pentatonic wonders

I've seen this video several times before, but it is SO worth sharing. Particulary in our current mindset of budget cuts which directly affect the arts in most cases.

vespers

was nice.... I got to sit with my friend Marly.. whom I haven't seen since Election Day 2008.... That seems too long ago! There was something missing this year though... wish I could put my finger on it. It could be my Bah Humbug spirit :-|~

I had started the Chickadee cowl in a Tahki bulky weight varigated wool. My 10.5 needles are all busy.. so I started it on 10s... got about 2 inches finished and decided it needs a larger needle..... After I got home I cast on again on size 11 and the diffference is just amazing.


Off to make the grocery list for tmrw.... need to finish the packing peanut garland tonight.... and maybe figure out if I can put the accompaniments into the slide show.. (that would really be awesome!)

i <3 this man

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

the color purple

is fortunately one of my favorites. There's nothing wrong with my hand... just the remnants of tie-dying 85 shirts and cleaning up after removing my gloves. That is really the worst of it.


But tomorrow, my hair will be purple. I challenged my kids 10 weeks ago to raise money in a penny war against the other elementary school to be donated to Relay for Life (their colors are purple and white) in the town I teach. They didn't meet the outrageous goal i originally set, but with one day to go and only $60 to break $1000, I told them if they broke the thousand mark, I'd dye at least a portion of my hair purple. Well the teachers in my school were more than willing to kick in their fair share.... $75 to be exact... but I didn't let the kids know... if each kid brought in 10 pennies, we would break the $60 that they thought they needed. That's the announcement I made Thursday just before dismissal. The local grocery store donated $100.... but my students brought in, IN ONE DAY, $214 and change.... and almost all of that was in pennies!!!!

This is to kick off the joint elementary chorus concert that will take place next Tuesday and the them is We Can Make A Difference.
The repertoire:

• Get On Your Feet
  
• With My Own Two Hands - from the Curious George movie
  
• Turn The World Around
  
• Child of the Universe
  
• Under the Same Sun
  
• Bridges
  
• We Are the World
  
• Ripple - my principal's request
  
• One Small Step
  
• Gonna Build High Hopes - my arrangement of High Hopes and Gonna Build a Mountain
  
• Cantare Cantaras
  
• Give A Little Love
  
• I am but a Small Voice
  
• Power of One by Bomshel

Most of these songs are taken directly from the music text we use by Silver Burdett
Making Music series but there are a few we stuck in that aren't that fit the bill as well.

The kids are so psyched. I'm a bit nervous but hope they'll sing well... this is our first joint effort. I have to play guitar on With my own 2 hands and piano on We are the World. I don't mind either... but am taking my own guitar so my fingers aren't bloody stubs when I finish... because the piano at the school we're going will certainly finish them off... the action is unbearably poor, way to stiff for my taste.

OK... off to knit a newsboy hat for DS1's music concert. I have to put their costumes together in 2 days... He's to dress like the 1920s and DD like the 1900s... I'll put pictures up of how I accomplish that... I'm a bit excited. Just wish I had started earlier... but that sums me up!!!!!

happy crafting

wowza

DH and I went to hear Denyce Graves in recital last night at Moravian College. It was an incredible performance. The woman commands such stage presence and conveys the message of the song or aria so believably through her acting. I was completely enthralled. Her accompanist Brian Zeger was amazing as well. The collaboration between the two was so evident. It was the highlight of my musical year so far. Thanks honey for insisting that we go and finding the way to make it happen. You're a dream!
The program you ask?
Schubert Heimliches Lieben, Der Tod und das Mädchen, Gretchen am Spinnrade
Brahms Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen Meine Liebe is grun, Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer, Die Mainacht
Celia Acerba Volutta from Adrana Lecouvreur
Mascagni Voi le sapete from Cavalleria Rusticana
Robert Saari When the Forsythia Bloom (a cycle from a new composer)
DeFalla Siete canciones populares españolas
A set of spirituals: Scandalize my Name, Prayer, Swing Low and Git on Board
3, yes 3 encores... including Habañera from Carmen by Bizet and two very humorous encores I need a dog and I'm hungry both of which had one foot in the classical realm and the other foot in the musical theatre genre.
The audience was totally engaged. I wasn't alone in my admiration for these artists.


On the knitting front, I present to you:

Pattern: Chinese Waves by Margaret Radcliffe
Size: CO 49 stitches
Yarn: Lily's Sugar 'n Cream
Color: Key Lime Pie
Needles: US6

I am not a real fan of green. I made this for a colleague that I work with. But I have to say that this cloth shouts spring to me and I need that about now. Fortunately I have another skein of this in my stash, cuz I think I'd like one for me too! It's a great pattern for using varigated yarn and this will rank right up there with the infamous DW cloth that I also LOVE to make! I found this pattern through the weekly dishcloth group on ravelry, the place where I spend most of my web time.

I got some yarn from ebay yesterday in the mail. The woman who sold it posted that it smelled of mothballs but there was 500g for $9.99 in a mixed lot of wool so I bit. Before we left for the concert I took the odiforous skeins outside and hung them to air out. I brought them in after returning from work today. Granted it was a very windy, sunny, sometimes snowflurry 24 hours but there is absolutely no remnant of odor on the skeins. DD claimed the lot of this (2OOg of worsted weight) for mittens and a hat There are another 200g in a similar colorway and then 100g of some fun thick and thin mostly browns but with teal yarn.

