Category Archives: Diary

Hangs Head And Is Listless

I bought a plastic? resin? metal? circular needle this morning for my next knitting project. The shop did actually have wooden ones in the size and length I needed, but the tips were uber-dull and I knew they’d be more hassle than they were worth. Anyway, so I now have a 29″ size 10 circular needle, which means the missing one with wooden tips that I’ve been searching for since last week should show up any minute now.

I also bought a bronzey-brown (the colour’s called ‘Toast’) and a blue (‘Admiral’, of all things) yarn for the lap blanket that will be my mindless garter-stitch project. I only picked up half of what I’ll need, though, because it’s acrylic (I cry a little, here) and I may end up hating it. I’ve used some of my craft-stash acrylic for practise and it has been awful. But it was acrylic or nothing since the cats have taken to chewing on wool-content yarn, cotton just felt wrong, and soy was ye-gods expensive for the amount I’d need. This is just a silly lap throw that will be on my office chair, not art. Also, as much as I love shopping at the yarn stores, they sell expensive yarn and I don’t have a lot of money right now, so acrylic it is. (Sob. Even though it is very soft acrylic.)

I’m halfway done those interview questions. I started knitting my slippers yesterday, and may well cast on the lap blanket this afternoon when I can no longer stand the interview. I expected the boy to be home with me today but he ended up going off to the caregiver’s after all, so I do have the time to work. Yesterday was not a great day, which is why the interview didn’t get done and was rescheduled to today, pushing Orchestrated off to next week. That’s okay; I felt no desire to work on it anyway. The beginning of the week was fantastic, but I suspect that driving to get the proofs and the freelance project done (and the unexpected mess of the ms. for review that led to many more hours invested in handling it than I expected) burned me out a bit, leaving me listless yesterday. My back hurts, which does not held the sitting-at-the-computer-working thing much.

We had our first orchestra rehearsal of the year last night, where we met our new guest conductor. She is, in fact, a cellist, and I’m really kind of excited about that because it means she’ll actually work with our section instead of pretty much ignoring us, even though I suspect it also means she’ll be extra-picky about our sound. That’s both intimidating and motivating. She asked the celli to play measures 241 and 242 in the first movement of Beethoven’s fourth symphony, then told the rest of the strings to “play it just like that.” It was really, really nice to hear on the first day back after the holiday break, especially because we were sight-reading it. It almost offset the oh-my-gods-you-can’t-be-serious treble clef cello line in the Carillon of the Bizet suite. (Last time we played this was my first year with the orchestra; I seem to remember the principal playing a solo there. This time, I’m going to do my damndest to play it, and I can lean on my teacher for help.)

Back to the interview.

Unrelated Reviews Of Things

I played the 7/8 yesterday for my entire practise time. It was that good. Usually I get frustrated with the lack of response I expect to get and switch back to my own instrument.

It’s… resonant. A bit less clear on the C string, but that can be adjusted. It has really nice tone colour. There’s a good balance across the four strings, nice response, and did I mention it’s resonant? Holy cow. There were times when it sounded uncannily like my cello. In general it sounded much, much more developed than the last one. At least, it sounded that way from behind the instrument. We’ll see what happens when I cart it to my lesson Friday night.

I kept hitting adjacent strings because the bridge/fingerboard combo is less curved than mine. I initially thought I’d want that increased but then realised that most cellists probably wish it was the other way around in order to use the minimum amount of effort/energy possible in switching strings. It’s even easier to play than the last one in a physical way, too; the action is even sweeter. (The action was pretty much the only thing I liked about the last one.) What I find interesting is that they’re both 2007 instruments, so they’re roughly eighteen months old, and yet this one sounds so much more played-in. Just goes to show how wide a variety you can find within the same model and production year.

I’m looking forward to hearing it played by my teacher. You hear completely different things when you’re sitting in front of the instrument being played than what you hear from behind it.

And now that I’m potentially close to finding The One True 7/8, I’m panicky. I don’t really need to change instruments. I love how my instrument sounds, and I like how it handles. (I may just be used to it; a 7/8 might handle even better once I adjust to it.) What if I switch and it’s a bad decision? (I sell the 7/8 privately and don’t take much of a loss on it because 7/8s are hard to find, or even sell it back to the luthier for not much of a loss.)

