Monthly Archives: January 2010

Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Sunday

Previously on the Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Friday and Saturday!

Together with t! and Jan, we figured out that we’d have to get up around 7:30 and start making breakfast at 8:00 in order for the rest of the day to run on time. As it was, we all kind of lingered in bed and got up around 8:00, but we only ended up running about fifteen minutes late (Although we got a bit later each time we had to pick someone up, which always happens; I just didn’t account for it in my schedule). We had waffles and sausages for breakfast, and then Jan and I picked up Daphne and Ceri and headed out to Karine’s place for our monthly Random Colour crafting meeting. Four of us even finished projects: Karine started and finished a birthday necklace for Daphne, Jan finished her socks, Ceri finished her mitten, and I finished Mum’s silk scarf at last! After a lunch of soup, salad, and brownies, I dropped people off at their respective homes and got back to hand the car off to HRH, who went and collected the boy from his grandparents’ house. The boy was overexcited and evidently really enjoyed his overnight. They set up a really quiet movie to watch, as it was a no-nap day, and I packed up my cello and music and drove to my monthly group lesson. It was the first one of the new year, and I love getting new music. We’re doing a lovely quartet arrangement of The Entertainer, a trio arrangement of Ashokan Farewell, and a quintet arrangement of a Corelli theme, and the sight-reading went pretty well in general. We finished by sight-reading some quartet and trio arrangements of some of the Suzuki material, trying them out to help our teacher decide what to programme.

And then after dinner, I had the incredible experience of actually scoring a Phat Fiber box on my very first try at one. It’s a monthly sample box coordinated by the Phat Fiber project, which showcases samples from indie dyers and sellers. There are three kinds of boxes: Fluff (mainly spinning fibre), Stitches (mainly yarn, patterns, and little accessories for knitters), and Mix (which is a selection from both). There’s only about fifty boxes per month, and competition for them is crazy. They go on sale in the Phat Fiber Etsy shop at a very specific time, and sell out within a minute. The only reason I remembered is because I checked my Ravelry forums late in the afternoon and saw the latest thread about the January box going on sale that day. I thought I’d missed it, but then realised that there’s a separate morning drop and afternoon drop for the boxes so as to make it fair for people in different time zones. So I sat here at 6:55 & reloaded till they came up at 7:00, and was absolutely stunned that I managed to get through the entire checkout process without losing the box from my cart to someone else with a faster Internet connection. My box is a Fluff box, of course, and I’m thrilled to be able to sample all sorts of different kinds of fibre in batts and roving braids and locks, lots of them blended with angelina or firestar for sparkle. The best thing is that every month has a different theme, and this month’s theme was For the Love of Books, so every sample will be inspired by a different book. This is the video preview of the January box, and I am so looking forward to getting the box in the mail and sorting through all the wonderful stuff inside! It’s a terrific way to try things out without committing to a large purchase form someone you don’t know, or to try something new you might not otherwise would have tried. And the best thing is that it’s only the price of a hardcover book. This was total beginner’s luck, and I’m still on the high of winning it.

Today: Finishing the cello manual layout and sending it off for approval; blocking Mum’s scarf; and that will take up the rest of my day, thank you very much. I’ve already handled a chunk of correspondence.

Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Friday and Saturday

This was a heavily scheduled weekend! It made for a long post, so I’m breaking it into two parts: this one (Friday and Saturday), and Sunday.

Going back into last week a bit, the layout of the cello manual is going very well, and it’s looking more and more like a real book. Today I get to finish photo sizing, adjusting placement, and adding captions, and then I have to look at the ordering of sections to maximize the use of the space available so that people don’t have to turn pages in the middle of an exercise or to compare the before/after kinds of photos.

The landlord is currently here, patching holes made by the plumber who had to come in to handle a leak last week. We averted disaster by moving things in the basement and setting up buckets and giant Tupperware storage containers underneath the buckling ceiling, because it was coming down at some point; the only question was when. Fortunately HRH got home in time to take a drill to the bending gyprock and drain it safely, and only our bathroom sink was out of commission (a pipe rusted through between the sink and the main drainpipe, so when the sink drained it flowed out a no-longer-existent join and poured right down inside the wall; fun).