The cruddy part of the day was the walk through of the construction site where I'll be teaching K and 1st grade music next year. Once again, it's evidenced that our school is the stepchild of the school district. Makes no sense, cuz our kids do as well as if not better than those that come from the Taj Mahal in the country... go figure. One of these days I'll stop sucking on the fuzzy end of the lollipop... they won't care though. I'll just be replace with an incompetant boob and they will be blissfully unaware of the difference. What a shame!

here it is

the cabled headband:

Pattern: ChicKnits Cabled Headband
Yarn: Robin Aran
Needle: US8
Amount of yarn: about 40g needed


I cast this on this morning and was finished early afternoon. That was with 3 kids bugging me the whole time... very easy knit. Not wide enough for my liking, but it's OK to cover the ears. I bought this yarn from ebay long ago when I first started knitting. It's pretty soft too. I blocked it using a lanolin wool wash and it smells good enough to eat now :-)

I hope to finish my SIL's cloths tonight... I had a little delay. When I was putting the kids to bed, I laid down to nurse the littlest and fell asleep for a few hours (oops)

I leave you with a little family musical holiday cheer.

patience...

wish I had some. I think mine is all spent between my kids at school and my kids at home, that there isn't any left for tedious projects of my own. Like figuring out what the heck I did to make this:


Pattern: my own invention
Yarn: Lily's Sugar and Cream
Color: Pumpkin (how appropriate, no?)
Needles: US6 (I used my KPOs... should have used bamboo)

So I made it up as I knitted and since much of that time was while I was holding the door open for the cherubs at the school I work at, or while watching a movie with DH.. I didn't write it down as I went and I'm either too lazy or just don't have the patience to figure it out now...... I thought I would, but I don't I tried twice and frankly, I'm not that interested! Maybe the mood will hit me before I mail it out, but I kind of doubt it. Of course, I could just keep this one and mail out another cloth that I have to her. hehe I just finished it tonight. Now to finish the food item.... I want to mail it all out on Saturday so I can get back to the regularly scheduled knitting and life! Do you think it's worth the time to sit down and count the knits and purls so I can replicate it? or should I just make it up again later?

Two meet the teacher nights this week... UGH... I drove 80 minutes and sat in my room for another 80 for 5 parents to visit on Tuesday and 3 to visit on Wednesday. I ask you, is it truly worth it? Not to mention the havoc it wreaked on my family Tuesday evening....

DD has been complaining of headaches but only at school... is it a ply to get out of class or is there really a problem?
DS1 is worried that he's going to 'get in trouble' His teacher says he's doing great....
My kids want me to homeschool them and I so wish I could. I think they have the fantasy that it would be all play though... and lots of TV and movies.. They'd probably want to go back to their regular school after a day with me as their teacher.

We started listening to Holst's The Planets today. He's my composer of the month since his birthday is the 21st. What an incredible composition. I can't decide which is my favorite movement... although I'm leaning toward Jupiter. The diversity of that movement sets my imagination soaring. Venus is my sleepy time music.. I should play that before I go to bed every night. Just so beautiful..... Thank God for music!

Who has time?

OK.. I have 2 cloths done but no pictures. I have started (finally) the April KAL at Get Stitchy called April Showers. I wanted to do the bath mat in the MDK book but don't have double worsted cotton and couldn't see the joy of holding and knitting with 6 strands of 4 ply regular worsted so I've saved that project for later. Instead I'm using a mix of Peaches and Cream and Sugar and Cream both in beige. to knit the Nana's Bathmat from Lion Brand. I'll do a varigated beige and white for the edges... boring colors I know but the bathroom in the basement is beige and grey, so.....

I'm feeling very tired and sore today... I think I'm fighting off a bug. DH took DS1 to a birthday party for one of his pre-school buddies and DD went along. DS2 is asleep on my lap. I still have a messy kitchen house to clean and income taxes to finish....

Tonight we are going to dinner at the Apollo Grill with a bunch of people from Moravian College music department and a special guest with her husband and caregiver. For some reason one of the FT faculty had an idea to do concerts this year with the theme "Music in the Time of War" DH is the conductor of the Women's chorus and they are performing tomorrow afternoon a concert of music that the women in the POW camp in Sumatra performed during their interment. It's all orchestral music arranged for women's voices without text... The whole story is explained in the book Song of Survival and the resulting film Paradise Road starring Glenn Close... a truly inspiring true tale of how music can touch lives and help keep sanity in times of great duress. Anyway, the special guest at this dinner is one of the survivor's of the camp. It should be interesting.
Now if I could only find a sitter so I can go to the concert!

While arranging for a sitter for this dinner (on the phone), the 3 cherubs were in the family room (in the basement) watching Harry Potter and the goblet of fire when of course what do they see..... a spider, one by one, they came flying up the steps screaming about this spider and how I had to get it. By the time I got off the phone and down there, it was nowhere to be seen. I'm sure in their little minds, it was as large as the spider that speaks in the movie.

The spinning/knitting front is very slow going these days. Too much work and family interferes with time for my latest passions. I have to get moving on the squares for the school project as well. I've been calling them in from the kids to get a count on how many we have. I think some kids absconded with yarn and needles to make stuff for their own agendas... sigh!

I promise some pictures later if not today, definitely tomorrow.
Happy crafting