Category Archives: Diary

Whee-l!

My spinning wheel just arrived in the shop!

I am very happy indeed. Of course, I can’t go get it because I don’t have the car, and I have too much work to head out to meet HRH at the school and pick it up on the way home. Tomorrow is orchestra, and doing the trip out and back is likely to exhaust me. Perhaps Thursday. It’s a bit more expensive than I anticipated because prices went up, the exchange isn’t great, and there’s all that tax, but I have the money aside, and the gift certificate my wonderful Witchy Editor sent me for my birthday will offset a bit of it, too. And then to stain it, and set it up, and spin!

But it is here, and I am very pleased.

I totally stole the title of the post from one of Pasley’s e-mails, as she has been chatting with me this morning about spindles and wheels as used in Sleeping Beauty retellings.

Weekend Roundup

The weather’s turned crisp. Nice cool mornings, sunny days that don’t get too hot, and cool nights. I love this time of year.

Busy weekend!

Saturday morning I had a cello lesson, where I couldn’t hold more than one thing in my mind at a time. I warned my teacher that I was on the low end of the fibro scale, and she was patient with me, but it was rather amusing in a rueful sort of way to observe how I forgot about left hand when focusing on right elbow, and that sort of thing. Anyway, we have reached the Lully Gavotte, which amuses me for some reason. I think I’ve heard enough other people talk about working on it that it has stuck in my mind somehow.

When I got back HRH and the boy were in the garage, tuning up HRH’s bike and the trailer; they were heading out for a ride. They picked up hot dogs and french fries for us from the local drive-in, where the local hospital was doing their annual fundraiser. The boy charmed everyone by wearing his Superman shirt, his cape, and his bike helmet.

After lunch Ceri picked me up to head out to Ariadne, our favorite LYS, so I could pick up a magazine they had aside for me and she could choose sock yarn for a Christmas project. When we got there MA looked up and said, “Oh hey, I just got a cryptic email from UPS. Apparently they have received a 23-pound box from Louet for us. Now, I could be wrong, but something that heavy sounds like it probably has a wheel in it.” “Either a wheel, or a whole lot of yarn,” I said, but inside I was jumping up and down and squealing, “MY WHEEL MIGHT BE HERE THIS WEEK!” I did say, and MA agreed, that I’d believe it when I see it, and I am somewhat tired of hoping the wheel will arrive sooner rather than later, but I am cautiously optimistic.

I did recon on colourways for a Yule gift I’ll be knitting, and alas, they don’t have the one I want in the weight I need, so I shall have to track it down elsewhere or order it. I squooshed yarn and offered opinions on colourways while Ceri decided on her sock yarn, and we kept wandering back to the shelves of spinning fiber to pet them all. Ceri also bought me… er, my wheel… a gift of beautiful Lorna’s Lace fibre, lovely squooshy strokable superwash merino wool top in the Baltic Sea colourway, a lovely misty green/brown/heather symphony that I adore. (It may be my monitor settings, but the actual top is more subdued and has more grey in it than the linked page shows.) I cuddled it a few times in the shop, and told her that when I had my wheel and was proficient enough to spin sock yarn, I was going to buy it and make yarn so she could knit me a pair of socks. And she picked it right up with a grin and carried it to the counter to buy it. I am a very, very lucky person in my friends. I take the fibre out of the box I hid it in and pet it every once in a while. I would leave it out on my desk to admire, but I have cats who think fiber is stuff to sink teeth into and pull apart with joyous abandon.

We got home and knitted companionably for a while, with HRH and the boy wandering in and out. Then Jan and t! stopped by, later than I had anticipated. t! had called me earlier to ask about construction in the area, as he was going to be driving through on his way to the south shore for paperwork, and upon hearing that he was going to drop Jan to wander aimlessly around from mid-afternoon till the concert later that night I told him to drop her here instead. Due to the incredible space-bending and cardinal point-switching properties of the borough in which we live they got turned around and were late, so t! ended up very sensibly canceling his paperwork errand in favour of calming down instead of rushing and being stressed before the show. So there were a bunch of us knitting and eating brownies and drinking beer or other refreshing beverages, and it was an impromptu party. Then t! left for the gig setup and sound check, and the three of us knitted or sewed until Ceri went home for dinner. HRH’s parents showed up and we all ordered pizza from the local pizzeria. The boy settled down to watch a film with his grandparents while Jan and I worked on the back deck till it was time to leave for the concert. I don’t get to see Jan very often any more, and I miss her, so it was really nice to spend quiet time with her and chat.

