Category Archives: Cello

Fall Concert Announcement

It’s November, which means that yes, the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra’s fall concert is nigh! This concert’s theme is Transcontinental, and takes you through a variety of European musical styles.

Circle Saturday the 20th of November on your calendars. At 19h30 in the Valois United Church in Pointe-Claire (70 Belmont Ave., between King and Queen), the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will present the following works:

    Rossini: La Cenerentola overture
    Bartok: Rumanian Folk Dances
    Chabrier: Excerpts from Suite Pastorale
    Chaminade: Flute concertino, Op 107 (Soloist: Stephanie Morin)
    Dvorak: Czech Suite for Orchestra, Op 39
    Brahms: Hungarian Dances 6 & 1

Admission is $10 per person; admission is free for those under 18 years of age. The concerts usually last approximately two hours, including the refreshment break. There are driving directions and public transport info on the church website. I usually encourage people who are vehicle-less to find someone who has a car and share the cost of the driver’s admission to the concert among them. It’s more fun to enjoy the evening in the company of others, after all. And it bears repeating that children of all ages are very welcome indeed.

Wedding And General Weekend Roundup

I conducted my sixth rite of passage ceremony of the year this past weekend. (The current score is two weddings, four baby blessing/namings, if you’re filling in a scorecard.) It was a particularly meaningful one, as it united two dear friends whom I’ve known for a combined total of about forty years in front of 120 people, and it was beautiful in several respects. The wedding party (and some of the guests) chose a medieval/Renaissance theme for their dress, and the effect was very pretty. We told the boy everyone was dressing like knights and ladies and he got very excited, so I found him a small basic shirt and HRH made him a wooden sword and shield that he painted and varnished, which were a huge success. Had we more time, I would have tracked down some Buchanan tartan fabric and made him a tiny kilt to match HRH’s, but my local fabric shop yielded nothing but every other tartan under the sun and I didn’t have time to go into town to track some down.

It was really special to conduct a ceremony for an audience of that size. The compliments we got on the ceremony were very gratifying, and went beautifully apart from one or two minor hiccoughs. I’m used to being in the north for a ceremony, so of course west is to my right, yes? Except I was in the west, so south was accidentally designated west, and west was, well, west prime. I believe the two pieces of music for the attendants’ entrance and the bride’s entrance were switched, but it worked very well. And in general, it was just wonderful to be able to priestess such a special ceremony for people whom I love dearly, and then to see so many old friends and spend time with people I don’t see often enough. Also, it’s always great to see one’s friends all dressed up. The boy had a wonderful time running around with a small army of children, too.

There was car drama this weekend, too. We had a nor’easter hit Friday afternoon and evening, and our car chose that particular time to die. The battery, we discovered, was the original one, and no longer held enough of a charge to turn the engine over, even when boosted by another car. What was curious was that all the accessories such as headlights and radio still worked. Fortunately HRH’s parents were on their way over to stay with the boy while HRH and I went to the wedding rehearsal, so they rescued us from sitting in a parking lot in the storm and took us home, then helped call a tow truck for the car (who hooked its leads right up to the engine in the back and kicked it into operation, though it tried to die whenever HRH slowed for a stop sign). HRH bought a new battery but we didn’t have time to install it before we left (very late!) for the rehearsal in my inlaws’ car. The next morning HRH installed the new battery and everything worked perfectly. As the tow driver had said, seven years on the original battery is a pretty darn good run. As much as it played havoc with our schedule this weekend (we had to cancel the boy’s follow-up appointment with the behavioural psychologist researchers at McGill on Saturday morning, which disappointed both of us) we’re very, very thankful that the battery didn’t decide to roll over and die on our Thanksgiving drive either to or home from southern Ontario.

I finished my proposed table of contents and a sample chapter for a book project my editor asked if I’d be interested in writing, and she likes it, so we shall see if it’s ultimately approved. It’s a relatively short book that would be due in May of 2011, it’s a topic that interests me, and it would require research, something I love to do. I’m in the home stretch of the repurposing project as well, due on November 15.

