009 retrospective post, but it’s very slim and I keep thinking I must be missing something really big, so I’m sitting on it for the time being.

In other news, I’m sick, which is really annoying as I’ve had to cancel two things already this year. (I think it’s two. Last year’s Cancel-O-Rama may be blurring into this year.) This feels suspiciously like gastro, which is not the way I wanted to begin the year. And to top it off I’ve pulled my back today, so I’m in a fabulous mood because even sitting hurts and I have work to do.

Speaking of which (work, not the back) I am currently in the throes of the design and layout for A Modern Cellist’s Manual, and I suspect that Emily and I are having way, way too much fun with it. It’s great to be able to chat with someone three time zones and four thousand kilometres away, and send samples of things back and forth immediately. Living in the future is very useful. It also helps to be working with someone who has a very similar sense of humour, who coincidentally loves the samples I send to her.

Our postman retired at the end of December. He let us know as we were leaving before Christmas (literally; HRH stopped the car so I could get out and watch to see if there was any mail to be put in our box). I said a heartfelt thank you for everything he’d done for us and wished him an excellent retirement, but I wish I’d known earlier so that I could have given him a gift certificate to Tim Horton’s or Chapters. He was truly fabulous, always focused but cheerful, with a dry wit. He never complained about the piles of books I used to order as research when I was on a contract. I will miss him.

HRH has already repaired the CD tower that fell apart in a spectacularly attackish way on New Year’s Day (thank goodness for MLG, Mackay, and Ceri, who were all here and who helped rescue the hundred-plus CDs and the pieces of the unit, because HRH caught it across his back and was stuck). It has been screwed into the wall so it won’t attack anyone again.

I am dragging my feet about finishing Mum’s silk scarf. It’s very annoying because I only have about five inches to go, but wow, the resistance I’m getting from my subconscious is something else again. I’m scheduling an episode of Slings & Arrows (season 2, aka the Macbeth season) per workday to watch while I knit, but even that’s not motivating me very well.

Thanks to the piles of snow we’ve gotten over the past two weeks, HRH and the boy have once again built the massive slide in the backyard that starts at the little door off the back deck and winds around the outside of the yard. The boy positively flies on his little saucer-sled and makes it about three-quarters of the way around the yard before stopping. It’s hilarious to watch.

I haven’t really spun anything this year so far, other than a sample to show the Marcs what the process entailed, but it will come. If I made resolutions, one would be to spin more and sell the resulting stuff so I don’t have to worry about what to eventually make with it and at least cover the cost of the fibre. I can spin, enjoy the process, and then Etsy it without anxiety.

And finally, I have moved my dresser out of the corner of our bedroom because the puddles of frigid water behind it and the black mold were just too much to keep up with. This way the air circulates more and will theoretically slow the problem down.

Right. Back to some editing, and then some knitting.

Christmas 2009 Roundup

This what I’ve got. I’m really tired, and it’s kind of superficial, but it’s all you get.

We had a good drive down; thanks to the mild farewell snowstorm that hit the evening before and was still happening when we left, there were messy roads till Kingston, but after that it was fine. There was less and less snow as we went southwest; as close as Cornwall we were noticing significantly lower snow-to-square footage on the side of the road. The only other thing of note regarding the drive down was that thanks to multiple rest stops being closed for renovation (read: levelled to the ground) and one stop’s fuel pumps being cordoned off for some reason, there was only ONE fuel stop open between the QC/ON border and Toronto. Crazy. Of course, we are brilliant, and do not rely on the rest stops; we pull off the highway and fuel up/eat in non-rest-stop type places. Usually Kingston, actually.

The boy did cookie baking with Nana the morning of the 24th while HRH and I went out shopping. The stores were remarkably quiet, the streets sane, and we were mystified. I picked up Dragon Age for the Xbox for HRH and told him to forget I’d done so; we found a copy of TMBG album in Toys R Us, of all places, after months of being foiled at finding it in local record and bookstores. We looked for Star Wars action figures there, too, but couldn’t find any decent ones. We hit a dollar store, where we could not find any Xmas socks, alas (the boy adores Xmas socks with a passion, and getting him a new pair every year is a Thing) but they did have a snowman cup that matched the Santa cup the boy had in his stocking last year, and found some stickers and a remarkably decent pair of binoculars there, too. As the action figures were a bust, we picked up a copy of the Clone Wars movie for him, too.