The concert was fantastic, of course. We’re always predisposed to enjoy ourselves at an Invisible concert, but this was particularly good. I’m so proud of the guys for further refining and developing their sound and skill. The band was relaxed, the songs were tight, the new songs were lots of fun, and the company was of course excellent. I’d made the decision to not dance, as I’ve been suffering from low energy and low-level pain (no love, fibro) as well as the exciting back spasms, but when ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’ started playing and the rest of the Random Colour girls present leapt to their feet, I knew I couldn’t let them or the band down, during both that song and ‘Poor DeeDee’ which followed it. I seem to have survived the rash but enthusiastic decision quite well on the fibro side, but in the realm of non-fibro-related mishaps, while dancing I whacked my right hand against the lead guitarist’s headstock when he’d jumped off the stage to dance with us. I discovered the mild sprain in the car on the way home: a swollen finger that wouldn’t bend. The next morning it was an interesting shade of dark purple, still swollen and not bending. It gradually improved, and the swelling has now completely vanished, although it’s still mildly discoloured and is creaky when I bend it. It’s just not a punk concert unless someone gets injured. Fortunately it’s my bow hand, so it hasn’t interfered with fingering. I can’t count the number of times I was asked if I missed performing at the concert, and the answer is, yes, I do miss it. I always miss it, and it’s worse at the shows themselves. But I don’t miss the stress and the struggle to perfect things. The further away we get from working on music together, the more I understand what a huge challenge we set for ourselves in trying to arrange music for the selection of instruments Random Colour comprised. It would be interesting to work with a different set of instruments, or on a different kind of music.

Sunday was lazy, lazy, lazy! I couldn’t fall asleep till about two in the morning after the concert, and I initially woke up at five something, so the boys let me doze in bed for a good long while. When I finally dragged myself out of bed we all decided that we were having a really relaxed sort of day. We had nowhere to be and nothing pressing to do until HRH left to help ADZO move some heavy appliances. The boy and I napped, then watched some TMBG DVDs and read books. My mum called, back from a wonderful visit to France with her sister, and it was great to hear about her experience.

There; that was our weekend. Today has been an exercise in lack of focus and self-discipline, although I did bake a batch of bread and one of cinnamon buns, edit a review, and practice (hello Lully Gavotte!), as well as setting up for the next freelance assignment that is due on Friday. I’ve been fighting bad fibro lethargy for a while now, and while the lower back spasmy thing has pretty much passed, the exhaustion that follows physical illness or injury is still happening.

On Saturday I finished the increases on the yoke/cap sleeves of my short-sleeved sweater. The next row I get to bind off the edge of the sleeves, and then the next row I cast on shorter rows and join them to the front and back to start knitting the body of the sweater. Progress! I may even finish it before it gets too cold to wear short sleeves, although at the rate the weather is going I doubt it. The lace scarf is progressing nicely.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print at the moment. Maybe something more exciting will happen tomorrow, although I doubt it.

Fifty-One Months Old!

Oh, there was great emotional trauma this past month. The boy was playing out back with HRH and wailed when he discovered that he’s too big to make the little ride-on tractor he got just before he turned two move through the grass by pushing with his feet. He just can’t get the leverage any more, because his legs are so long that his knees are up around his ears. He was very distraught. The thing comes up to below his knee when he stands next to it; he can pick it up and tuck it under one arm. HRH said, “See, that’s new. You could never do that before.” And he tried to tell the boy that it was super awesome cool that he could carry a tractor, but the boy as unconvinced. He’s too big for the sandbox now, too; we haven’t told him that it’s being dismantled this fall. More resisting the growing up…

One of the three new fish died, of no discernible cause. This is the first time that he’s really been aware enough or present when we discovered it, and he had a minor breakdown, despite the fact that he ignores them most of the time. The only way he could work through it was to imagine that a shark was going to eat the flushed fish corpse. How this made it okay, I will never know. I’d have thought it would be more traumatic.

He made up his own Transformer and described it so HRH could draw it, then he sat down with his pencil crayons and coloured it. Unfortunately this has led to arguments and tears when he gets dressed because he has a shirt and a pair of pants in those colours, so he wants to wear them every day so he can pretend to be that Transformer. One day I told him he’d just have to use his imagination, and he stomped his feet and said, “But I can’t use my imagination!” Which amused me, of course, as that’s exactly what he’s doing when he wears those clothes.

