Category Archives: Music

Weekend Roundup, Concert Recap Edition

We had a tremendously lazy Saturday morning which we all needed for our collective mental health. Saturday afternoon while the boy napped I weighed out a quarter-ounce of the Tussah silk I’d bought on Friday and spun it up into a 56 yards of two-ply laceweight:

The silk drafts and spins like a dream, into a lovely soft yarn that I pat a lot. The tiny green skein is also silk, coloured with some leftover dye solution I had in a jar. Wow, does silk ever gobble up dye. It’s variegated because I dropped the dry mini-skein into the dye instead of untwisting it and soaking it first. I don’t doubt that pre-soaked and properly loose it will dye very evenly.

When the boy got up he and HRH worked out in the backyard, putting away the garden furniture and toys for winter, and emptying the very broken sandbox so it could be recycled.

We had an early dinner, and then it was time to dress up for our first official concert under the direction of our new conductor. The boy chose a very nice red cabled sweater to wear. The concert was lovely. Pressing past the usual enthusiastic support I had feedback that the sound was more focused and rich, so evidently we’re doing something right. I was very happy with my performance in the first half, but intermission apparently broke me because I lost focus in the Beethoven. Still, it was very enjoyable. Our clarinet soloist was a knock-down success; I really enjoy doing the second Weber clarinet concerto. We had a fabulous audience of about one hundred people, among whom were Jeff and Devon, Lu, Ceri and Scott, and HRH and the boy, who stood on his father’s lap to applaud and cheer loudly at the end of the Beethoven. Thanks, everyone! And our spring concert has already been announced: Saturday 27 March 2010 (2010, yikes) at Beaurepaire United Church (25 Fieldfare, Beaconsfield, QC) we will be playing Vaughn Williams’ ‘Wasps’ overture, a Haydn symphony (I forget which one, sorry), a Debussy suite (possibly ‘Images’? I don’t think it’s ‘Bergamesque’ because I would certainly remember that, but I didn’t get the title noted down in time and now I’ve forgotten, woe!) and something by Butterworth. Mark the date down now (or whenever you get your 2010 calendar).

Sunday morning I picked up Mousme and Ceri and we met Jan over at Karine‘s house for a couple of hours of knitting and sewing. (Bonus points to those of you who recognise the membership of Random Colour.) It was very nice indeed. Ceri delivered two bags of cotton pencil roving that Meallanmouse had ordered for me to dye and spin up for her, and Jan brought me the pound of merino/mohair blended fibre that I’d arranged to buy from Finney Creek near Alexandria… and she bought another pound for me to spin up for her at some point as well! So I’m pretty set for spinning, at least for the next little while. We followed the crafting up with a delicious lunch of homemade pumpkin-apple soup and freshly baked rolls, and topped it off with Schadenfreude pie. Lunch was a bit later than I’d expected (this happens when you do not watch a clock) and by the time I’d dropped everyone off and gotten home, instead of having an hour to myself I had only fifteen minutes to change, grab my cello and music bag, and leave again for my monthly group cello class. Fortunately HRH agreed to drop me off and go grocery shopping with the boy while I played, so I had an extra fifteen minutes to sit and relax before we all headed out (and as a bonus, we actually got groceries this weekend!). Group class was very enjoyable, as usual. We worked on our ensemble pieces for the upcoming Christmas recital, which are going okay. We had an interesting non-teacher-initiated chat at the end about how when things sound wrong we all automatically think we’re the ones in error instead of trusting ourselves. It’s not an isolated thing. We have another group class next Sunday, as the recital happens in three weeks and we’ve only had two group rehearsals so far. M and I have a coached duet lesson together on Wednesday night, and then I have my regular lesson on Friday evening. With a week off from orchestra, now I can really focus on my lesson and recital pieces and not feel like I’m losing ground in my other music.

CONCERT CORRECTION

I should not be allowed to copy and paste the text of previous concert announcements unsupervised.