The boy is doing splendidly. School is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, get him excited about discovering new things and giving him tools to do it on his own. He sounds words out everywhere, and makes lists of words that begin with the same sound. His drawing skills have gone up a level or two as well; he uses a pencil to draw an outline and then colours it in carefully, and his art is getting ever more recognisable. He loves taking different things and mashing them together to make something new and creative, and that goes for three-dimensional building toys as well as two-dimensional art. He’s coming home with poems and songs, French words and rhymes, and it’s wonderful. He has even done two book reports; the kindergarten version, anyway, consisting of drawing a map of the places in the story or a picture of something he learned from the book. These reports are kept, and they eventually form a record of all the books the child reads from the school library. He loves school, and I love that he does.

I’ve arranged to buy a friend’s used iPhone in January. It just makes sense. It will replace my iPod, my cellphone, I will be able to make voice memos with it (something I dearly wish I could do easily while driving), record cello lessons and practice sessions with it (something I can’t do with my first-generation iPod Touch), play podcasts away from the computer without having to find speakers to wire into it (again, the first-gen Touch doesn’t have a built-in speaker), and take decent photographs with it. All I need is a pay-as-you-go voice plan, because I work at home and use wifi, so a data plan would be pointless. It means I don’t have to buy a Mac-compatible microphone that the Mini will recognise or a new camera (I may want a better camera than the iPhone eventually, of course, but it will serve my basic needs as well as or better than the eight-year-old borrowed camera I’m using now, and the battery will last longer!).

What else? I think of things to journal about now and again while I’m doing stuff but don’t have a chance to make a note before I forget them.

It’s getting colder and colder. I got an earache from the wind at the boy’s bus stop the other day, so I am knitting a hooded scarf. The house seems to be holding heat pretty well. I’m about halfway through spinning the 8oz of wood violet-coloured fibre, and I’d better get a move on if I’m returning Lady Jane in a week and a half. I pulled out a piece of fabric I’d woven early this year and laid it over the middle of the white chair in the living room, because it’s getting coffee drips and crayon marks on it as well as general dirt from cats and people, and I quite like how it looks. So does HRH, who, when I said I would weave a wider piece to cover the whole chair, suggested I weave another matching one to go on the settee. (The sheepskin is currently on it, and Nixie won’t touch it; she stretches and contorts herself to step around it. Odd little cat.) Good thing the yarn is a Zellers standby. This time, though, I’ll use the same yarn for warp and weft and weave it on the 32″ rigid heddle loom, and make the weave a bit less loose.

I had a cello lesson today, and orchestra is tonight. I’ve tried to avoid driving out there twice in one day, but it’s an exception; my teacher’s substitute schedule went haywire. Cello is going all right. I feel like I’m on the verge of grasping something and I can’t quite do it, or even put it into words. I feel as if I’m juggling a trillion tiny balls — rebalancing bow hand, rebalancing left hand, minute shifts with thumb, practising vibrato, minute movements of the left elbow to readjust left hand, large movements with right elbow to propel the bow while not allowing the wrist to get the upper hand (so to speak), minute adjustments to extensions from one position to another… and then handling subtle dynamics, being musical, and precise with phrasing on top of it all. Sometimes I almost get it. Then I have to think about one of the balls and a bunch of others drop. I”m trying to get into the habit of playing the cello first thing in the morning before turning the computer on to handle correspondence and news, and it’s tricky because it takes my hands and fine motor skills a while to rev up in the morning; always has.

Okay; that’s all I’ve got right now. Time to go meet the boy.

Thanksgiving Roundup

We drove down to spend Thanksgiving weekend with my parents. It was simultaneously the best and the worst drive we’ve had. The worst, because it took us an hour and forty-five minutes to get to Kirkland. The best, because after that it was clear sailing. We left after HRH and the boy got home, which meant we hit the highway at about 4:15. Sure, that’s the beginning of rush hour, but we accounted for that and even so it should have been okay… except there was an accident on every single highway we took: on the bridge into town, on the 20 west, and on the 13 north. The 40 west was just slow.

Once in Kirkland we flew at our usual speed, though, and really enjoyed the deep colours of the trees lining the road. The boy got to watch a small light plane take off at the private airstrip, keeping pace with us as it taxied and lifted off. We picked up dinner and ate in the car, trying to catch up on some of the lost time. When night fell we pressed our heads against the passenger windows and watched the stars, tracing patterns in them and talking about constellations. The boy napped on and off, but didn’t actually sleep much. We arrived around 11:30, about an hour and a half after we’d planned thanks to the slow start. But everyone slept hard, and the next morning was bright and sunny and surprisingly warm for the season.