I took pictures last night because she’s really, really pretty. I spent more time that I ought to have because I couldn’t really capture the colour correctly. But here’s an idea of what she looks like. The first picture is the standard comparison shot of my 4/4 and the trial 7/8 (standard, ha; I haven’t done this since I brought the first one home last July, but it shows you the colour difference and reminds you of the proportion differences as well; it may not look like much in this tiny pic but click and you’ll see there’s about an inch of difference at the base, a half-inch at the top of the body, and a good inch of the scroll). The second is a full shot of how she looks, and the third is a close-up of her ‘dimples.’ I’ve touched up the last one colour-wise to give you a better idea of her true colour:


I’ve just realised something: I’ve started calling the cello ‘her’ instead of ‘it.’ That’s the first time this has happened. Hmm. This could be dangerous. (Or appropriate. Who knows?)

And now to shift topics entirely: I have realised that I have not yet given any kind of review of my stand mixer. That’s mainly because all I’ve used it for so far is to mix and knead bread dough. It does this very, very well indeed. I am positively in love with how easily the dough slides off the dough hook after the kneading is finished. It mixes and kneads very well, yielding a satiny smooth dough that rises and bakes up nicely. I do miss kneading by hand, but being able to watch the dough hook do it is the next best thing. First of all, it isn’t hidden away like dough inside the bread machine is, so I get to watch it and it’s strangely relaxing. The hook really does a nice job gathering it up and constantly rolling it around. It also doesn’t make an unholy banging noise the way the machine does. I’m also fully in control of how long the kneading process goes on for.

I do like the way the head lifts, and how the different beater attachments go on and off; it’s all very simple and well-thought out. All the attachments and the bowl are super easy to clean, thank goodness. So far I’m very impressed. The only drawback I’ve found so far is that the thing weighs a bloody tonne, and because I don’t have space near an outlet in which to store it, I have to lift it and move it when I want to use it. I only need to move it a couple of feet but the height of the counter robs me of most of my lifting power, and there’s that fibro thing too. I may look for a power bar with an extra-long extension cord for the kitchen.

That’s all from here at the moment.

For My Own Entertainment Records: The Series Of 7/8s

Cello 1: Eastman VC-100 (May 2008, La maison du violon Longueuil) [balanced tone? brown-amber varnish, in-shop trial only]
Cello 2: Scarlatti (May 2008, Wilder & Davis) [in-shop trial only; oil varnish with pronounced grain]
Cello 3: Eastman VC-100 (July 2008, La maison du violon Longueuil) [just didn’t grab me, orange-red varnish]
Cellos 4 and 5: Jay Haide (July 2008, The Soundpost) [in-shop trial only]
Cello 6: Eastman VC-100 EA-78-954 (December 2008, La maison du violon Longueuil) [unfocused, bleh tone, stuffy, dull]
Cello 7: Eastman VC-100 EA-78-1460 (January 2009, La maison du violon Longueuil)

Sunday

I originally titled this post my usual Weekend Roundup before I realised that I’d already covered Saturday on, well, Saturday. I so rarely journal on weekends. Anywhats!

Sunday was… interesting. I want to say fun but there was Tired and Lingering Illness involved, which is never fun. I woke up with the boy around six-thirty and he tried to snuggle in bed with us but kept waking himself up by coughing or trying to pet the cat, so around seven HRH got up and took him off to do morning stuff. I rolled over and got another two hours of sleep, which I desperately needed to help kick the stupid flu. When I woke up again at nine I thought that I’d have a leisurely morning with a cup of tea and maybe knitting in the sun, but around nine-forty-five I walked into my office to get something and saw a stack of books with a sticky note on top, which reminded me that the boy and I were due to pick Paze and Devon up and go to register for the new monthly children’s Pagan playgroup that’s just starting up. Ack! So I called Paze to push our meeting time back, packed up the box of books I was donating to the resource centre, and threw the boy into his snowsuit. The info session was fabulous; not only did the kids have a fun time exploring the room, meeting other children, dancing, drawing, and playing with various things like masks and the drum, but I discovered that one of the educators running the group is a wonderful woman I know from some of my workshops a few years ago. It was marvelous to see her, and to know that she and her equally delightful co-educator were handling the group in every way I could have thought fun and appropriate. Even better, while parents will attend the first session along with the kids to help ease them into the routine, we get to drop them off for subsequent sessions, which means Paze and I get a child-free coffee date once a month!

