Category Archives: Cello

Weekend Roundup

My fibre arts stuff is detailed elsewhere, so this will be brief:

Saturday:
AM: Awful cello lesson. It’s been a while since I almost broke into tears. I’m at the I-can’t-do-anything-and-I-don’t-understand-why point.

PM: Shopping: Errand-running after the boy’s nap, mostly for Hallowe’en related itemry. We get a turtleneck and tights for the boy’s Superman costume (pattern plus fabric = more expensive). No rainboots, but we do buy him a new pair of winter boots he needs (size 11, yikes).

Night: I finish my green lace scarf after much hair-tearing, rending of clothes, and gnashing of teeth.

Sunday:
AM: Another shopping run. I become very annoyed when the kitchen scale on half-price at Zellers is nowhere to be found in the store. We do the groceries, then head out to the farm stand on the south shore to pick up our pumpkins and a whack of veggies. The farmer slips the boy some Hallowe’en candy, and a pair of the best apples ever to HRH and I. On the way home we periodically exclaim anew at how awesome these apples were. Seriously; best apples ever.

PM: I knit up the first swatch for my goddaughter’s wrap. Then I have to flee for my monthly group cello class, where I have fun but yet again can’t play to save my life It’s not even the playing that goes wrong; it’s intonation, timing, trying to figure out where I am note-wise and how to fix it so I can blend, and I can’t. I know this must mean my brain is working stuff out, but while it’s happening I can’t stand a single sound I make, and so I’m not terribly inclined to make sound at all.

In Which She Natters About Everything For A Bit

Oh, Mr. Mailman, you do love me. I was beginning to think you didn’t care. I know I don’t order stuff any more — I’m not writing a contracted book and so I’m not ordering used books I can’t get through the library, and I don’t have the money to buy fun stuff. But today you brought me a little freelance cheque. This was a pleasant thing to offset no mail at all this week so far. That was sad. Although no mail means no bills, so there is an up side to it all.

My current freelance assignment is going swimmingly. It all flows and mostly lacks spelling and grammar errors. It’s refreshing to be able to read a story that hangs together with well-written characters and dialogue. The last little sixty-page one that was supposed to be easy after the four-hundred page disaster ended up being just as much of a disaster, as it wasn’t even an outline. It’s really, really hard to supportively review something that essentially isn’t there.

Because work was going so well yesterday I had the opportunity to knit the boy a hat. This was supposed to be a Yule gift, but we discovered yesterday morning that he has no hats that fit him beyond his ball caps, so it got a bit more critical. I knitted the whole thing before he got home, tried it on him to size and place (somewhat, er, freeform) earflaps, and he fell in love with it. He kept thanking me and running to look at himself in the mirror. What I haven’t told him is that I found an excellent web site that turns pictures into knitting charts, and I had planned to double-stitch the Autobot symbol on the front for him before I gave it to him. As he has absconded with the thing, I shall stitch it Friday night after he’s in bed, and leave it for him to find Saturday morning.

Orchestra was good last night. At least, it sucked less that it had for the past three weeks, so things must be better. I still need to work on some of the Beethoven trouble spots. Some I have down, others I don’t (which is an incredibly helpful statement, I know). We got to play the Schubert, which was nice because I could play it with no trouble even without practice, and we sight-read the first movement of the second Weber clarinet concerto (well, it shouldn’t have been sight-reading, because I’ve had it for two weeks) and that wasn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been once I remembered that we were in E flat major. It always sounds so wrong until you hear everyone else playing.

Today is laundry and bread-baking (both already on; the freelance work-at-home life is such a glamorous one), and then when I’ve polished my report on this latest ms. I’m going to finish spinning the singles for the wrap. I have about a half-ounce of fibre left, and I’m so close to being done. Of course then I get to ply it, which is another kettle of fish entirely. I discovered last week that I need a second swift, because having a skeinwinder is all well and good, but once you’ve washed a skein you need to unwind it and wind it on again to measure the length properly. The good news is I can build one with jumbo TinkerToys, so I don’t need to buy one. (Now we just need to find the TinkerToys and convince the boy it’s Not To Play With once it’s built; he can have the bits I don’t use. Or, you know, I could ask the husband to knock one together in his copious spare time at work. Along with those extra bobbins.)

