A Bluestocking Knits

"Forever Plaid"

The cast of "Forever Plaid" on the "Tonight Show" in 1992.  Gosh, the memories this brings back! I don't want to say how many times I saw the show at the Canon in Beverly Hills, but it was a lot more than once.

The album is still a treasure, too --

Some Harry Connick Jr. ...

Catching Up

Good heavens, I'd almost forgotten how to log in to TypePad!

So what have I been doing, you ask, these long months?  Very little knitting, I'm afraid -- two pairs of socks finished, one of which was actually started in January.  Now I am plugging away at half-finished projects, a row at a time, apparently -- Vintage Velvet (wh. for some reason leaves me quite indifferent lately), a Muriwai Bathmat, a Harry Potter scarf in the Ravenclaw colors, not counting the projects that I found under the sofa cushions and stuffed back with a shudder.  I am, however, chain-reading fiction, racing through Joanna Trollope (loved The Men and the Girls), Anita Brookner (until I froze from the chilliness), Kristin Lavransdatter in the Tiina Nunnally translation (miles better than the old one, remind me to expound on this some time), and so many others that suited my fervid fancy at the time that my mind begins to boggle.  I suppose I don't need to explain that I now have two children in school all day.

The Father-in-Law socks, finished at last, during the Summer Olympics.  I was so excited by Michael Phelps' races that despite working exactly the same number of rows on the second sock, it came out noticeably smaller than the first. 

This is Jitterbug in "Blue Parrot" -- a quite apt name, I think.  Vivid isn't in it.  The socks are presently residing in Laura's sock drawer until cooler weather.  And still unmodelled.

We went camping at Lake Tahoe at the end of August with a passle of cousins.  They had just taken the kids down to the beach when we had our first visitor.  This was the baby bear -- mama came back in the middle of the night to rattle the Dumpster.  I actually did not know that a Dumpster could be so very loud.

Am also deep into choir rehearsals, what with our first concert of the season at the end of October.  We are doing, among other things, Benjamin Britten's "Hymn to St. Cecilia" with the small choir, and Monteverdi's "Beatus Vir" and Charles Ives' "Psalm 90" with the big group.  The Britten is lovely and strange, set to a poem by W.H. Auden, and the Monteverdi is just as wonderful as the first time I sang it years ago, and doubtless as wonderful as it was in 1630.  The Ives is seriously weird -- if you don't believe me, look at this --

Why the sopranos got off so easily, I don't know.  Man, that's a lot of notes.  And no help from the orchestra, either.

Tone clusters, Blue Parrots -- I'm seeing an unexpected connection, here, all of a sudden ....

Fruit Coulis

Some knee socks for Julia, Jitterbug in "Fruit Coulis", with a K3, P1, K1, P1 rib, offset by three at the cuff, as in the Yarrow Ribbed Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks, but with a standard slip stitch heel and wedge toe.

The color is even more vivid in real life, I assure you.

I have been listening to a new album of mine, "Le Jour du Poisson" by Thomas Fersen.  He has a song each on two of the French Putomayo albums, "French Playground" and "Paris", both of which albums we listen to quite a lot -- this is how I heard of him.  I find his music fascinating -- melodic and quirky, intelligently crafted, with each song having a character completely its own and yet still recognizably "Fersen".  One song has a klezmer-y feel, another salsa, one a rather thrilling tango, one a lovely lilting piano and orchestra accompaniment that makes it almost a lullaby, another has a rather formal brass band intro and then sweeps in with an unexpectedly charming lounge-singer feel.  Fersen's voice is rough and smoky -- very Gauloise.  I suspect that Fersen's music might bear comparisons to Tim Finn's, also quirky, melodic, and highly intelligent.  Alas, that I do not speak French! for I am somewhat dismayed that I understand very little of Fersen's lyrics -- one of the things I appreciate deeply about Tim Finn is that his lyrics are so interesting (and they rhyme, always for me a sign that the writer has given a lot of thought to what he wants to say) -- but this is certainly my own limitation, and not Fersen's!