My parents took us up to the Halton Trolley Museum, and we spent hours there, riding all the operational trolleys, having a hot dog picnic, and strolling through two huge sheds of old trolleys and streetcars. It was the perfect day for an outdoor museum like this one. The sky was that perfect autumnal blue, the sun was golden, and the colours on the trees of the forest through which the tracks wound were quintessentially fall. Our last trolley ride was on the 327, an open trolley car from the late 1800s, and the motorman asked if it was our first visit. When told that it was, he told the boy he could ride up front with one adult, and that was such a treat. The sun and the smell of the leaves, the sound of the wheels on the rails and the soft grind of the pantograph on the wire above were wonderful. Trolleys are so relaxing. The older ones had exquisite stained glass accents, pendant lighting, glowing woodwork, and lovingly restored plush or leatherette seating. In the sheds we found an old green trolley that used to run through our own neighbourhood between downtown Montreal and Granby in the 1930s to the 1950s, a trip that would take about two hours.

The next day was just as beautiful as the day before. The boys washed the car, and my cousin and his family came over for Thanksgiving dinner, at which my mother excelled as usual: Beef Wellington (for ten!), roasted heirloom carrots, fennel, and potatoes, French beans, rolls, and for dessert there were butter tarts, pumpkin tarts, and a lemon pie. There’s nothing like seeing a huge roast wrapped in a crust come out of the oven like that. And for hors d’oeuvres before it all there were three cheeses, smoked salmon, and three pâtés, and there was a lovely Henry of Pelham red wine. Seriously, it was divine. And it was great family time, too. Mum had some leaf garland and ghost-making crafts lined up for the kids, bless her, and I love spending time with my cousin and his family. We washed all three kids in the tub together (we’ll have to stop that at some point, but right now they’re still young enough to think it’s a big treat and they look forward to it) and off they went home, and the day was over.

The drive home the next morning went really well, too, although it’s always harder going home because everyone’s had an intense couple of days and late nights. It felt wonderful to come home to the house after our first trip away.

Tuesday was a decent cello lesson, where we started working on my piece for the December recital. It was nice to hear my teacher say that it would be ready with no problem after a bit of a late start on it. I did work on it this past spring on my own thinking I’d play it at the spring recital, but we ended up not doing it because we missed a month of lessons due to various things.

It’s Halloween in two weeks and I have to finish designing the boy’s costume. The costuming was hidden behind We Are Going Away For Thanksgiving Weekend and The Wedding The Next Weekend, but once we’re past that it’s clear sailing. His school photos came in too, so we’ll have to sit down and go through the website to choose a background and order them. I’m personally leaning towards a traditional non-photo background, because I find the photo backgrounds really detract from the person in the picture.

Fibro-wise I am starting to settle with the meds again. It’s hard to get up in the mornings, a side effect I remember very clearly from last time. I need to adjust the time when I take the pills, otherwise I’m groggy for too much of the morning. Work is going well, too; I got a lot of writing done today on the sample entry for the proposal due next week, and it’s the best work day I’ve had since before we moved.

There you are. That’s about it so far.

Day By Day

Yes, things are quiet. I’m sorry about that. I’m tired, I’m on new medication and it’s a struggle to get used to it, and there’s stuff I have to get done before I jot things down here. And by the time it’s done I’m exhausted and can’t string two coherent words together.

Cello is going well. My teacher is patient and sympathetic about what I’m handling right now, for which I’m very grateful. We had a cello sectional at orchestra this week, and that went much better than I expected.

Work is… problematic. Trying to focus with the fibro was bad; trying to focus on it while working through the period of adjustment with the new medication on top of the fibro is harder. I know it will all even out in the long run, but when I repeatedly forget the sentence I’ve just read it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever be able to get past it. I can do bits of the repurposing project at a time, but trying to remember where other thematically-similar material is in a 200-page document when I’m muddled by medication is frustrating and depressing. I’m doing work on the book proposal and sample chapter away from the computer, which is great to a point, but I’m going to have to come back and start organizing it into something coherent at the computer next week. I finally gathered up the courage to take down the old pro website and upload the new iWeb one after a few more tweaks, too, and I’m very happy with it. I aced the copy-editing test, and start with that department at the beginning of November, too.