We got home and I wrapped our gifts for everyone with the boy, which was kind of an exercise in patience. After putting him down for a nap, we went out to local yarn store to look at the wheels I was going to rent, only to discover that they were closed. I’d asked via email if they were open on the 24th and they’d said yes; not there or on their website did they say anything about closing early. They closed at 2; we got there at 2:15. I was a tad annoyed. It was a good thing HRH had managed to fit my wheel in the car, so I wasn’t left without one all week.

On Xmas morning, the boy got up to find his stocking and a basket in front of his bedroom door. He came into our bed to open it all, ate both snowmen chocolates, thought the binoculars and cup very cool indeed, and was thrilled with his books and the Transformer.

We dressed and had breakfast, then opened our gifts. I was so tired that I just kind of sat there with gifts on my lap and watched everyone else open things. The boy kept passing gifts out before we’d finished opening the last round. He got lots of books and clothes. I received lots of kitchen stuff that I’d put on my wish list a while back (an adjustable sink strainer, not one but two offset spatulas, a digital oven thermometer) and things I hadn’t asked for like a new Silpat rolling pin, and linen dishcloths, potholders, herbs, and sea salt from Provence. HRH and the boy got me the padded iTouch skin I’d asked for (sorry, Meallanmouse; it is no longer the Little Pirate Computer, as the boy used to call it; it is now the Little Flowered Computer).

My cousin and his family came over after the boy’s nap for the last round of gifting and a truly wonderful roast beef Christmas dinner. They almost didn’t because most of them had colds, but we all shrugged and figured that unless someone was deathly ill, there was no point in cancelling our plans. And it turned out they weren’t really very ill at all, so I’m glad they came. On the other hand, HRH and my father were on the edge of nasty colds themselves, which got worse at various rates over the week.

On Saturday the 26th we ventured out to the local bookstore to spend happy gift certificates, and I got three books from my wish list, one I found, a new calendar, adorable owl holiday cards for next year (because yes, our holiday cards were also thrown out along with the tags and bows and ribbons), and renewed my discount card. (No, the gift card did not cover all this; only half. And the store did not have three of the books that had been higher on my wish list, nor were they anywhere within commutable distance.) We were again really rather surprised at the lack of insanity on the roads and in the shops. Very civilized.

On the morning of Sunday the 27th HRH and I left the boy making Rice Krispie squares with Nana and icing the rest of the batch of cookies they’d made on the 24th, and hit the local Michaels for yarn and sketchbooks on sale. The boy insisted that he wanted his handknit scarf in black, so I got two skeins of black Wool-Ease Thick & Chunky and cast on to knit a double-thickness scarf in the round, nice easy straightforward knitting that I could do in the car without having to count. I also got a basket to keep my yarn and wheel accessories in. Then we headed out to the LYS that had been closed on the 24th, and I ended up buying some light brown Coopworth and my very first Malabrigo ever, the worsted weight merino in the Stonechat colourway. It’s so wonderfully soft and squooshy that I may never knit it; I might just cuddle it for the rest of my life.

Sunday afternoon we headed out to my cousin’s home for dinner with them, and we had some lovely beer: Hockley’s Dark. He had it in a litre bottle with a swing cap. (I’m noting it here for future reference. There’s not much else to say other than it’s delicious and we will be haunting the closer LCBOs for it.) He also gave me a g&t made with Hendrick’s gin, which was the most flavourful gins I’ve ever tried. I find a lot of gin sharp, but this was mellow and smooth.

Monday we saw The Princess and the Frog, which was fun because I can’t remember the last time my mother and I saw a new Disney film in the theatre together. It was fine, but it will never be among my favourite Disney films because it just didn’t grab me, despite loving the palette, the designs, and the message. I think a lot of it was the music. While I appreciate a lot of Randy Newman’s stuff, he’s not among the composers whose music I really enjoy. Part of it was also my inability to feel close to any of the characters, and the vague sense that the story was rushing, somehow. At the end, when the couple was transformed back into humans, the boy sighed and said, “Oh, I wanted them to stay frogs,” which may have been my favourite moment of the entire experience. (Hey, if you were a four year old boy, don’t you think staying a frog would be more magical?) I may enjoy it more after watching it when it comes out on DVD.

My mother’s silk scarf (not previously mentioned here because it was a gift, but this was the yarn… I’ll post a picture when it’s done) was not ready in time for Christmas. I wrapped it unfinished and let her open it so I could knit for the rest of the trip in front of her, but even then, although I increased its length four- or fivefold, I didn’t finish. I admitted to myself on the Monday that even if I did heroically polish off the knitting part, I couldn’t block it, so I gave myself permission to slow down because I’d need to do the after-knitting finishing at home anyhow. The silk just doesn’t move the way the Koigu did. And I lost a lot of time moving lifelines, because the silk was splitty and my lifeline yarn slowly shredded. I ended up switching to unwaxed dental floss for the lifeline.