Actually, I’ve been wondering if I can’t use the old textile mill quill-style pirn bobbins for storage of singles and plying, assuming I can get a bunch of the inexpensively at flea markets or some such place. I know the holes don’t go very deep, but HRH could drill them a bit deeper. The trick would be winding the singles onto the quill bobbins, but if one located an old manual bobbin-winder, one could do it. Theoretically. (Oh, look, they make new ones, but good grief they’re expensive, even the manual ones. Wow. And new storage bobbins, too, but those are much less fun. )

Which brings me to the discovery that the great wheel my mum owned for years and recently placed in Ceri’s sunroom was retrofitted to be a bobbin-winder. The spindle doesn’t extend out to spin off the tip; it’s been hacked so that it lifts out of the brackets to enable a bobbin to be slipped on, and the drive band runs the spindle/bobbin combo to wind yarn on. Apparently it isn’t uncommon for great/walking wheels to be kitbashed in this way. Gods, I love the Internet. People can share so much information.

Right. On to that work thing. After another load of laundry and punching down the bread.

Weekend Roundup, Thanksgiving Edition

Friday night I had a good cello lesson. We cleared up some fingerings in the Beethoven symphony, then I said I wanted to work on recital stuff instead of my lesson stuff. I’d been playing on Thursday night with the practice mute (a good hour and a quarter of practice, hurrah, although it meant I didn’t sleep well) and was struggling with making an Air by Bach sound properly smooth, and I’d worked on the Mozart duet and Ashokan Farewell too. I also finally said I needed to walk away from the Berceuse, because I was fighting it so much that it was causing more problems that it was solving. My teacher said that leaving it wasn’t a problem; we’d revisit it later. Although, she added, I’d been making progress on it, even though I couldn’t tell. The Mozart duet had good parts in it, and I have notes to help me focus on string crossings and smoother shifts. We worked out better fingerings for the Bach that made it so much easier, so I’m feeling better about that too. I don’t feel as overwhelmed by it all any more.

Saturday morning I took the boy out to run errands with me. We dropped some books off at the Melange and bought two candles, one for Thanksgiving (the boy chose ice blue) and one for Halloween (the boy chose orange, naturally). Then we went to our local yarn shop, and I’d mistimed travel slightly; we arrived just on the stroke of eleven, and it hadn’t opened yet. The boy stood there and burst into tears, and wouldn’t listen to me when I said the we’d just sit and wait; he thought we were going home. (Yes, my son gets upset when the yarn store is closed. Of course, there is a toy fire truck there, and he loves the spinning wheel and the containers of yarn, but still.) I’d managed to get him to sit on the step with me and look at the new drawing app on my iPod when MA arrived with her keys and let us right in, bless her. “Are we going to be here for a long time, Mama?” he asked hopefully at one point. I told him that I hadn’t brought knitting or spinning to work on, and that we’d have to go home eventually for lunch anyhow, but I love that he was hoping we’d be there for a while. (It may have been directly connected to the fun he was having pushing one of the wheeled storage containers of yarn around like a train, of course.) We got all the fibre I needed to spin for various projects, plus a skein of yarn for another Yule gift and one to knit a hat with earflaps for the boy. Somehow my list of things to make for Yule has tripled in the last two weeks. I officially have what Ceri calls a Knitlist. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Saturday morning was overcast and gloomy, but the clouds were swept away for a bright though windy afternoon, beautiful weather for the wedding we were to attend on the south shore. Weddings of friends are always wonderful, because you get to see people you love in formal dress, something we don’t do enough of. I had the pleasure of handling the cufflinks for both the groom and best man, and assisted Jan with boutonnieres for the wedding party. (We were both on site early because t! was celebrating the wedding with assistance from HRH.) Lovely ceremony written by t!, sat with excellent people, touching speeches made by the best man and the maid of honour, and generally an all-round pleasant time. I want copies of the pictures others were taking because my own camera sat in my bag under the table. I think I was photographed more than I’ve ever been photographed at a wedding that wasn’t my own. Or maybe I was just standing with members of the wedding party a lot. We left around nine once the lights had gone down and the loud music had begun. There had been somewhat loud music throughout the meal as well, and I found myself kind of shouting to people across the table. Something irritated my throat in the middle of the meal and I had a coughing fit, which ruined my voice for the next day. All in all, though, we were with excellent friends celebrating a wonderful day, and it was a good time.