Spinning proceeds apace. I’m starting to get used to Lady Jane, although I’m still experimenting with her. I’ve plied the Shetland with silk thread from my local Fabricville, which went very nicely and yielded about 230 yards of lovely soft black yarn. Lady Jane spins the wood violet-coloured BFL I’m working on beautifully, too, and I’m interested to see how that chain-plies. I like it so much that I’ve planned to make a wrap out of it, so I stopped by Ariadne to buy the second 4-oz braid of the colourway so as to have enough.The drive band seems to be stretching and getting floppy, though, and I originally moved the mother-of-all to account for it, but then the treadling got stiff. I checked with Bonnie and she gave me the go-ahead to move the MOA as close to the wheel as possible and then trimming the drive band, and now it treadles beautifully with no stiffness at all. The new drive band just stretched, I think. I still have to check my spinning books to see what they say about adjusting Saxony wheels in Scotch tension, as it’s completely foreign to me. I like the Scotch tension a lot, though. I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to try double drive before I give her back.

I’m still trying to find a comfortable angle at which to spin, though. My knees seem to complain if I’m sitting straight on or at too much of an angle. Interestingly, I’ve switched my fibre and twist-controlling hands. Usually I hold my fibre in my left and pinch with my right while drafting straight back from the orifice past my left side, but I reverse my hands on the Saxony and draft in front of me to my right, at a right angle to the orifice. Speeding up my drafting has been a challenge; there have been a few slubs in both the Shetland and the BFL. I’m still not wholly sold on the idea of DT, though. At least I don’t think I am; I’ll try something on the Louet next week and see how odd ST feels after a week and a half of DT. It still just feels like another method, and I don’t know if I have a preference for one over the other. Overall I feel like I’m not good enough for a Schacht-Reeves, but I also know something like this would last me my entire spinning life and give me lots of room to grow.

I also accidentally taught myself how to knit Continental-style (I think; I haven’t formally checked against a video yet) and finished half a replacement handwarmer for the boy that way. (He lost one and was devastated, so I knit a replacement, and of course someone found the lost handwarmer at school, so now we have one in reserve against the next time it happens.) It happened when I wondered what feeding the yarn over my left hand would do, and then I saw that I didn’t have to actually wrap the yarn over the needle; I could just sort of flick it up with the needle tip. The first few stitches were awful but by the next row it looked just like the other way. I fact, my tension was better and my first finger wasn’t locking up.

Meallanmouse lent us the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the flickering issue we had with the last set we tried to watch is still there but not so pronounced as to make it impossible to watch like last time. I don’t know if it’s the different discs, the new TV, or the Blu-Ray player, but whatever the reason we can actually watch it this time without both of us getting headaches, so we’ve stuck it out and are enjoying it immensely. HRH and I watched the first two episodes together and then decided that yes, the boy would adore it, so we introduced him to it the next day and rewatched those episodes with him. Now we get to watch an episode every day together after HRH gets home before supper.

Last weekend the boy went down town to McGill to participate in a research study, and was very excited about it. They video the interviews, and apparently when they asked him if he knew why he was there he chirped, “Of course: I’m here for an experiment!” with a little double hand-flip thing as if he was displaying something, and cuted the researchers right out. The next day we went to Ada’s naming, which was lovely even if I did leave out an entire paragraph of introduction at the beginning. If you have to drop something, dropping the least-essential bit is the way to go. It was a beautiful day with good weather, fabulous food, and excellent company.

Okay, you’re caught up with my endlessly scintillating life. The rest of today is work where I can between laundry and the long list of errands before Thanksgiving weekend.

Second Update: Cello & Fibre Arts

Orchestra’s back in session, as are my cello lessons. The programme of the fall concert is going to be fabulous. The theme is ‘intercontinental’ and we’ve got a smashing variety of Eastern European dances, Italian overtures, and French suites. Lovely stuff, and lively. Equally lovely is the fact that it’s not as technically challenging as the last concert. I adored the last programme, and it really pushed me to work hard, but it’s nice to be able to relax a bit and focus on musicality. (Fall concert, November 20; mark your calendars!)