He’s developed a very sweetgoodnight kiss routine. First he kisses me and hugs me, then I kiss and hug him, and then we both kiss and hug one another. There are specific words that go along with it: he says, “First me [kiss and hug]; now you [kiss and hug],” and then we both say, “And now, both of us, together.”

Fave songs these days include “Hickory Dickory Dock,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and “E Eats Everything.” We are anxiously awaiting the Canadian street release of Here Comes Science by TMBG. We have a couple of the new videos from it thanks to podcasts and YouTube, so everyone has “Electric Car,” “Paleontologist,” and “Davy Crockett (In Space)” stuck in their brains.

He’s so tall that all his pyjamas are too short in legs and arms. I’ve gone through a lot of his clothes, and we’re going to need new boots again (probably a size ten) and likely new socks as well. Good grief.

There are tougher things going on that he’s struggling to wrap his mind around, too. There are new kids at school, one who is a classic high maintenance child and who tells him on a regular basis that (a) he can’t play with her or be her friend, (b) she is his friend and therefore he can’t play with another already established older friend, or (c) if he plays with someone else he doesn’t like her. He is utterly confused, and often hurt by these statements. “But why would she say something like that, Mama?” he asks, usually at night after our story when we’re snuggling in bed. Trying to explain insecurity and fear of being rejected so one attempts to manipulate and arrange everyone’s relationships to a four year old is challenging, to say the least.

“What’s that?” he said when we were in the yarn store. “A ball winder,” I told him. He gazed at it hungrily, standing as close to it as he could, and I explained how it worked. “Can we get one?” he said. Recently he asked if he could help me knit and was upset when I asked him not to, so I got out the size 11 needles and a ball of rainbow yarn, and cast ten stitches on for him to knit. At the moment we’re at the ‘Mama holds her hands over his hands’ stage, but he is very enthusiastic about wrapping the yarn over the RH needle to make the new stitch. He has decided that he is knitting a scarf for his teacher (first it was a hat “because hers is getting very old”, but I suggested the easier scarf instead and he took the suggestion readily).

We ‘goed’ and ‘wented’ places, and it feels like I’m constantly correcting him on that one point of grammar alone. He used to say ‘went’ correctly, so I suspect either the new kids at school are misusing them, or he’s consciously trying to conjugate and getting it wrong because English follows so many different rules.

There is great excitement at breakfast now. On weekends we set up a bowl of cereal, a small finger bowl of raisins, and a spoon at the table, and turn a big plastic mixing bowl over it all so the cats don’t have a festival with it at night. We put a glass of juice in the fridge, and a half-glass of milk. When he gets up in the morning he comes and crawls into bed for a cuddle, then whispers that he’s going to go make his breakfast, patters into the kitchen to take the milk and juice out of the fridge, uncover the cereal, pour the milk and raisins into the cereal bowl, and have his breakfast. He adores it; he feels so grown up and important. And the bonus is, HRH and I get to sleep in a bit longer.

Fearsclave and his wife got a new kitten this past month, and she’s so tiny she needed to be fed from a bottle for a few weeks. They called her Maggy, and the boy was absolutely enchanted with the short video Fearsclave posted of the kitten being fed. I dug out a squeeze bottle and he ‘fed’ his own stuffed Maggie:

Things you can do with knitting needles other than knit: conduct!

Chugging Along

Nothing like being the de facto principal cellist in the absence of the first chair on the first day of orchestra… and not embarrassing myself. Go me!

Yes, it was the first orchestra rehearsal of the season last night, and our principal cellist couldn’t make it. It’s entirely possible that the late notice caught her with a double-booking. Anyway, our new conductor graciously asked if I wanted to move into the first chair and I said, “Oh, no; I’m good right here, thanks.” So everyone else shuffled so as to be closer and the third chair moved up to sit first. And I discovered something: Even though we were sight reading, in general my rhythm and timing is more accurate. We all ran into problems with a badly printed copy of the music and nasty accidental-sown runs (oh, Beethoven, I love you but you’re a bastard, with your notation tricks of slurs across beats and those damn modulations within scale-like passages), but I was pretty reliable in entrances and so forth. I did lose my place more than I’d liked in the runs because everything was squished together, and I have trouble ignoring people who are playing the wrong thing at the wrong time to focus on my own technically correct stuff. Still, it was a good time, and bodes very, very well for the season. Also, yay for my intonation. Lessons and a new cello are working well.