Sunday morning went out to Chapters to pick up the new TMBG kids’ album. I had deliberately waited a month and checked stock online to make sure it would be there. Well, it wasn’t. They looked on shelves, they looked in back, they finally concluded that it was somewhere in one of the ten pallets in back that had technically been received (i.e., someone had entered ISBNs, titles, and quantities from an invoice) but not unpacked. And the senior clerk I spoke with admitted that they were behind, and that it would take some time before those pallets were opened and shelved properly. I was thoroughly unimpressed. This isn’t the first time I’ve run into the “in stock but not on the shelf” issue at this shop, but it’s the first time they admitted to being so far behind that they couldn’t find it in the warehouse.

So the boy was disappointed (as were HRH and I, because we love TMBG’s kid stuff, too). Another book I wanted was also not on the shelves, despite there being twelve available according to stock check. I did pick up the copy of Amy King’s Spin Control I’d intended to come home with, though. From now on, I will call in advance, as much as I hate phones.

We did the grocery shopping, then I chatted with my mum and spun up another ounce of the yarn for my goddaughter’s Yule gift. We made cookies late in the afternoon, then I put the tiny cross-rib roast we’d bought in the oven for a somewhat unplanned Thanksgiving meal at home. It turned out perfectly, meltingly smooth, served with roast potatoes and carrots from the garden, drizzled with a separately-made onion gravy. Before we began to eat we lit the ice blue candle the boy had chosen for Thanksgiving and I asked if he wanted to say anything special. “No,” he said, “just Happy Thanksgiving.” I said I was thankful for food on the table, family and friends, and the roof over our heads, and the ability to enjoy our many hobbies and activities. And then we swooned with yum at the incredibly delicious food on our plates. The boy patted my hand during dinner and said, “I love you, Mama. Thank you for making this dinner for us.” He had seconds of potatoes and carrots, and ate every single piece of roast beef on his plate, impressing both of us. Oddly enough, he refused gravy. Once upon a time he wouldn’t eat anything unless it had gravy, so lo, we have come so very far. We’ve also come far in the successful roast beef department. Pretty much every roast I’ve done in the past few years hasn’t turned out the way I wanted it to for some reason. In fact, this one nearly didn’t; after roasting it for twice as long as I was supposed to it still wasn’t cooked through, so I hacked it into three pieces, laid the less cooked sides up, and roasted it at a higher temperature for ten minutes. The result was sheer perfection, so hurrah for my experience and instincts working together to actually get dinner on the table.

Once he was in bed I checked e-mail and discovered that I’d won… a copy of Amy King’s Spin Control in an online draw. (Insert whacking of forehead here. I am very pleased, of course, but also abashed.) So I will be returning the copy I bought and using the refund against the purchase of The Intentional Spinner, which they’ll need to order in for me. Not only that, I got a message from Aurora saying that she’d been in Vermont for Thanksgiving and had found a case of Vanilla Coke, and was bringing it home for me. An embarrassment of riches!

Monday we lazed about in the morning. HRH and the boy built a fort with a quilt and some chesterfield cushions, and the boy set up a Thanksgiving dinner inside it for all his stuffed animals with great enthusiasm. While he napped I spun up another ounce of yarn for the wrap. After his rest we went to HRH’s parents’ house for the official family Thanksgiving dinner, where I got another six inches of lace scarf knitted before dinner. Dinner itself was spectacular. The boy ate a staggering amount of turkey, half of it from the carving board before dinner itself, and the other half from drumsticks that he brandished like a pirate. He tried the stuffing and the purple cauliflower and passed on both of them, but ate several carrot sticks.