Lessons are going well so far, too. I was worried about an eroded skill level after a month of no practice because of the move (two days does not count), but I’m not as bad as I expected. I need to get my head back into translating squiggles on paper into finger and bow movements—it all feels kind of sludgily slow at the moment—but apart from that, my tone was very pleasant, my bow behaved, and my elbows and shoulders and wrists were doing what they were supposed to be doing (most of the time). I sounded like… a cellist. So far I’ve had two private lessons and one group lesson, in which I spent an hour and a half sight-reading Christmas carols, much to our delight (group rehearsal is all about practising group pieces for whichever upcoming recital is next). There’s a seven-part arrangement of Greensleeves that knocked our socks off; it’s glorious.

On the fibre arts front, I’ve been spinning some plain Jane undyed Corriedale for a month, but even though I’m close to finishing it I may bundle it away and start either the delicious violet, blue, and green Projekt B dyed BFL I got from Ariadne Knits when Ceri and I took Ada on her first yarn crawl, or the stunning ‘Iris’ Romney braid I got from Feeling Sheepish and have been hoarding. It was chilly at the bus stop on Friday morning and the poor boy was pulling his cuffs over his hands, so I offered to knit him a pair of fingerless mitts. He chose white (yes, such a sensible colour for little boys’ outdoor accessories) and I knit them up on Friday for him. They’re very white and a bit feminine-looking, so I told him we could dye them whatever colour he wanted. “Yes!” he said, excited. “Like… dark white!”

Well, I tried.

An Open Letter To Her Cello

Dear cello:

I know, I know. You’re sitting there in your case, trying to not look disapproving and to be supportive and understanding at the same time. The house is in chaos; we move in a day and a half. I’m exhausted from packing and running around doing all the new-house imminent-move stuff that has to get done.

But think: in a week, we’ll be mostly unpacked. The new house is a house, which means I will be able to sit down and play you whenever the fancy strikes me without worrying about disturbing neighbours above, below, or beside me. I have a room for my office that’s bigger then this one, and I’ll bet the acoustics are great. And when we finish the attic and my office moves up there, think of how resonant things will be in a big room like that.

Lessons stopped for the summer; I miss them, too. But we’ll start again in September, and orchestra will begin again, too, and we’ll get back into the swing of things. We’ll muddle through the first few weeks of regaining ground we’ve lost through not playing regularly through the two summer months, and then by early October we’ll be fine again. I may even earmark some money from my project delivery cheque at the end of November for a new bow upgrade. Wouldn’t that be nice? Let’s do that.

I love you. I miss you, but I just can’t do it right now. A week. Ten days. How does that sound? You, me, the metronome once I unearth it from whatever box I put it in my accident (it was an accident, I swear), maybe a café au lait, and some nice, mellow long tones in the new house?

Love, me.

Catching Up

Let’s see, what of importance happened last week that I didn’t sit down and write about?

* A second job with my publisher in negotiation, this one for a single editing contract due in November. My editor is a networking goddess. Also, I hammered a lot of evaluation assignments home in the past two weeks and today I get to invoice for a very nice amount.

* The inevitable happened, and the boy lost Whitey-Blackie the bunny on a shopping trip Friday. Oh, the screams in the car after the first fruitless search when I explained that if he was lost and we couldn’t find him, then someone had found him and picked him up to give him a good home. “AAAAAAAAAH!” screamed the boy through his tears. “I DON’T WANT ANYONE ELSE TO HAVE HIM!” Cuddling him while he cried in the car was a sobering example of how sometimes all you can do is hold someone while they grieve or rage against the injustice of life, and that sometimes a mother’s kiss doesn’t make it all better. Retracing our steps the second time, we found the bunny stuffed under the bottom shelf in Zellers where we had been trying on new sandals that didn’t rub the boy’s feet to fresh blisters on top of the blisters of the day before.

* I had a lovely surprise Saturday morning. It was dull and gloomy, and I haven’t been sleeping well, so the boy was up playing and I was still lying abed with a book when the phone rang. “Who’s calling at this hour?” I said, leaping for the phone, but of course it wasn’t seven-thirty (which is what both the light and my inner clock were telling me), it was nine-thirty, and Bodhifox was on the line to wish me a belated birthday. I curled up in my office reading chair and had a very enjoyable chat with him. It set a lovely tone for the rest of the day.

* We had friends over on Saturday night and ordered in an incredibly large spread of General Tao, beef and black bean noodles, spicy peanut butter ravioli, and other things. This was a belated birthday thing, too, and was an inspired alternative to all of us going out. The food cooled a bit beyond what I’d have liked while I put the boy to bed, and I should have thought of putting everything in the barely warm oven to keep it hot. And Ceri made a peanut butter pie which was kind of like an ice cream pie with chocolate sauce that was light and delicious.