The major drawback to the morning out was that I took my glasses off to wash my face before I left and forgot to put them back on. I only noticed when I was halfway to Paze’s house, after my right eye had felt like it was working harder than the left. I’m still not used to wearing glasses full-time. (I thought I’d been wearing them for about nine months and was at a loss to explain the not-used-to-it-yet-ness, but a quick search of my archives reveals that I didn’t get them till the end of August, so it’s only been four months. Okay. That’s not so bad.)

Sunday afternoon I went through the Nigella Bites cookbook that Aurora lent to me, and we made tiny pork meatballs and tomato sauce from it for supper. In return I gave her a pile of beginner flute books on permanent loan to help fuel her newly rediscovered passion for her flute after taking several years off. I am thoroughly enjoying being a music-enabler for people. I stopped by my luthier this weekend to drop off the last trial 7/8 (you know, the one I got in early December that was due back the 26th, but they were closed for two weeks? Yeah, that one.) and it turned out that they had a new 7/8 that had arrived, so we just switched the cellos in the case, scratched out the old serial number and entered the new one on the trial contract, and I went back home with another cello. (I’d kind of been looking forward to having only one instrument case in my office, but hey, I take the 7/8s when I can get them because they’re hard to find.) I took it out as soon as we got home and it’s just lovely: a deep chestnutty-red colour (none of the orange stuff I dislike!) with two little knots on the front that look like dimples. It’s certainly my second favourite-looking instrument so far in this epic search, the first being the chocolate-amber one that was bought out from under me back in May. I played the first section of the Lee sonata, and from what I can hear from behind it the sound is nice, too — much more focused than the last 7/8, and certainly well-balanced across all four strings. We’ll see what happens when I bring it to my next lesson and my teacher plays it for me so I can hear what it sounds like from in front of the instrument instead of behind it.

Once the boy was in bed HRH and I headed out to the initial session of the first RPG I’ve been involved with in two moves. (I can’t remember what that translates to in years. Long enough that I have no idea where my dice went.) I baked focaccia, which vanished awfully quickly (note to self: next time do a double batch), and brought my knitting, which turned out to be a brilliant move on my part. I got a good quarter of Bodhifox‘s hat done, finishing the bronze portion and switching to the blue. (I may have done about five rows too many of the bronze; we’ll see. It won’t matter in the long run, but at the moment I am critical of the decision to do a full four inches instead of three and a half.) It was great, because I got work done and could focus on what was going on in everyone else’s turn in a way that I hadn’t expected, and didn’t get bored or drift off to sleep (not from the lack of interest in the story, but from Teh Tired and Sique). Knitting keeps one part of my brain busy as well as my fingers, so my mind doesn’t wander from what’s going on. It’s really interesting. The only drawback is that I’m mildly concerned that I may distract other players, although Karine did make a successful roll to save against Fascinating Shiny Things when the flashing needles began to relax her overmuch. Too bad I didn’t get to the row where I needed to start decreasing, because she wanted to know how that would happen.

(I suspect I will be knitting many scarves. Or maybe I’ll find the yarn for my lap blanket before the next month’s session and work on that, because it will be straight stockinette and easy to do while being engaged in other things. Yes, the lap blanket it shall be.)

It felt really, really good to be sitting in the room with close friends, working through a story together, even if my rolls did suck. I need to get myself back into rolling-multiple-consecutive-sixes-on-my-Force-die fighting trim. Also, steampunkian horror with an awesome soundtrack! What’s not to love?

I am cautiously optimistic about the day. I feel not quite at one hundred percent, but pretty close. I’m still cold, but that’s not unusual at the tail end of any illness of mine. My chest doesn’t hurt when I breathe any more, which is very welcome indeed. So I’m going to close a few tabs in my browser and make myself another pot of tea, go curl up in the living room in the sun, and finished the freelance assignment that’s due today. Tomorrow I finish and hand in the proofs of the book, and then the next two days are scheduled to work on Orchestrated. As a test run my cello lessons have been switched to alternate Friday nights and Saturday mornings, so I have all day on Thursday to work for now.

I think that’s it. Have an excellent day, Gentle Readers.

A State Of The Me Update

Hello, world. I’m not dead, just really, really exhausted. See, having fibro = feeling like you have the flu all the time. So when I have the flu? Extra-bad, and extra-long to recover, and I never really feel like I fully get there.

And now the boy is sick, and HRH is iffy, no one is sleeping properly, and can we just fast-forward to where we’re well again, please? The boy had to cancel out on a much-anticipated birthday party this morning, and HRH and I have had to cancel on a different long-awaited multiple-person birthday extravaganza tonight. We are none of us amused.

