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

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

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

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

Back to the interview.