All in all, a lovely holiday weekend. Now we turn to winterizing, putting plastic over the windows and making things as efficient as possible. HRH put in the second outside window in our bedroom, and took out the screens in the boy’s room. We’d turned the central kitchen heater on last week and used the ceiling fan to circulate the warmer air when it went on, but yesterday we set all the room thermostats at 15 degrees, just to make sure things didn’t get too chilled. The outside gardens need to be fully cut back, and the compost spread over the beds, too. Snow has been spotted in the air not too far north.

Dull

First, a pretty picture: I’m currently spinning some Louet Northern Lights in the Cactus Flower colourway. It’s my first foray into spinning dyed fibre, and it’s fascinating me. I probably wouldn’t have chosen this to spin, but it was a test done with fibre on hand, and it turns out it works rather well for a project I had in mind. More on that later, though. Show and tell first!

Okay. Now for the less than cheerful stuff.

I seem to be at a pretty bad fibro low. The cold/flu thing that tag-teamed me through September really kicked me hard, and getting back on my feet is a very long drawn-out process that’s not much fun at all. It’s also that time of year where I’m restless, but don’t want to leave my office. I want to be out being distracted by things, but I don’t have the energy to either do it physically or mentally, since dealing with People At Large requires a heck of a lot of energy. And as I no longer have the car, going out via public requires more time and physical energy as well.

So I’m spending a lot of time flipping dully through stuff on the internet hoping for inspiration, researching spinning and testing stuff out because it relaxes me and doesn’t draw a whole bunch of energy from me, and getting frustrated because I can’t work. Work is… draining. It’s at the point where I’m not being fulfilled by it, and it’s just a paycheque. Which is not a bad thing, because I never set out on this particular freelance gig seeking fulfillment; it was always intended to be just a paycheque, because money is good. It’s just really hard to open these documents and run a review on them, because most of the time they’re poorly written and poorly laid out, and that’s really depressing. I have to muster up a huge amount of energy to deal with them, and that’s draining on a whole other level. What would probably fulfill me more is actually writing, except that whole finite amount of energy and currently low levels means I need to direct the energy towards paying/deadlined work first. I feel exhausted just thinking about writing my own stuff, and not terribly inspired. What I need to do is rethink how I handle these assignments. Maybe read through them entirely before starting to pull out the broken elements for the report, then handle the report at the end rather than starting with it at the beginning of the read-through, because it slows things down.

Cello is feeling kind of sloggy at the moment too, because I’m trying to internalize a whole lot of stuff that’s coming up in lessons, mostly about technique, and as a result a bunch of other stuff is breaking down. This is not unusual; very often we have to unlearn things, or take things apart in order to reassemble them properly. I know this intellectually, but my emotional awareness just sees things I was playing decently now being played horribly and piles on the self-confidence crisis. Orchestra is a slog too, because I’ve been dealing with the take-apartness issues (I’ve played everything on this program before, so why can’t I do it now?), the past month I’ve been ill and unable to focus properly, and I’m experiencing issues with bringing things up to tempo. I can play them sub-tempo at home, and I’m not up to speed yet at rehearsal, which, let me tell you, is frustrating and embarrassing when you sit second chair right in front of the conductor. (I am very specifically not looking at the Beethoven, here. I know, I asked for a Beethoven symphony; I’ve changed my mind. How about some Haydn? Or some Boyce?) So rather than being excited about cello the way I was in the spring and early summer I’m dragging my feet.

There’s a wedding this Saturday for which I’m trying to muster up the enthusiasm to attend. It’s Thanksgiving, which means there will be a visit to the in-laws. Perhaps that’s part of my trouble; we usually visit my parents at this time of year, and maybe not going is messing with my seasonal pattern.

Ultimately it all comes down to being frustrated because I don’t have enough energy to handle everything I need to handle. I want to go out; I stay home because I know that if I go out I’ll exhaust myself for an undetermined period of time. I can’t focus on work. Cello is at a not-rewarding point.

