Most of you know I’m interested in odd kinds of instruments. When I say odd, I don’t mean out of the ordinary; I mean things you can’t get easily and are stupidly expensive, and even if you could get one you’d have a hell of a time trying to find a local teacher for it. Like a harpsichord. Like a viol (AKA viola de gamba).
Like this seven-course Renaissance lute.
Repeat after me: Autumn has no time. Autumn has no money. Autumn should stop subscribing to Craigslist RSS feeds.
I played the 7/8 yesterday for my entire practise time. It was that good. Usually I get frustrated with the lack of response I expect to get and switch back to my own instrument.
It’s… resonant. A bit less clear on the C string, but that can be adjusted. It has really nice tone colour. There’s a good balance across the four strings, nice response, and did I mention it’s resonant? Holy cow. There were times when it sounded uncannily like my cello. In general it sounded much, much more developed than the last one. At least, it sounded that way from behind the instrument. We’ll see what happens when I cart it to my lesson Friday night.
I kept hitting adjacent strings because the bridge/fingerboard combo is less curved than mine. I initially thought I’d want that increased but then realised that most cellists probably wish it was the other way around in order to use the minimum amount of effort/energy possible in switching strings. It’s even easier to play than the last one in a physical way, too; the action is even sweeter. (The action was pretty much the only thing I liked about the last one.) What I find interesting is that they’re both 2007 instruments, so they’re roughly eighteen months old, and yet this one sounds so much more played-in. Just goes to show how wide a variety you can find within the same model and production year.
I’m looking forward to hearing it played by my teacher. You hear completely different things when you’re sitting in front of the instrument being played than what you hear from behind it.
And now that I’m potentially close to finding The One True 7/8, I’m panicky. I don’t really need to change instruments. I love how my instrument sounds, and I like how it handles. (I may just be used to it; a 7/8 might handle even better once I adjust to it.) What if I switch and it’s a bad decision? (I sell the 7/8 privately and don’t take much of a loss on it because 7/8s are hard to find, or even sell it back to the luthier for not much of a loss.)
I took pictures last night because she’s really, really pretty. I spent more time that I ought to have because I couldn’t really capture the colour correctly. But here’s an idea of what she looks like. The first picture is the standard comparison shot of my 4/4 and the trial 7/8 (standard, ha; I haven’t done this since I brought the first one home last July, but it shows you the colour difference and reminds you of the proportion differences as well; it may not look like much in this tiny pic but click and you’ll see there’s about an inch of difference at the base, a half-inch at the top of the body, and a good inch of the scroll). The second is a full shot of how she looks, and the third is a close-up of her ‘dimples.’ I’ve touched up the last one colour-wise to give you a better idea of her true colour:
I’ve just realised something: I’ve started calling the cello ‘her’ instead of ‘it.’ That’s the first time this has happened. Hmm. This could be dangerous. (Or appropriate. Who knows?)
And now to shift topics entirely: I have realised that I have not yet given any kind of review of my stand mixer. That’s mainly because all I’ve used it for so far is to mix and knead bread dough. It does this very, very well indeed. I am positively in love with how easily the dough slides off the dough hook after the kneading is finished. It mixes and kneads very well, yielding a satiny smooth dough that rises and bakes up nicely. I do miss kneading by hand, but being able to watch the dough hook do it is the next best thing. First of all, it isn’t hidden away like dough inside the bread machine is, so I get to watch it and it’s strangely relaxing. The hook really does a nice job gathering it up and constantly rolling it around. It also doesn’t make an unholy banging noise the way the machine does. I’m also fully in control of how long the kneading process goes on for.
I do like the way the head lifts, and how the different beater attachments go on and off; it’s all very simple and well-thought out. All the attachments and the bowl are super easy to clean, thank goodness. So far I’m very impressed. The only drawback I’ve found so far is that the thing weighs a bloody tonne, and because I don’t have space near an outlet in which to store it, I have to lift it and move it when I want to use it. I only need to move it a couple of feet but the height of the counter robs me of most of my lifting power, and there’s that fibro thing too. I may look for a power bar with an extra-long extension cord for the kitchen.