The concert is in fact on the 21st OF NOVEMBER, not the 28th as previously announced. That’s one whole week sooner. As in, this upcoming Saturday.

Many thanks go out to Ceri and MLG for verifying the date with me. Apart from my unsupervised copying and pasting, I try to get the concert announcements out two weeks before the date to give people plenty of time, and it got away from me this time; but I probably defaulted to the usual two-weeks-from-now thing anyway. (When I find out who authorized it to be mid-November I will have sharp words with them, I tell you what.)

The correct details:

The time has come again to make plans to attend the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra fall concert! Every fall we present an introspective and soul-uplifting concert to celebrate the season, and for your entertainment we have prepared a challenging programme that our new conductor and musical director, Stewart Grant, has titled Wien un München (Vienna and Munich).

Circle Saturday the 21st 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:

    Mozart: Ouverture Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario), K. 486
    Schubert: Rosamunde – incidental & ballet music
    Weber: Concerto pour clarinette no. 2 op. 7 – Allegro (soloist: Eric Braley)
    Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) K. 620- In diesen heil’gen Hallen (soloist: John Manning)
    Beethoven: Symphony no. 8 op. 23

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, linked above. 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.

This is the first concert with our official new conductor Stewart Grant. We’re really enjoying the work he’s doing with us, and judging from the reception of the Canada Day concert, audiences are enjoying it, too. Come experience our first proud formal performance with this talented and experienced conductor!

Concert Announcement: Wien und München

Yes, gentle readers, the time has come again to make plans to attend the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra fall concert! Every fall we present an introspective and soul-uplifting concert to celebrate the season, and for your entertainment we have prepared a challenging programme that our new conductor and musical director, Stewart Grant, has titled Wien un München (Vienna and Munich).

Circle Saturday the 28th 21st 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:

    Mozart: Ouverture Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario), K. 486
    Schubert: Rosamunde – incidental & ballet music
    Weber: Concerto pour clarinette no. 2 op. 7 – Allegro (soloist: Eric Braley)
    Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) K. 620- In diesen heil’gen Hallen (soloist: John Manning)
    Beethoven: Symphony no. 8 op. 23

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, linked above. 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.

This is the first concert with our official new conductor Stewart Grant. We’re really enjoying the work he’s doing with us, and judging from the reception of the Canada Day concert, audiences are enjoying it, too. Come experience our first proud formal performance with this talented and experienced conductor!

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.

Fifty-Two Months Old!

The boy has become quite the Lego expert. He builds wonderful little vehicles, my favourite of which was the steampunk car that had a propeller on top. He completely gets this from his father, because I think very poorly in the cube-based three-dimensional manner Lego requires.

We have had some very enthusiastic pretends lately; this past weekend saw him romping through house with stuffed owls and bunnies (“I have new springs!”) being chased by pretend crocodiles. The maturity level of his playing is becoming more complex, as are the situations he sets up for his cars or trains or stuffed animals. He uses his imagination, which resides in his head right above his right eyebrow, I am told.

He’s still interested in cooking, and will drag his chair over to help me use the stand mixer. He is especially enthusiastic about cracking eggs. (The success rate is about fifty-fifty. We’re getting there.) We made cookies for our at-home Thanksgiving dinner and when we put the first tray into the oven he went and got his little chair and set it in front of the oven door so he and Blackie could watch them bake.

The relationship with Blackie is… evolving, I suppose. His first can’t-be-separated-from toy was Bun-Bun, the stuffed rabbit Roo gave him when he was about seven months old. Bun-Bun was replaced by Blackie-Whitie this Easter, and the boy will pretty much always insist on bringing Blackie out of the house with him. The problem is, once out, he often forgets to collect Blackie and bring him back to the car or the house. Sometimes he tries to shove Blackie into our hands so he’s free to do whatever he intends to do, but we’re working on getting him to understand that he has responsibility for whatever he brings with him.