We upgraded our ISP plan last week too, because we’re really being dinged for bandwidth use. We were looking at alternative to Sympatico, because my Sympatico address doesn’t work and hasn’t for a year; they claim it’s all right on their end and all the fixes we’ve tried on our own and via customer service have been useless. I’ve phased use of the address out, but there’s a SMTP issue as well that doesn’t allow me to use Sympatico server to send my domain e-mail since I switched to the Mac, but I’m phasing a lot of those out as well, so it’s less of an issue. We were more concerned about being charged a fee for change of service in the first year with a new company, as we’ll be moving to the south shore at some point, so when Sympatico confirmed that an upgrade wouldn’t be considered a new plan, we decided it was easier. The new wireless modem we ordered to go with it arrived on Friday but I haven’t set it up yet, figuring that if something goes wrong I’ll want it to happen after I’ve finished the layout on the cello manual and sent it to Emily for approval today. So the modem switch currently scheduled for tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to being able to use my laptop in bed, and the Touch anywhere in the house.

And last but not least, also on Friday we got the appointment to register the boy in kindergarten at the school right around the corner from his current preschool, and if the stars align his teacher may very well be one of the educators who was doing a stage in his preschool last year. I’ve tracked down all the papers we need, and the appointment also covers applyign for the certificate of eligibility for English instruction (bless my mother who has lept every single report card I have ever gotten, from elementary through high school; not only that but my parents had my own certificate of eligibilty in their safety deposit box, so I’ll bring that to the appointment as well). We were all misty-eyed; he cannot possibly be old enough to get on a school bus without us and go to school already. We were concerned about the living here and registering in a school in another zone under another school board entirely, but they didn’t bat an eyelash and said that if we hadn’t moved by the time school begins, we’d just have to be responsible for getting him there and taking him home every day. As this is essentially what we do every day as it is, there isn’t an issue.

Saturday morning I had my weekly cello lesson, where we worked on musicality, using the Lully Gavotte as the focus. I learned a tonne of stuff about using the weight of my bow arm and staying in the string, which was really nice considering I hadn’t worked on my lesson stuff at all during the week. (There was lots of work, and orchestra, and I looked at the orchestra stuff and not the lesson stuff, okay?) We looked at the Boccherini minuet, which I’m starting next, and talked about my solo for the spring recital; I think I’m going to do the Bach Gavotte in C minor. HRH dropped me off at my lesson and while I was there he took the boy to get his hair cut, then picked up birthday presents for a party happening next weekend. They came back to get me and we dropped a snowsuit off in Pointe-Claire for a little boy coming over from England next month (half an hour early, argh, but my lesson didn’t go twenty minutes overtime the way it usually does), drove home to drop off the cello, and then we went to get groceries. Back home we did a whirlwind cleaning session, had lunch, then the boy napped; under duress, but he did, thank goodness. When he woke up we took him over to the local grandparents’ place for his very first sleepover ever, which was very exciting. Back home I made a scallop gratin with extra butter and garlic, and spooned the extra sauce over pasta for a very nice and easy supper. Then I started getting ready to go out to Capricornucopia, the annual January cooperative playwriting and -staging extravaganza hosted by various friends born in January, with audience participation.

While I was getting ready my cell phone beeped, telling me that I had a text message. I don’t get many of those, so I went to check it out, and when I read it I laughed and laughed. During the week a friend had asked if I’d be interested in recording a message to be used in a game he was running on the weekend, in which key information and plot points would be delivered to the players. I agreed, he sent me a script, and we discussed different ways of recording it. The Mac mini has proved recalcitrant in recording till now, refusing to recognise my microphones or pickups, but I had the idea of using the MiniDisc in record mode as a sort of preamp while running GarageBand, and it actually worked. I sent the first message to him in mp3 format, and it had worked so well that he had the idea of recording a longer sequel message to be accessed by the players if they got to that point in the game and needed the next set of information. Well, evidently they did, because the text message I received Saturday evening was from one of the players, sent in character, thanking me for the tip. And since the point of the first message was to maintain cell phone silence so they couldn’t be traced, I texted back that I’d told them not to use cell phones, which the GM tells me got a good laugh from the players. It was a lot of fun to do, and I’m told that the players not only didn’t recognise my voice (which boggles my mind, as many of them know me, but pleases me as well) but thought the recording quality comparable to a video game tutorial or something. I am terribly chuffed. I am also glad that we did this only a couple of days before the actual game, because I don’t think the GM or I would have been able to keep the secret much longer than that.

We then headed out to Capricornucopia, which was wonderful because we got to see people we don’t see often enough, as well as people we see often but always enjoy seeing more of. This year’s play was a Choose Your Own Adventure style, where the playwrights had chosen key points at which the audience voted, and the actors were given different scenes to follow according to the audience’s vote. It was ambitious, and hilarious, and featured on the spot singing, dance numbers, and jazz hands (because jazz hands make everything better).