That’s all from here at the moment.
So that one-page brief overview of a topic that I was asked to write for inclusion in a private collection of educational material turned into a two-page intro plus a page of sources.
Yeah, I know. But it was all important.
And I found a newly published book on the subject that I need to read, too! When I have money to buy books online again, that is.
Just another day here, Gentle Readers. Tired, achy, cold the usual. Only more because the after-effects of the flu are still dogging me.
In the Good News column, I finished and uploaded my freelance assignment yesterday (it was like beating my head against a brick wall; you all know how I feel about plagiarism, and this project quoted pages and pages of another book and blew right past the concept of Fair Use, while merrily paraphrasing other original material without attribution) and I finished my first pass through the galleys of the book this morning. Now I’m doing my second quick pass to make sure the edits I’ve made aren’t stupid (and have caught a couple where I phrased the requested correction badly, thereby demonstrating that my second pass is indeed necessary). Once that’s handed in early this afternoon I’ll have to move on to the next two things on my to-do list. One is an interview for an online community, and the other is a private pro bono one-page thing to write that has repeatedly been dropped down on the list of things to do because it’s non-paying. If I can get all that done today I’m free Wednesday and Thursday to work on my own stuff. Except it’s highly unlikely that finishing both today will happen. I need to do some cello work too, both on mine and the current trial 7/8 (Cello 7, for those of you with scorecards at home).
In the meantime, what I want to be doing is knitting my lap blanket. Except I do not yet have the needles or the yarn for it. Stupid space-time continuum, messing up my plans. Well, the boy and I are home together Friday, so I have proposed a trip to the bookstore for him if he comes yarn-trawling in places like Zellers with me. (Me, the bookstore? It doesn’t have the book I’m looking for. Bah. Although I do need to get a miniature wall calendar for my office wall.)
ETA: Aaaaand… as of 12:14 PM I am done, done, done! The proofs have been sent back and I am going to reward myself with a half-hour of browsing through colour cards for yarn to try narrowing down my yarn and colour choices for the lap blanket. The I think I’ll work simultaneously on the interview and research the one-page history. (In other words, I’m going to have two documents open at the same time and use one to work-avoid the other. This is a technique that actually works sometimes.)
Cello 1: Eastman VC-100 (May 2008, La maison du violon Longueuil) [balanced tone? brown-amber varnish, in-shop trial only]
Cello 2: Scarlatti (May 2008, Wilder & Davis) [in-shop trial only; oil varnish with pronounced grain]
Cello 3: Eastman VC-100 (July 2008, La maison du violon Longueuil) [just didn’t grab me, orange-red varnish]
Cellos 4 and 5: Jay Haide (July 2008, The Soundpost) [in-shop trial only]
Cello 6: Eastman VC-100 EA-78-954 (December 2008, La maison du violon Longueuil) [unfocused, bleh tone, stuffy, dull]
Cello 7: Eastman VC-100 EA-78-1460 (January 2009, La maison du violon Longueuil)
I originally titled this post my usual Weekend Roundup before I realised that I’d already covered Saturday on, well, Saturday. I so rarely journal on weekends. Anywhats!
Sunday was… interesting. I want to say fun but there was Tired and Lingering Illness involved, which is never fun. I woke up with the boy around six-thirty and he tried to snuggle in bed with us but kept waking himself up by coughing or trying to pet the cat, so around seven HRH got up and took him off to do morning stuff. I rolled over and got another two hours of sleep, which I desperately needed to help kick the stupid flu. When I woke up again at nine I thought that I’d have a leisurely morning with a cup of tea and maybe knitting in the sun, but around nine-forty-five I walked into my office to get something and saw a stack of books with a sticky note on top, which reminded me that the boy and I were due to pick Paze and Devon up and go to register for the new monthly children’s Pagan playgroup that’s just starting up. Ack! So I called Paze to push our meeting time back, packed up the box of books I was donating to the resource centre, and threw the boy into his snowsuit. The info session was fabulous; not only did the kids have a fun time exploring the room, meeting other children, dancing, drawing, and playing with various things like masks and the drum, but I discovered that one of the educators running the group is a wonderful woman I know from some of my workshops a few years ago. It was marvelous to see her, and to know that she and her equally delightful co-educator were handling the group in every way I could have thought fun and appropriate. Even better, while parents will attend the first session along with the kids to help ease them into the routine, we get to drop them off for subsequent sessions, which means Paze and I get a child-free coffee date once a month!