Naps are still happening, thank goodness, although he misses one now and again. They’re down to an hour and a half. He’s still sleeping about ten hours at night. The bad cold he had this past month had him waking up at least once a night for a good two weeks straight, and lately he still has a tendency to wake up around three or four in the morning. Then again, we all do these days, so it’s not so surprising. He gets put back to bed, and while he is upset at the time he falls asleep quickly.

The boy whistles better than I can. It’s both cheer-worthy and annoying.

He’s getting quite good at photography. As we have had one camera damaged already in the past three years, we are kind of jumpy about letting him use this one, but when he’s calm he’s pretty good with it. We’ll be looking for a secondhand one for him for Yule. I think I was about six when I got my first camera, a little Kodak Instamatic. Allow me to share one of the coolest artistic photos he’s taken so far:

He also took the pictures of me spinning. He needs to work on keeping people’s heads in the frame, and thinking of faces as the focus, but in general he’s not bad.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he picks up music extremely quickly. I’ve noticed it in the car, where he can often sing most of the words of a song after two cycles of the CD, but his teacher has noted it as well, saying that he often has new songs learned after one go at circle time.

He has suddenly mastered zippers, getting his arms into coats, and doing up belts. Getting socks on is almost there. He’s trying valiantly, but we often have to set them on his toes so he can pull them over his foot and up his leg.

Reading: he knows more than he’s letting on. This is frustrating for us. I understand that he doesn’t want to lose the closeness of an activity like reading together, but nothing we say or do seems to convince him that we’ll keep reading to him if he admits that he can read on his own. His language skills are noticeably developing more and more. His inflections and sense of humour are really emerging. He’s starting to engage in wordplay, which is hilarious. There are a lot of “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes going on, which are funny because they’re not funny, if you know what I mean. ( “Because his knitting was on the other side!” will kill your audience because you’ve missed the point of the joke.)

There were two big events this past month. The first was his first trip to go apple picking. We had a wonderful day out with the Aubin-Murphy clan, helping the kids find the best trees, the highest apples, and enough ladders so they didn’t have to keep taking turns. The second was the harvest ritual at Rowan Hill Farm, which was the first ritual he was old enough to actually understand and participate in independently. Both events were full of enthusiasm, love, running around outdoors, and absolute joy. It’s when I see him running around in situations like this that I can’t help but feel joy as well. It’s catching.

Weekend Roundup With Bonus Monday Material

Sushi Friday night! This was a long-awaited treat. We went to our favourite sushi restaurant with Jeff and Paze, and as we went out after the kids were in bed there weren’t tables when we arrived. We chatted at the bar for about half an hour or forty-five minutes, and when we finally got a table the chef sent over a treat for us as a thank you for being so patient. It was one of his personal creations, not on the menu, and was delicious: a roll of salmon around tuna and what may have been red snapper, all wrapped in nori and lightly sauteed so that the first five millimeters or so of the salmon were barely cooked, all drizzled with a gingery sesame-chili-green oniony sticky glaze that we all scraped up with our chopsticks after the roll was gone. Oh ye gods, it was all heavenly. The tiny bit of cooked salmon contrasted so beautifully in taste and texture with the raw. I want to be kept waiting for half an hour every time now. We also learned that they’re expanding! Finally, after a decade of going to this tiny restaurant that seats maybe thirty people, they’re taking over half of the next space in the mall, so we’ll be able to bring a party larger than four people, which currently strains the seating. (Perhaps they will also take reservations. You never know.) We’re very excited about this, not only for our benefit, but because it means the restaurant is doing so very well. They opened two new locations over the past few years, one in Vaudreuil and one in Laval, but this one has stayed tiny and intimate. I can’t say I’m thrilled with their switch in music from jazz classics to modern pop, but everything else more than makes up or it. Dinner was, of course, delicious.