I did manage to drag myself out for a rescheduled cello lesson this morning, because I was going stir crazy at home and I needed the discipline. We decided to play the Lee duet sonata for the concert in April, about which I am very very pleased. It feels good to reply with an immediate and enthusiastic “Yes!” when one’s teacher asks if you’d be interested in playing the piece you just started working on for a recital.

So yes, going wiped out my day’s spoons (what there were to begin with) but it was worth it. I played both my own cello and the 7/8 on trial yesterday for a total of about two hours, and it is increasingly obvious that simply finding a 7/8 that sounds equivalent to my cello is going to be a huge obstacle. When I switch between them I can very certainly feel the difference in body size, but I can also feel the klutzyness of the 7/8s sound- and response-wise. It is repeatedly being demonstrated to me that my cello is indeed a very excellent cello.

Something I’ve really noticed in this revisiting-old-stuff-I-worked-on-twelve-years-ago is that these easy pieces really point out where my technique has eroded away. On top of that I’m trying to unlearn certain techniques that were taught to me (lead the bow hand with the wrist, the bye-bye movement to switch between adjacent strings during a quick passage) for more ergonomic and efficient applications. It means a good portion of my lessons are taken up by working on minute things, like today where we spent a good ten minutes on the tiny motion of the right elbow backwards to roll between the A and D strings. After fifteen years of doing that motion with a flick of my right hand and nothing else, it’s hard to shed the habit and focus on doing the new movement instead. And at one point I was trying to incorporate three things we’d worked on in the lesson (a different way of approaching a half-shift to extended second position with the left hand, placing the fourth finger on the G two notes before it had to be there, and the right elbow-only backwards movement for the string crossing, all in a passage of four sixteenth notes) and my brain just about exploded. Learning it new would have been enough of a challenge. Trying to ignore the ingrained habits of a decade and a half while applying the new technique and trying to sound good at the same time? All three things on top of one another? While I’m still not operating at 100%? Let’s just say it didn’t work so well. The good thing is my teacher knows exactly how hard it is to rewire these sorts of things because she did it herself (her original training and my first teacher’s technique seem very similar), and understands that planting the seed during the lesson is only the beginning, while setting exercises to work on the new technique during home practise are what develop it. And it’s not like we hit all three things at once; we did them separately and they all showed up in that single four-note passage. She also understands that I need a balance of description and actual physical this-is-what-it-feels-like, so she often has me relax and moves my bow arm in the motion it needs to take. I close my eyes a lot during lessons to feel what the movement or sounds is supposed to be like.

I’ve rambled enough. I’m having trouble breathing, so I think it’s time for some hot tea with lemon and honey.

Back To Bed

Last night I felt off. This morning I thought I was okay but have grown steadily worse. Hello, flu.

Despite the wooziness I’ve been working all morning, and the day so far can be summed up as follows from my Facebook status updates, because I don’t have the energy to sum it up in new words:

Autumn is officially sick with the flu. Good grief, world, what are you trying to DO to me? Haven’t you seen my workload? 9:27am

Autumn just cancelled her cello lesson. She can has chicken noodle soup in bed now? 11:02am

Autumn is Oh, copyeditors, why have you left both “staffs” and “staves” as-is in the same paragraph? 11:47am

Autumn is wondering why her little mackeral tabby cat smells like fabric softener. 1:02pm

Autumn is 230/256, has one chapter left to proof, and is going to bed. Urg. 1:34pm

And this is me, off to bed. Or at least the chesterfield with the afghan and a cat. Be good, Internets.

Yet More Wiktory!

The tassels are on. The eight-foot-long Gryffindor scarf is Officially Complete. Proper pictures to come. (Ravelry is down, AUGH!)

A sneak preview:

Because of course the damn cat can’t leave the wool alone, even when it’s all knitted up. What is it with my cats going crazy for wool? (Not yarn, the wool itself. Roman and Maggie once chewed a hole in a pure wool cardigan of mine. Roman was particularly bad, and used to roll and drool all over it.)

Remember, the cat is ginormous. It may be an eight-foot scarf and eight inches wide, but when it’s on HRH it will look like a normal scarf. It will still be impressive, but not as impressive as it is when I unroll it on the floor.

ETA: Ta-da!

And if you know how big HRH is, you know exactly how wide the scarf is:

Mischief managed. That’s one very happy geek man.