The major drawback to the morning out was that I took my glasses off to wash my face before I left and forgot to put them back on. I only noticed when I was halfway to Paze’s house, after my right eye had felt like it was working harder than the left. I’m still not used to wearing glasses full-time. (I thought I’d been wearing them for about nine months and was at a loss to explain the not-used-to-it-yet-ness, but a quick search of my archives reveals that I didn’t get them till the end of August, so it’s only been four months. Okay. That’s not so bad.)
Sunday afternoon I went through the Nigella Bites cookbook that Aurora lent to me, and we made tiny pork meatballs and tomato sauce from it for supper. In return I gave her a pile of beginner flute books on permanent loan to help fuel her newly rediscovered passion for her flute after taking several years off. I am thoroughly enjoying being a music-enabler for people. I stopped by my luthier this weekend to drop off the last trial 7/8 (you know, the one I got in early December that was due back the 26th, but they were closed for two weeks? Yeah, that one.) and it turned out that they had a new 7/8 that had arrived, so we just switched the cellos in the case, scratched out the old serial number and entered the new one on the trial contract, and I went back home with another cello. (I’d kind of been looking forward to having only one instrument case in my office, but hey, I take the 7/8s when I can get them because they’re hard to find.) I took it out as soon as we got home and it’s just lovely: a deep chestnutty-red colour (none of the orange stuff I dislike!) with two little knots on the front that look like dimples. It’s certainly my second favourite-looking instrument so far in this epic search, the first being the chocolate-amber one that was bought out from under me back in May. I played the first section of the Lee sonata, and from what I can hear from behind it the sound is nice, too — much more focused than the last 7/8, and certainly well-balanced across all four strings. We’ll see what happens when I bring it to my next lesson and my teacher plays it for me so I can hear what it sounds like from in front of the instrument instead of behind it.
Once the boy was in bed HRH and I headed out to the initial session of the first RPG I’ve been involved with in two moves. (I can’t remember what that translates to in years. Long enough that I have no idea where my dice went.) I baked focaccia, which vanished awfully quickly (note to self: next time do a double batch), and brought my knitting, which turned out to be a brilliant move on my part. I got a good quarter of Bodhifox‘s hat done, finishing the bronze portion and switching to the blue. (I may have done about five rows too many of the bronze; we’ll see. It won’t matter in the long run, but at the moment I am critical of the decision to do a full four inches instead of three and a half.) It was great, because I got work done and could focus on what was going on in everyone else’s turn in a way that I hadn’t expected, and didn’t get bored or drift off to sleep (not from the lack of interest in the story, but from Teh Tired and Sique). Knitting keeps one part of my brain busy as well as my fingers, so my mind doesn’t wander from what’s going on. It’s really interesting. The only drawback is that I’m mildly concerned that I may distract other players, although Karine did make a successful roll to save against Fascinating Shiny Things when the flashing needles began to relax her overmuch. Too bad I didn’t get to the row where I needed to start decreasing, because she wanted to know how that would happen.
(I suspect I will be knitting many scarves. Or maybe I’ll find the yarn for my lap blanket before the next month’s session and work on that, because it will be straight stockinette and easy to do while being engaged in other things. Yes, the lap blanket it shall be.)
It felt really, really good to be sitting in the room with close friends, working through a story together, even if my rolls did suck. I need to get myself back into rolling-multiple-consecutive-sixes-on-my-Force-die fighting trim. Also, steampunkian horror with an awesome soundtrack! What’s not to love?