Saturday morning I headed out to my cello lesson, which was pretty intense in the focusing department. It was also very physical in that we spent a lot of time talking about back muscles and doing various exercises in order to isolate their movement. I also got to choose between two pieces for my solo in the upcoming Christmas recital, and I chose another duet with M, a lovely two-cello arrangement of Mozart’s ‘Canzonetta sull’ aria‘ from Le nozze di Figaro. I get to play Susanna! The lesson was good, but by the time I headed home I was drained, exhausted, and dizzy, and when I got in I knew that I was going to be useless for the rest of the day. This was problematic because I’d scheduled a very necessary grocery run and various errands, most birthday-related, and then had to drive to the south shore through a detour around the reserve to get to my in-laws’ house for HRH’s mom’s birthday dinner. (HRH was being picked up by his dad that morning in order to go help put a new fence in.) Well, the day got shafted because I couldn’t focus enough to drive, which made me even more irritated than the original irritation about being downed by the fibro. The boy and I stayed home all afternoon, napping together, watching movies, and making cupcakes. In the end we rescheduled the birthday dinner for next Friday night and HRH’s dad brought him back home again, going above and beyond the call of duty by crossing the bridge and traveling the associated detour four times in total.

I was climbing walls by that point, so HRH insisted that we head out to make an appearance at Scott’s birthday gathering after the boy was in bed. As I didn’t have to drive I agreed, with the proviso that the moment I felt not-good we had to leave. Things went rather well, and there was excellent company. I spent a couple of hours watching people play the new Beatles Rock Band game while HRH drummed or sat out, and he even pulled off a very impressive vocal performance of ‘Yellow Submarine’. We came home to bed at a reasonable hour. Blade is to be commended for being the Responsible Adult On Site two nights in a row.

Sunday morning we went apple picking! I have never done this before. Formally, I mean; I’ve pulled an apple here and there from people’s trees to eat as a child, but I’ve never done the full-out trip to an orchard. We met the Murphy-Aubin clan at an “apple forest” near Oka and had an absolutely fabulous morning. The weather was glorious, the company was excellent, the apples were delicious, and the kids had a great time running around, up and down ladders, in and out of branches so laden with apples that they bent to touch the grass below. It was spectacular. I ate more apples in one day than I have over the past year, and every single one of them was indescribably delicious. We now have twenty pounds of apples. It was a lovely way to celebrate the first day of fall, although one day early.

Back home we napped, and then the boys took me to my group cello lesson, which was great fun. While I was there they did the groceries, then they picked me up and brought me home again. We had sausages and eggs for dinner, I called my mum to chat, and went to bed. I slept poorly again, though, and only got about four hours, which made Monday kind of hard.

The lack of sleep wasn’t the only thing making Monday hard. I opened my latest freelance assignment to find a 172,000-word manuscript presented in a font composed entirely of capital letters. (I am serious. The author screamed this novel. All five hundred pages of it.) Not only that, the classification was wrong; it wasn’t a fantasy novel, but religious fiction, which isn’t one of the areas I work in. After calming down I debated sending it back, but figured no, I would just be focused and ruthless like I’m supposed to be. I tend to give a lot more time to these evaluations than I ought to, and I need to learn how to be more precise and efficient. This is as good a place as any to begin. And I began by changing the damn font to Times New Roman and putting a big note on the front of the evaluation saying that in order to be read and evaluated the font had to be reformatted, and all page references were according to the new pagination. (I am still incandescent about it.)

Last night we had a Harvest ritual, focusing on celebrating our achievements over the past year. B brought a small bottle of ice cider, and we used our horn for the first time (although we offered the horn to the gods, ancestors, and spirits and used small glasses for ourselves, as most of us had colds). I am really enjoying how our coven is exploring a different way of celebrating, rather than using standard Wiccan format. We’ve chosen to explore the Germanic aspects of our tradition and heritage, and we’re finding that the philosophies reflect our goals and directions very well.

Today I finish up the evaluation, and if I have time, I may prep some more fibre to spin, or I may crack open the black roving I got with the wheel, or even try some of the silky BFL I have left over from spindling.

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.