We left the morning of Wednesday the 30st and made very good time to Maxville, where we spent the afternoon and night with t! and Jan and Rowan Tree Farm. This was absolutely wonderful, as when we visit we usually need to leave a couple of hours after we get there in order to be home for the boy’s bedtime, which also means (ahem) that both of us cannot indulge in alcohol. No such restrictions this time! We also got a surprise visit from Fearsclave and Mousme late the day we got there, which was delightful as we don’t see either of them often enough. We slept over, and it worked beautifully. Upon rising the next morning the boy and I visited the chicken house with Jan (the boy just can’t seem to remember to call it a hen house or a chicken coop, and really, ‘chicken house’ is so cute I’m not pushing it very hard) and the boy got to help find the eggs and tried to pet any chicken that got too close to him. We were rewarded with two crows from the rooster as we walked back to the house for breakfast (t!’s justly famed French toast). HRH and t! had a most excellent time playing bass together on the Wednesday night and the Thursday morning, and the boy had a marvelous time romping with Carter (spending a lot of the non-playing time walking around with his arm slung over the dog’s shoulders), and I got to chat and knit with Jan. It was all sorts of good crammed into about twenty hours, and we left with much regret at noon on Thursday the 31st.

We got home around one o’clock and did a quick stop at the grocery store so that we could gather supplies for the scallop dish I was to take to the New Year’s Eve dinner at Ceri and Scott’s house, as well as supplies for the New Year’s Day chili I was making for a couple of other friends. Dinner was lovely, although we were very tired and left not long after midnight. The boy woke us up on the first of January by wishing each of us (and all three cats on the bed, individually) a happy new year’s day. The huge pot of chili turned out very well, despite my ongoing anxiety about it not tasting chili-like enough and its refusal to thicken until I tossed some cornstarch into it. I made the accompanying cornmeal muffins with gluten-free potato flour, so my gluten-intolerant guest could eat them, and while they didn’t rise as much as the cornmeal muffins I make with regular flour (as expected) they tasted delicious. And not being able to decide what jelly to put atop the brie as it baked resulted in taking all three little jelly jars out to the table, where people got to put a dab of Jan’s jalapeno jelly, Ceri’s red pepper-garlic jelly, or my mum’s port wine jelly on crackers of baguette spread with just brie. A brilliant solution, if I do say so myself, and one that proved yet again how damn good baked brie is. Things were so relaxed that I completely forgot to bring out a platter of cookies and baked treats afterwards.

It’s been a lovely holiday, but we really need to get back on schedule; we’ve all been sleeping later in the mornings and staying up later at night, and staying in our jammies later than we ought to. The long car trips have thrown the boy’s nap schedule into disarray, as have the various different locations he’s been staying in. A return to schedule will be good for us all.

What I Read in December 2009

The Hidden Land by Pamela Dean (reread)
The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
The Secret Country by Pamela Dean (reread)
Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn (reread)
Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn (reread)
College of Magicks by Caroline Stevermer (reread)
The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
Extraordinary Canadians: Glenn Gould by Mark Kingwell

This was a month of rereads because I never made it to the library (missed two reserves that way, argh), couldn’t afford to buy new books, and then it was too close to various gift-giving occasions. It was kind of lacklustre month, reading-wise. I revisited old favourites (Stevermer) and not-very-challenging stuff (Shinn) but then hit the Pamela Dean books, which make my quotation-repository part of my brain work hard.

Brief notes:

Every time I finish College of Magicks I am reminded of how brilliant a read it is.

I wanted to enjoy The Court of the Air much more than I did. I found it very hard to hold on to the thread of what as actually happening, since there was so much going on in different plotlines. It was a fabulous world, but I had trouble empathising with the main characters, and the villain was just insane, so there wasn’t much to empathise with there, either. It didn’t feel very immediate, somehow; a bit scattered and crammed. And every time it came close to the reader, it jumped away again. Eventually I’ll get to The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, because it’s on my shelf, but not any time soon. (I don’t usually buy more than the first book in a series by a new-to-me author, but I received these two in a draw.)

The White Queen helped shore up my knowledge of the Wars of the Roses, which was woefully patchy and skewed time-wise. For some reason I’d always thought there was more of a gap between that part of the Lancaster/York dynasty and the Tudor one. It would be helpful if not everyone was called Elizabeth, Henry, Richard, or Margaret, though. I kind of liked Gregory’s envisioning of what might have happened and people’s motivations.