I am cautiously optimistic about the day. I feel not quite at one hundred percent, but pretty close. I’m still cold, but that’s not unusual at the tail end of any illness of mine. My chest doesn’t hurt when I breathe any more, which is very welcome indeed. So I’m going to close a few tabs in my browser and make myself another pot of tea, go curl up in the living room in the sun, and finished the freelance assignment that’s due today. Tomorrow I finish and hand in the proofs of the book, and then the next two days are scheduled to work on Orchestrated. As a test run my cello lessons have been switched to alternate Friday nights and Saturday mornings, so I have all day on Thursday to work for now.
I think that’s it. Have an excellent day, Gentle Readers.
This is going to be a short one because Christmas happened, so there was lots of other stuff journaled about the boy to refer to if you want update-type stuff.
Poor kid, he was sick on Christmas Day, then sick with bad colds not once but twice in the next ten days. It made for a very tense holiday period because we couldn’t toss him out in the snow the way we wanted to. So there was a lot of book-reading and movie-watching instead. This is the month that will be remembered as the month the boy officially entered the world of Harry Potter. Sure, he’s kind of known about it before, but this month he watched the first two films (Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Express, and Harry Potter and the Flying Car. What, you know them by different names?) and really got into them. He can name all the houses and identify that he’s a Gryffindor (“That’s the house I live in!”). The basilisk in Chamber of Secrets makes him a bit anxious, but he’s pretty brave about it. Of course, being brave means watching the snake from behind a chair or casually from around the corner in th hall, but he does it. The other day he requested a lightning-shaped scar drawn on his forehead, which e wouldn’t allow to be washed off for three days. He then dashed around with a rolled-up piece of paper in the shape of a wand, pointing it at things and saying ‘magic words’ that resembled people’s names from the Potterverse. This exchange occurred in my office:
MAMA: Wow. What was that?
SPARKY: That was my magic wand! Look, all the letters are gone from there!
MAMA: Uh-oh!
SPARKY: Yeah!
MAMA: Well, can you put them back now?
SPARKY: [earnestly] No! They’re all in the wand! And I don’t know how to get them out!
(I see through you, small child. I know you’re trying to get me to stop working to play with you. )
We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series of books, and he’s really getting into them. (I, on the other hand, am going crazy with all the sentence fragments, and am calling a halt to the month-long odyssey at the end of this story arc.) He’s getting better at reading, too. He can somewhat reliably read ‘cat,’ ‘dog,’ ‘in,’ ‘out,’ ‘wow,’ ‘mouse,’ ‘book,’ ‘train,’ ‘Canada’ (you had to know that one would be among the first words read), ‘home,’ and others I’m forgetting. I think we’ll try the Nate the Great series next. I tried reading him the first Time Warp Trio but his sense of humour isn’t quite there yet.
We are encountering the three-year-old push for independence and control of his environment. There’s a lot of “no” and “after I finish this” and “no, you do it,” which are fine in some contexts and just sheer frustration in most others. We know he’s being better-behaved at school than he is at home, and it’s somewhat frustrating to hear people say, “But he’s such a thoughtful, well-behaved, polite child!” Yes, we know that, and it would be nice if he demonstrated some of that at home these days. I know he’s working things out, and pushing to ascertain boundaries, and testing structures to make sure they’re consistent, but wow, it gets old fast.
He has joined the first-ever local pagan three-to-nine-year-old kids’ circle, and had a blast at the first introductory session with masks and the drum and snacks. I’m so excited about this, because he’ll hear about elements and deities and seasons and cultural celebration from someone who isn’t me, so he’s more likely to listen. (It’s just the nature of things, and I understand that.) And at school they’re doing a month-long unit on sound and music, so he comes home with all sorts of little tidbits of information there too.
The other day he picked up two bits of thread from his snowsuit and twiddled them together in his fingers. “I’m knitting!” he told HRH when he glanced in the rearview mirror. HRH told me this story when they got home and I couldn’t help but think of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe story about Sam and his hockey team knitting. He’s bright, he’s eager to learn, and I’m sure it won’t take long before he’s wrapping string around sticks and somehow managing a rough approximation of a knitted object.
Other Liam-themed posts this past month:
– Mama is cool because she has awesome movie music
– Liam rediscovers The Philosopher’s Stone
– poor Liam is sick on Christmas Day