And in related news, I can’t listen to the Schubert ‘Rosamunde’ theme without singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ in my head. (Now you can’t either. Ha.)

On Tuesday I had a minor heart attack. I submitted my freelance project before lunch, and around five o’clock I got a note from them saying that they couldn’t read my file. “Are you using a Mac?” they inquired. “It looks like a conversion issue.” Oh great, I thought; the freelance people can’t read my Mac Word docs. They’re arriving corrupted. It hadn’t made a difference before when I used the iBook, but for some reason now it’s a problem. So I opened the file in Open Office, saved it, and sent it off to them, and all was well. Not only was all well, but they gave me an approval code right off the bat before reviewing it so I could get an invoice in by the end of the day to make the next pay period, bless them. I had deliberately not planned for that, figuring they’d be swamped.

My back’s been slowly improving each day, but yesterday I still had to spend a couple of hours lying down and reading. This morning I seem to be operational without the aid of tiger balm or painkillers, which is a huge improvement. Still being very careful, though.

While waiting for another freelance assignment to land, I was aimlessly wandering through the files on my computer, waiting for something to jump up and say “Me! It’s time to work on me now!” Nothing really did. I’m at one of those low points in the process where I’m not immersed in something and I need something to work on that I’m excited about. Slogging is necessary at times, but when one is looking for a new main project, it’s good to have at least some interest in what you’re about to sink time into. I found Wings & Ashes, the novella loosely based on Swan Lake I’d written a few rough scenes for two years ago. I knew I’d written more than what was in the file, so I dug through notebooks until I found what I’d done, and transcribed seven pages of writing. When creatively frustrated and uninspired, transcribing handwritten stuff from two years ago can help one feel not totally useless. And it eased me back into the story. We’ll see what happens now, because just before I logged off last night the next freelance assignment landed in my FTP folder. It’s a short one, though, so I’ll work on that this morning and do a couple of hours on Wings & Ashes this afternoon.

The dough for cinnamon buns is rising, I have the Schubert tenth and thirteenth string quartets lined up, and a full pot of tea. Let’s see how far I can get.

Weekend Roundup, Labour Day Edition

As it has been many many months since my hair was cut, I booked an appointment for Saturday morning at 8:30, and an appointment for the boy at his ‘haircut store’ (his term, not mine) for an hour later. My stylist moved salons, so this was my first trip to the new location. It’s closer, it’s more posh.. and also more expensive. Still, I’ll pay it gladly to keep working with a stylist who doesn’t condescend to me and who actually does what I ask her to do. My hair is now even shorter than it was at its shortest last year. Heh.

There was a Tim Horton’s two doors down from the new salon, so the boy and HRH headed there for a treat while I got my hair cut, then we moved on to the boy’s appointment about five minutes away. The boy loves getting his hair cut, so that wasn’t a problem, either. Then we wandered to the bookstore, where the boy found a Transformers collector’s guide that we told him to save up for, because it was fifteen dollars and he had already chosen an early reader book to buy. He kept insisting that he had the money, and we kept telling him that he didn’t, and that lots of coins in his money box did not necessarily translate to a large total sum of money, especially when they were mostly nickels and pennies. He was not pleased with this, to put it mildly, which necessitated his removal to the sidewalk outside the store while I paid for our books. I was apologized to when I emerged from the shop. We then stopped at our local Best Buy to pick up a birthday gift certificate for HRH’s dad, where the boy found a Wii terminal that was demoing the swordplay game from the Wii Sports Resort kit and proceeded to do a creditable job for a four year old player while giggling madly. While he did I checked out the webcams (no luck), and the cases for iPod Touch (finally, win!). We coaxed the boy away from the Wii and took a quick turn through the two video game shops for a secondhand copy of Sports Resort, but again, no luck. We’ll put it on the list of things to surprise him with at Yule.