Afterward t! and Jan came home with us and slept over.

More! Go on to Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Sunday

First Finished Yarn of 2010

It’s a 36-yard sample, but still; finished yarn, yay!

Half-ounce of oatmeal BFL (which seems to be more of a grey-brown, really) spun as a single, semi-woolen draw on the 1:5.5 ratio, around 11 wpi after blooming. I expected it to be thicker than 11 wpi; it looked loftier on the bobbin, less so after skeining. I really did think I was spinning a thicker than heavy-worsted single, so I’ll be trying again. I must draft even less. The yarn is nice, soft, and bouncy, though, and certainly my best single so far in that it stays together. It was fun deliberately trying to shock it between hot and cold water while setting the twist, and agitating it to felt it ever so slightly so that it would be less likely to drift apart. It does vary a small bit between thick and thin, though; I’m not as consistent in the self-contained single department as I am in the thinner-single-to-be-plied department.

Why does damp BFL smell better than any other damp wool?

Fifty-Five Months Old!

It was Christmas, which always kind of decimates the January monthly post. The boy had a terrific holiday season, ranging from Santa to various parties at school and with friends, such as the godfamily singalong. He helped make cookies and pies, and to prepare meals, and was very helpful in general. He really got into the spirit of things, and having a four-year-old child in the house means you can’t help but get into the spirit along with them. He’s still a little unclear on the concept of a secret, though, and was so excited that he would often run up to people and say, “We got you a present, and it’s [insert gift here]”. Fortunately we did a lot of clapping hands over ears or mouth, and what bits of information managed to escape were either missed by the giftees or were about gifts the recipient already knew about.

He was terrific about opening gifts this year. Last year he was ill and lost interest in the process, and at recent birthdays he’d been more excited about ripping the paper off and seeing what was inside before jumping immediately to the next gift. This year, though, he returned to his previous behaviour of opening and playing with the item inside, exploring it thoroughly before moving on to the next thing. Unless it was clothes, of course, which didn’t interest him much at the time, but he was been enjoying them very much as we take new shirts and socks out of the drawers come time to get dressed of a morning. He got piles of new books (we had to remove the basket of toys on the bottom shelf of his bookcase in order to make room for them), clothes, and a few very carefully selected toys. This was a Star Wars Christmas in a couple of ways: we got him the Clone Wars animated movie, and the local grandparents gave him a ship from the Clone Wars line. It was also a Lego Christmas, as he got kits from the upstairs neighbours, the Oakville grandparents, and MLG.

And holy cats, the progress he’s making on following directions in those kits. On the harder kits we’ve been getting him to sort the blocks and help put together the simpler parts while we assemble the bulk of the unit, but he got a kit of small work vehicles on Christmas day and he pretty much followed the pictograms to assemble one on his own, being talking through the harder bits by myself or HRH. It’s thrilling to watch that kind of thought process, the ability to turn a picture into a fine motor process with actual three-dimensional items.

He got very upset about our Christmas tree. You see, we left on the 23rd, and there was no point leaving it up while we were gone; for one thing, it would be prime cat disaster material, and for another, it would be a fire hazard. We got it early in order to enjoy it for two weeks, planning to take it down the night before we left. The boy cried and cried, and said that he wanted to keep it, and that Santa had to put presents under our tree. (He was going to put presents under the tree at the house we’d be in on Christmas, we pointed out, but this did not calm the angst about whose tree under which Santa would be placing whose presents.)

It’s winter, and there’s snow, which means he’s ecstatic about being outside and rolling around in the stuff. Back when the local grandparents bought him the wagon for his second birthday, we asked them to get one that could be converted to a sled of sorts by switching the wheels for skis. For the first time this winter HRH swapped them out, with the boy’s help, and the boy has been gleefully dragging it all over the yard. They took it down to the corner store, and while it bumps and scratches on the barer patches of the sidewalk it really flies when it’s on snow. It’s like a new toy. Also in backyard news, the slide from the back deck has been built again, this year with extra banking so that when the boy goes down on his saucer he really zings around the perimeter of the yard and ends up pretty much at the base of the stairs to the upper apartment. He only has to get up, grab the saucer, and drag it a couple of feet to the deck stairs, drag it up the steps, and he’s ready to launch himself off the back deck again.

His nap is officially being phased out. He naps only twice a week at school now, otherwise staying awake through the general rest time in another room with an educator and his best friend at preschool, working on letters and words and reading. Unless, of course, he very obviously needs a nap, in which case he has a lie-down. At home we’re playing it by ear. If he’s running on high, then we do the nap thing in order to give him a break. If he’s fine, then we carry on without it.