The one good thing that’s happening is spinning. I am so thankful I discovered it at this particular point, because it’s productive and creative while being not overly demanding energy-wise. I just started my first spinning with colour experiment (see above), and it’s brilliant. Ceri got the fibre as a sample when we took our spindle class together in May, and found it while she was looking for something else during the crafting weekend. The bag of roving was a bit garish, but I test-spun it and lo and behold, it’s exactly my goddaughter’s favourite colours: hot pink, deep greens and blues, and some purples. The colours soften and blend so much during the spinning process that the single is quite attractive. I’m so glad, because finding a yarn for the wrap I wanted to knit for her as a Yule gift was becoming quite a trial (not that I was looking for a colourway with all her favourite colours in it; this was pure serendipity). I’m spinning a fairly fine single, and fingering weight (what the pattern calls for — well, actually it doesn’t, it calls for laceweight, but I’m knitting a heavier wrap so I’ll be using fingering weight) will be no problem at all. Thank goodness my beloved LYS Ariadne Knits had another couple of the small 2oz bags in stock; they’ve got those aside for me, and all together that will be 6oz and more than enough (she said, crossing her fingers and looking sternly at the spinning wheel, which is totally innocent). Of course, once it’s spun up and plied I’ll have to knit the thing, which is another kettle of fish entirely. I am also planning to knit a hat with earflaps for the boy, so we shall see what all these good intentions bring.

Bits And Pieces

The Corriedale I spun shrank when I washed it, apparently significantly judging from where it’s hung when I tried to fit it back on the skein winder to evaluate it. It covers only three of the pegs and makes a loose triangle now instead of fitting around all four pegs to make a snug square. Better it shrink now than later after being knitted, but still; annoying. I’ll have to reskein it and measure it again to make sure Ceri has enough for her project. It looks very pretty in its little temporary twisted skein, though. (And upon trying to reskein it I find that it has tangled somehow, despite my careful tying. Grr. We’ll need to use the ball winder on the weekend. I need one of my own. Well, that should thrill the boy.)

The elastic on pretty much all my trouser socks has relaxed, even on the ones I haven’t worn yet. Everything I’ve put on so far falls down around my ankles. This is really, really annoying, because I love my patterned trouser socks for this time of year, and I haven’t even worn half the ones tucked away in my bin yet. It means I have to sort through my sock bin yet again and toss out what are perfectly good socks except they don’t fit my calves. (No, I have not lost weight or muscle tone; the elastic has gotten old, that’s all.) I don’t even know if thrift stores will take them. [ETA: No, wait! I know what I need: These funky brown sock garters I bookmarked ages ago! Hah, I just saved a whole slew of socks. Or I will have once I have the money to order these.]

I went to orchestra last night, and although everyone was horrified at how I looked and sounded I managed remarkably well. Working the first movement in such detail earlier this week helped a lot. I probably should have left at break, because I didn’t get much work done in the second half (and the bowings and slurs for the third movement are awful, I need to clean them up to make them readable which means a lot of corrector fluid), but even just being there absorbing the right kind of sound and the conductor’s directions was better than missing it entirely.

Today is one of those odd Twilight Zone kind of days where the sun hasn’t actually come out so I don’t know what time it is, and having an hour-long nap around lunch has further messed up my sense of where I am during the day.

I am working my way through polishing the freelance thing, taking plenty of breaks because I’m exhausting myself thinking through sentences. One of my breaks was to engage in a meme going around called the Handwriting Meme. I’m not big on memes and quizzes, but this struck me as really interesting. We read e-mail and people’s online journals all the time, and we rarely see their handwriting. I wasn’t specifically tagged by anyone (and good thing, because I hate that) but at least two people whose journals I read threw it open to anyone who wanted to play along. So here, for the record, is mine. Click it to embiggen so as to make it readable.


1. Write your username.
2. Write your 2 favourite bands/groups of the moment.
3. Write something you love, aka lemme see your heart.
4. Write the name of your favourite person of all time.
5. Write the name of your recent favoured person.
6. Tag 6 people to do this meme.

In other news, hello, it is the first of October, and I still haven’t finished the boy’s September monthly update. I’m trying, but I’m just slogging. And now there’s another one to do in ten days. I don’t have the mental energy. Even acknowledging the fibro I get pretty down on myself. And then I read Laura Hillenbrand’s “A Sudden Illness” in which she outlines her life with chronic fatigue syndrome, and I am so desperately thankful that my chronic illness is nowhere near the degree of hers. At the same time I feel a bit better about not having the energy to think things through, about not being able to find the right word, about not engaging in discussions that I’m passionate about. Too many times this past weekend I had to stop in the middle of a statement because I couldn’t think my way through to the end of it, which was really frustrating. I end up being brusque with the people who press me to continue or want to hear more, because I can’t think properly. It makes me sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about or as if I don’t care, and I hate that.