Sunday morning we joined Ceri, Scott, and Ceri’s parents for brunch. We haven’t seen Aubrey and Carmel in eight years (almost exactly, as it was for Ceri and Scott’s wedding!). It was lovely to spend time with them again. The boy thought them very fine as well, and gave them huge hugs and kisses when we left. He spent lots of time digging through an old box of Lego and action figures that Scott had unearthed, and playing on the play structure in the backyard. Brunch was delicious. After the boy’s nap we headed to the south shore for HRH’s dad’s birthday dinner, which was also wonderful. We had a lovely time relaxing in the backyard, and then indulging in a huge pile of barbecued ribs. There was no traffic on the bridge, which was surprising because there had been several warnings about closures, which didn’t seem to be closed after all either there or back. And then when we turned onto the street before ours we saw emergency vehicles, and as we turned onto our own street we saw that one of the duplexes in the building across and one over from ours had burned out during the three hours we were gone. HRH and I were a bit freaked out for the next couple of hours. The shock of coming home and seeing it so drastically changed was bad, but being here while it was happening would have been worse. Our next-door neighbour told us that there was so much smoke it was like night-time. Somewhat reassuringly, the flat above the one that burnt and the ones beside it were relatively undamaged, if one discounts the hole the firefighters had to punch in the floor and roof of the flat above to vent the smoke. Good construction.

Monday we’d left blissfully unscheduled and open. Good thing, too, because my back was so bad by that point that I was pretty much bed-bound. We went out late morning to the pharmacy to buy tiger balm (ours has gone AWOL) and lotion and such things, and we discovered that tiger balm now comes in a lotion form dispensed from a pump. It’s heavenly. I spent much of the day reading or asleep thanks to the muscle relaxants I was taking. I was able to get up and do a third round of tomato canning mid-afternoon, and then made a really nice spaghetti sauce for dinner.

Over the weekend I also managed to reknit all the stuff I’d frogged on my short-sleeved sweater, which makes me very happy. The boy asked if he could help me last night and was upset when I asked him not to, so I got out the size 11 needles and a ball of rainbow yarn, and cast ten stitches on for him to knit. At the moment we’re at the ‘Mama holds her hands over his hands’ stage, but he is very enthusiastic about wrapping the yarn over the RH needle to make the new stitch. He has decided that he is knitting a scarf for his teacher (first it was a hat “because hers is getting very old”, but I suggested the easier scarf instead and he took the suggestion readily). I also managed to read three books over the long weekend. Amazing what being stuck in one place can do for sedentary pastimes. The weather over the weekend was lovely, too; clear, not too hot, nice and cool in the mornings.

Today I’ve been very, very careful. Sudden movement is bad, as is twisty side-to-side motion. If I sit down and stand up very slowly and remember not to turn while I’m doing it, I can get around. I proofed, polished, and handed in the freelance project I’d pretty much completed on Friday this morning.

And… I just got a call to tell me that orchestra is beginning tomorrow night! Which means I have to scramble for my augmented dues, about which I’d entirely forgotten. There’s a silver lining to my spinning wheel being delayed; I have extra money in the bank.

Ups And Downs

Friday’s score:

+1: Started and finished the freelance assignment. Hah! Put it aside to be proofed and submitted on Tuesday. (No point in racing to get it handed in on Friday; Monday’s a holiday and it wouldn’t get approved in time to invoice on Tuesday anyhow.)

+1: Lower back hurt so much that I yanked Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary out of my stack of reference books to use as a foot rest. Wonder of wonders, it fits under the desk, is the perfect height to take some of the stress off my back, and is surprisingly comfy.

+2: Good cello lesson. Also found out we’ll be playing Beethoven’s Eighth this fall with orchestra, as well as a Mozart overture, Schubert’s Rosamunde suite and something clarinety. (A bonus to studying with the principal cellist, who learns the programme ahead of time in order to do bowings.) Whee! I was hoping hoping hoping we’d do Beethoven with this new conductor! Good cello lesson stuff included dynamics and expression. Not-so-good stuff included intonation (stupid left elbow) and impatient sulky right wrist (who wants to lead like it used to and leaves the right elbow in the dust when I’m not paying attention). Lessons are officially set for Saturday mornings, Friday or Sunday evenings if my teacher will be out of town on Sat. (Note to self: I really need a mirror to practice with. I should cruise garage sales.) Also, I got group lesson material for the Christmas concert.

-2: Started reading two books, both pretty boring/badly written/not conducive to actually reading. Good thing two other books I reserved are in at the library (My Life In France and The Demon’s Lexicon, the latter of which I requested them to purchase, and they did!)

-1: Frogged all two inches of the in-the-round top-down short-sleeved sweater I started in April and tucked away in May, then pulled out to work on again two weeks ago. (Evidently I am not a summer knitter.) Frogged because I was increasing at every marker… including the one placed to solely identify the middle back as well as the four raglan markers at which I was supposed to increase, because I didn’t think the instructions through. Durr. Froggity froggity frog. Cast it all on again. I was surprisingly sanguine about frogging all that work and redoing it. Maybe it’s the lovely Harmony needles and the deliciously soft Pima cotton I’m using, or maybe I’ve achieved that knitting Zen thing. (Ha. Not likely. I think I just didn’t have the energy to get upset.)