* I am so very tired of talking to people about the house. I was tired of it two days after we sealed the deal, and so many conversations still lead back to it. Yes, it’s a house, it’s lovely, we’re happy, but all I seem to do is repeat the same information over and over when people ask about it, which is boring to me and thus, I assume, boring to others. That said, it must be recorded here that after all is said and done, our combined monthly mortgage payment is going to be slightly less than our current rent. It’s only by about six dollars, but it’s the principle of the thing, and makes us very happy. Also, no one seems to make the kind of light wooden-leg loveseat I want for the new living room, and I am peeved. We have picked our paint colours, though. Earthy and creamy tones, as usual, because they work for us.

* I picked up the new Scott Pilgrim graphic novel on Friday, and finished it in about twenty minutes, handed it to HRH, and watched him finish it in about forty-five. (An excellent wrap-up of everything with some really good storytelling; I am pleased with it.) We then sent it home with Scott on Saturday, which was only right as he and Ceri had lent us the first five as they came out. Besides, he left me Tongue of Serpents, the new Temeraire novel, in return, so everyone is happy.

* I had literally just finished reading The Lost Years of Jane Austen, which posits that Jane travelled to New South Wales (AKA Australia) with her aunt and uncle Leigh Perrot, when Scott brought me the new Temeraire novel… which takes place in the same place at essentially the same time, so all the place names and locations and general conditions are familiar to me. Very synchronous and convenient for my mindset.

* The boy and I stopped by the library on Friday (post-Whitey-Blackie incident; the bunny stayed in the car, as all toys are doing from now on) and I discovered that they had the first two Moomintroll books on the new acquisitions shelf on the kids’ side. I jumped up and down and exclaimed and snatched the first one, and the boy totally brushed me and my excitement off, heading for Dewey numbers 625-629, which are his regular turf. That night I said we could read the first chapter at bedtime, but he said no; then he compromised, saying I could read him a picture book of his choice and then the first chapter of whatever this chapter book I was so excited about might be. And it turns out that when we got to the end of that chapter, he took my arm and said, “No, Mama, you should keep reading.” We read a chapter and a half the next afternoon while HRH vacuumed, and another chapter and a half that night, and a chapter last night, too. We’re going to have to go back for volume two sooner rather than later. Or perhaps we shall buy them, which would make me very happy indeed. I found my first Moomintroll book at a church sale when I was about ten, and loved the series so much.

* I spun 4 ounces of Corriedale into a single comparable to the single I spun last weekend of the HAY batts, and dyed it a deep sort of crimson rust colour yesterday. It’s drying now, and I’m hoping the colour complements the HAY single well enough to ply them together this week. I also experimented with dyeing 4 oz of the local wool/mohair roving I had, mixing up what I thought should be a celery green and looked it in the pot, but when the roving dried it was more of a cheerful lemon-lime colour. I tried blending some with a bit of white Tencel on my hackle comb, but while it breaks the solid green up a bit it doesn’t have the lighter sheen I wanted. I think I’ll spin the green roving as-is, then possibly overdye it with a bit of blue. My problem so far is I think I’m mixing up really weak dye solutions (a quarter-teaspoon of dye powder total to about eight cups of water) but they’re stronger than I expect. This green would have worked if it had been about a third of the concentration. From now on, I’ll mix the solution and then use maybe half of it; I can always do a second dye bath to deepen a colour, but you can’t take dye out.

* Working on some nudges and fixes of Emily’s cello book (second edition! if you own the first edition it is now a collector’s item!) made me want to play the cello, so I pulled it out and played for half an hour. I regretfully sent a note to my cello teacher saying that the plan had been to set up lessons again after everyone’s stuff in July was done, but now that we’re moving in three and a half weeks I just don’t have time, what with packing and work.

* Music-wise I have been thoroughly enjoying Zoe Keating’s new album Into the Trees, and Hans Zimmer’s score to last year’s Sherlock Holmes. I also recently picked up Danny Elfman’s score to The Wolfman, with lots and lots of lovely dark cello, but it has, alas, suffered in the aforementioned company, and so I have tucked it away for re-introduction later when my brain is not obsessed with other music.

Right, enough of that. This is what happens when I don’t blog for a week.