With zero surprise to any of us, the new TMBG album has been a super hit. So much so that after owning it for three days he was singing a good chunk of the songs and acting out the videos. They’re doing a dinosaur unit at preschool this month, and he informed one of his educators that he was going to be a paleontologist when he grew up. “Ah,” she said to the educator who had been running the material, “so you’ve gotten to the paleontology part of the unit?” “No,” said the dino-unit educator. “We haven’t.” And they both just looked at the boy, who went on to burble happily about what paleontologists do.

We’re about to embark on the kindergarten open house merry-go-round, which terrifies me to a small degree. I happened to see an ad in the local paper for one this past week, so I casually looked it up and discovered that kindergarten registration happens at the beginning of February. In two weeks. With education being a provincial responsibility, and children being on the civil roll, one would think the government would think to point out the necessity of upcoming registration via mail, but apparently not; one is supposed to pick this up by osmosis or something. Perhaps daycares generally mention it, but the other kids in preschool with the boy have siblings so everyone else knows, and mentioning it to us may have slipped his educator’s mind. We’ve already missed the open houses for the more exclusive schools (last November, how helpful), so now we get to catch what we can. And there’s the added tangle of moving at an undetermined time this summer to be closer to HRH’s job (and oh, the money we will save on gas alone) so will there be problems registering for a school in anther zone and under another school board’s aegis while we’re still living here? The Internet is remarkably unhelpful in this respect. Actually, the Internet is remarkably unhelpful about the whole kindergarten issue; I am mostly directed to contact individual schools. Which makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose, but isn’t comforting at all for someone who likes to research intensively before walking into an actual person-to-person encounter. I hate not having information. I’m also told by the Internet that I should have obtained a certificate of eligibility for instruction in English a year ago to make sure we have one on time in case there are bureaucratic issues, which is not constructive in the least. If I don’t know I have to do it, I can’t do it. It will all work out, I’m sure. I’m just going to quietly deal with anxiety attacks here in the corner until it is.

And finally, the other big news of the month is the removal of the back of the car seat to make it a booster seat only! This is a huge relief for everyone. The boy is at a height and weight where it’s possible, and it’s much less fuss. We’re all thankful.

Weekend Roundup

After being sick for a whole week, I’m grateful for a fabulous weekend. Friday was good; I ate bland food cautiously, but did a whole editing pass on the cello manual, got an hour and a half of practice in, yogaed, and even played some Wii sports that night after the boy went to bed (had the achy muscles the next day to prove it, too).

Saturday morning I had my first cello lesson of the year, and it went well. This may have had something to do with the hour and a half of work I did on Friday reacquainting myself with book 3, or the beautiful weather (cold, but sunny and still) but whatever the reason, I was in a terrific mood, and pulled off a decent Gavotte. We then filled my slate with working on the musicality of the Gavotte, the 3rd pos Ruined Castle tonalisation, and the Boccherini minuet. (Good grief, what is the Boccherini doing so early in book 3?) And with the pile of work we have to do for orchestra, that’s going to be plenty. When one’s teacher shakes her head over the orchestra material and says, “This is going to be a challenging programme,” you know you’re in for it. I’ve been very afraid to look at the orchestra material. As much as I love it all, it’s hard, and I know that means I will love it less very soon, and least of all right before the concert. It will take a couple of months before I enjoy it again.

I also have to keep reminding myself that the work I’m doing in the Suzuki material is supplementing my orchestral development in particular, and my musicality in general. It’s not like I’ve never used third position, or extended shifts, or seen these keys before. I’ve reviewing things I’ve learned elsewhere, and using simpler pieces to work bits of technique and provide a relatively easy environment to play with musical expression. I need to get past the oddness of telling people that I’m on book three, but I’ve been playing for fifteen years. (Whoa; I just checked, and I started in July 1994. That means we’re rapidly coming up on sixteen years.)

I’d intended to run a couple of errands on the way home but I’d forgotten that I’d have a cello in the car, so I rescheduled them for later in the day and made a cake when I got home instead. After the boy’s nap we all headed out for the errands and checked a couple of shops for a Star Wars action figure the boy has been hunting for, I made a pile of photocopies at the office supply shop (and picked up some tags for my skeins, although I forgot the larger binder I needed for my cello lesson material, grr), and then we went to the library. I scored a pile of books, among them a new Timothy Findley collection. One stops watching for new books to be published when an author dies, so this one slipped past my radar when it came out in 2004. Hurrah for libraries that actually keep up on Canadian lit! This is called Journeyman, and is a collection of articles and personal journal entries by Findley and edited by his partner, Bill Whitehead. It’s a nice companion to In Memory and From Stone Orchard.