Friday wins out in the plus column. I’m not counting the insane drivers on the highway last night who wouldn’t let me merge and the eighteen-wheelers who shoved me into lanes I didn’t want to be in.

Checking In

This week has been an exercise in frustration. Monday I finally admitted that I had a cold, and that’s been dragging on, although today’s been the best day of it so far.

I didn’t want to start working on anything new this week because I was expecting to be hit with a freelance gig right off the bat. This is typical, because they’re usually swamped with assignments and pass them out hand over fist. But this time, a freelance assignment didn’t land in my FTP folder till last night, after three work days of waiting. In the meantime I read through a chunk of my short fiction from the last ten years, and discovered that while they are all definitely first drafts, they do not suck as much as I was afraid they would upon rereading it.

I woke up this morning to a seized lower back. I’d thought it was better after taking care of it over the weekend, but evidently not. It was back to spasming, shooting pain, and inability to move. I saw the boys off, checked email, took a muscle relaxant, and went back to bed with a heating pad. Work would have to wait. Soaked up heat for an hour, slept for another two, and woke up feeling groggy but at least I could sort of move. Came back after lunch and decided today would be the day I finally engaged with Bell customer service to try to figure out what the hell is up with my email. Since the switch to the Mac, I haven’t been able to receive or send from my Sympatico address, nor use the SMTP to send from any of my domain-associated addresses. Bashing at the problem on my own and trying increasingly arcane Internet fixes hadn’t solved anything. I detest Sympatico service people with a passion, as they are very obviously reading from a script and ignore the information I give them right off the bat. Part of the problem got fixed in a surprisingly competent chat session that lasted under ten minutes; somehow my password had been changed. Aha! I can now download email! But it didn’t fix the sending. A second chat with another agent proved pointless, because Bell doesn’t support Thunderbird (why not?) and since his scripts didn’t cover my program, the suggested course of action kind of went like this:

Customer service guy: I can’t fix your problem from my script. Can I take remote control of your desktop and try to solve the problem that way?
Me: NO.
*goes and checks the Terms and Conditions, wherein it states that the agent has the freedom to install or uninstall stuff and change settings as s/he sees fit and isn’t responsible for anything going wrong*
Me: HELL, NO.

Because I know they’d end up breaking things that are working perfectly well at the moment, and leaving me worse off than before. And the Terms say that if that happens, too bad! I gave up the right to hold Bell responsible! So no thanks. I’ll just keep using Gmail as my primary, like I’ve been doing for the past 9 mos. And now I’m going to use Gmail’s SMTP as my outgoing mail server for my non-Gmail accounts, too. You are yet another step closer to no longer being my ISP, Bell.

Then I got an response to yesterday’s e-mail query about the ETA for my wheel from my Local Yarn Store, telling me that the manufacturer’s North American warehouse is still out of stock, and that they were told it would arrive “sometime this month.” The rest of the order the shop placed that day is in, but my wheel didn’t arrive with it. I said some very nasty things and grumped for a while. I could have bought one of three used wheels I saw listed in the past six weeks (and I just saw a fourth listed in BC, the same model I ordered, only used), and even with shipping I’d have paid the same or less than I’ve committed to for the new wheel. I am particularly wistful about the used Julia model in Maine that was selling for the same price as the new S15 I ordered. It is tempting to query about the $250 used Ashford Traditional in Georgetown, in the meantime. Because I could always resell it, right? (I should have queried about the $175 Kiwi last night before someone else jumped on it.) Because I really, really want to be spinning. And if the S15 doesn’t arrive in time for the spinning and crafting weekend we’ve organized on the first weekend of October, I will be very, VERY cranky indeed.

It’s not my LYS’s fault; they’re not happy about it, either. The North American supplier needs to get a move on. But damn it, I decided in July I was going to do this, and it is now September, and I just want my wheel.

On the other hand, I was working on smooth bow changes yesterday, and by the end of the practice session I did not suck as much as I did at the beginning. Lessons begin again this Friday night. And the principals from each string section in orchestra met yesterday to work out bowings for the first set of music we’ll be playing this season, and I’m very excited to know what those pieces will be. I’m really looking forward to working with Stewart as our new conductor.

I have no idea what to make for dinner, either. My creativity has run out in that department.