I know it’s also going to take me forever to get back to what-passes-for-normal-in-fibro operating levels once I finally kick this flu-cold thing, and knowing that makes me irritated as well. I wonder if that’s one of the reasons why spinning appeals to me so much. I’m sitting down, it’s a sensory-based activity that doesn’t require a lot of analysis and mental gymnastics, and I feel productive because there are tangible results. I suspect this is one of the reasons why writing has been frustrating me lately, because it requires me to think and I get lost so easily. You know, I can handle a lot about fibro: the aches, the sleep thing, not having a lot of energy available… but the fibro-fog that clouds my thinking processes? This, I hate the most.

In Which She Moans A Lot

So this cold that I thought I was over? Feels suspiciously like the flu. I’m croaking from coughing so much, it hurts to breathe, I have a perpetual headache, all my bones hurt, and I need to lie down a lot. I suspect that I won’t be going to orchestra yet again, which is frustrating because I missed it last week due to the beginnings of this, and then got somewhat better before being utterly wiped out by it today. I’m worse tonight than I was last week, and I’m annoyed about it because one of the reasons I stayed home from the last rehearsal was to avoid getting sicker. At the moment I’m considering attending for the first half of the rehearsal, if nothing else.

We had such excitement here last night: There was a wee fire in the kitchen! The base of one of our pots cracked on the element and whatever they put between the layers of metal caught fire. No damage to anything other than the pot itself. Nice to know that we’re calm in emergencies.

The freelance cheques got mailed today, so they should be here next Monday. I’ve just finished the first draft of the current project, and I’ll polish it tomorrow. Dinner’s in the slow-cooker, so all someone will have to do later is make rice. Now I’m going to go lie down under the afghan in the living room with some more Neo-Citran, and probably read some E.M. Forster and listen to some Philip Glass, because that’s what I need right now.

Day Off

The boy went into preschool today and wasn’t sent home, so I assume all was well. I gave myself a well-deserved day off, which means I practiced the cello twice (once this morning and once this afternoon), wound off the yarn I’d plied last night (237 yards), spun some more single and plied it with the remaining single (another 43 yards, for a total of 279! and I still have some original single left), washed both to set the twist and hung them to dry (the second little skein is positively the best yarn I’ve done so far), made bread (twice, because the first one went horribly wrong because I forgot to turn off the low heat I’d set in the oven to warm it up before leaving it to rise, so the heat killed the yeast), made stew, and caught up on some web episodes of things.

There is a train horn stuck on at the bridge near us. It’s… insidious. It’s almost not noticeable, until one notices it, and then it’s Very There.

I feel so relaxed. Apart from the irritating tickle in my throat that has caused me to cough all day, that is, and the resulting headache. It felt so wonderful to sit down and actually play again. The cello sounds fantastic, with excellent ringing tones and nice sustain. Part of that is I’ve forgotten how good it sounds, but I like to think part of it is also due to my use of back muscles to direct the bow and keep an even weight on it.

Oh good, the train horn stopped. You never really appreciate silence until it falls after a very long stretch of constant noise.

Speaking of noise, it rained quite hard in the early afternoon while I was spinning, and I opened windows so I could hear it. It was coming straight down, and it sounded lovely.

Tonight I am off to watch another two OVAs of Maria-sama ga Miteru with Marc, and then tomorrow I will do the little freelance assignment that’s waiting for me. We were told that accounting was behind and so the cheques that were supposed to be cut last week and mailed out today will in fact be a week late, which snarls up my budgeting somewhat. I am annoyed, but there’s nothing I can do. Accouting promises that it’s an isolated incident and the rest of the invoicing/payment schedule for the year won’t be affected, but we shall see.

Aha, the boys are home. As I just took the bread out of the oven, I suspect we shall all indulge in warm bread with butter melting off it and onto our fingers before supper proper.