The boy and I mixed a rub for the pork roast when we got home (dijon, flour, salt and pepper, various herbs) and the boy painted it on very intently. Then we made icing for the cake and frosted it (with an icing-sugar rescue from the upstairs neighbours, bless them). The boy put sugar sprinkles shaped like yellow baby chicks on the top (part of an animal set we’d bought to decorate one of his birthday cakes; the set had fish, dinosaurs, pigs, and chicks) and was delighted with the effect. The roast was fabulous, but the potatoes not so much; they’re a floury potato instead of a waxy kind, so I didn’t get the texture I was going for at all. And the gravy separated when I put the cold juices in, almost curdling, and it never got back to what I wanted it to be, either. It all tasted fine, of course. The cake was delicious, and was 95% gone twenty-four hours later.

Sunday morning we made pancakes for brunch, and then Ceri picked the boy and I up and we went to Ariadne Knits, our favourite local yarn shop, to play. I registered for the Spinning 102 class at the end of the month (exotic fibres, open to wheel spinners, not just spindlers, hurrah!), petted the Hound spindles but was steadfast in my resolution to not try one (the fifty dollars can go other places, like towards that workshop, or fibre, or, you know, groceries), and got most of the order I’d placed in November! My tencel and oatmeal BFL came in, as did the BFL/silk blend (soft, soft, soft!), but they’d been sent the wrong size of high-speed bobbin, alas, so the one thing I was really, really hoping for was not there.

We knitted for a while and chatted with MA. I worked on the boy’s scarf; he did one whole stitch on his own and then bounded off to play with storage cones again. The boy played very well with the toys on the shelf and the books (“Can you read this to me, Mama?” “Um, it’s German.” “Oh. Then I’ll read it.”) and the games on his camera. When it was time to leave he reluctantly got dressed and packed to go, and when we were home we hauled Ceri in for tea and cake, and we all knitted some more. I have now knitted back all the stuff I’d frogged on Mum’s silk scarf and beyond. There’s only 0.2 of an oz left (which is what, five grams?) and while that sounds like nothing, it’s a pretty fine yarn and so there’s more than you’d think. That tiny ball of yarn feels like it hasn’t gone anywhere, though, which is understandable, I suppose; after knitting a couple of feet over Christmas I ignored it for a week, and then adding and frogging fiveish inches this past week means it’s stayed pretty static overall.

I decided to make spaghetti for last night’s dinner, and that was delicious, too. I have just discovered that crushing a final clove of garlic and stirring it in just before serving the sauce adds a very nice flavour. It was a very good weekend food-wise… no, it was a good weekend all around. I’m very thankful for it; I really needed one.

In Which She Rejoices And Admits A Puzzling Oversight

I just found 1.2 oz of yarn I’d spun for Devon’s wrap at the bottom of a box, all wound into a cake. I must have split the bigger of my two skeins into two balls, for a total of three balls, and when I got near the end of the second ball I must have remembered that I’d spun two skeins, so I thought I’d used up all my yarn.

I feel a wee bit like an idiot, but I’m so thrilled to have it that I’m not engaging in as much self-flagellation as I otherwise might.

I have yaaaaarn! I can finish the wrap!

(Yes, yes, I know I am ignoring the silk scarf, which ought to be finished first. Ssh. I will probably be responsible and finish the silk scarf anyway before powering through the final third of the wrap. Perhaps this will give me the added incentive to finish knitting it up. That is, if I stop making mistakes that requires frogging multiple inches at a time. *insert expression of irritation here*)

Mending

I feel so much better today than I have felt for the past four days. I spent the majority of yesterday on the couch watching a season’s worth of Slings & Arrows and not feeling guilty about it, which is testament to my state of illness. I didn’t even knit while I watched; I just lay there. When my work ethic doesn’t have the heart to lay a guilt trip on me, I know I’m really sick.

Today I’m going to do the text edit on the cello book and send it for approval, then set it all in the fonts Emily and I have chosen to see how it works. If that’s a go, then I can start resizing and placing photos and really playing with layout. (I love how I just toss off the text edit bit; in truth it will take all of today and possibly part of Monday, because it has to do with moving bits around and working out subheadings and things as well as line editing.)

I need to finish the laundry, and play the cello at some point today, too, as I have my first lesson of the year tomorrow morning.