Now is the Caroling Season

I'm in the middle of a long week-end of concerts -- well, two, to be honest, but we usually do only one! and so it feels rather intense.  This year we are singing, in addition to some of the wonderful carols from the first volume of "Carols for Choirs", the "Gloria" by Francis Poulenc.  I wasn't so sure about this piece when we sang it some years ago, but it's growing on me.  I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to church music -- sometimes, the more ancient it is, the better!  Well, that's a sweeping generalization, but modern stuff usually leaves me rather cold.  But after six or eight weeks of rehearsals, the Poulenc has gotten fun to sing -- difficult, though, not like, say "Messiah", which is not only possibly my favorite piece ever to sing, out of a very extensive field, but wonderfully sensible.  The Poulenc has some very strange leaps and progressions that puzzle when you are picking them out on the piano, but come together in a surprisingly cinematic way.  In fact, I find myself humming snatches of it and "scoring" movies in my head -- one theme in the "Agnus Dei" sounds rather like a 1930s horror movie, frightening and poignant at the same time, the "Domine Deus Unigenite" is quite rollicking, even "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", and the last movement, with its dreamy "tu solus altissimus," seems to belong in a bittersweet 1960s French romance, all rainy umbrellas and Parisian melancholy.

We also have unusually early calls this year -- had almost an hour this afternoon between the end of rehearsal and the beginning of the concert -- and so I've gotten quite far on the second Spey Valley sock, almost down to the heel already ....

Dona Nobis Pacem

It seemed appropriate that on Memorial Day, we were singing this evening Haydn's Paukenmesse, "Mass in Time of War," and Vaughn Williams' "Dona Nobis Pacem."  These are very different pieces, one melodic and classically structured, the other unsettling, brutal at times and disillusioned, but with a stark beauty -- and yet the two works share not only their use of a fabulous percussion score, wonderfully stirring and martial, but a culmination on the Latin text dona nobis pacem, "grant us peace."

Garrison Keillor, in "The Writer's Almanac", which I heard on the radio on the way to choir practice, said that Memorial Day was originally not a day for speeches and debates, but simply a day for both sides -- as it was not long after the Civil War -- to come together and remember, not to judge, but just to remember.  We do so much judging these days, and so little remembering.

The Vaughn Williams piece is set to Biblical texts -- "Nation shall not lift up their sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" -- and three poems by Walt Whitman.  Whitman is a lot like Vaughn Williams, I think, weird and wonderful.  Sometimes I think he's a bit, well, over-the-top, but other times, even with the same poem, I can't read it without tears in my eyes.  This is from "Dirge for Two Veterans" --

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,
'Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.

...

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

(The soldier in the photograph is a cousin of mine, some half-dozen generations back, from Ohio.)

Saturday Stuff

Some miscellaneous thoughts this evening --

I've never actually knitted with the jewelry kind of stitch markers before this -- always admired the variety and beauty of ones I've seen on other people's blogs -- but find myself a little bit vexed by the maneuvers I have to go through to work with these.  A marker between two RS knit stitches isn't a problem -- it's when the marker is hanging on the other side of the work, and you must move the yarn to the front, slip the marker, and put the yarn back, or between a knit/purl or purl/knit sequence and you must move the marker either before or after you move the yarn for the different stitch, and it makes a difference, depending on which is first in the combination.  Otherwise, Belle ends up with the yarn strapped around her waist, thus --

But it's a niggly annoyance, and not yet enough to make me take out the markers altogether!

Well, tomorrow is my choir's concert, so I can at last get Honegger's "King David" out of my head.  A strange, clashing, cacophanous piece, and hard to sing.  If I liked it, the difficulty in singing it wouldn't be a problem, but unfortunately the parts I do like are few and far between the parts I don't.  I am certainly looking forward to starting on Vivaldi's "Gloria" on Monday for the Christmas concert!  (I adore Vivaldi.  Some people complain about his repetitiveness -- I can't remember at the moment who quipped that Vivaldi "wrote the same concerto 500 times" -- but it doesn't bother me.  I find his music, even the often-melancholy cello concertos, to be wonderfully soul-refreshing, and it is rare that my spirits are not lifted by a lute concerto.  The "repetitiveness" I see as a friendly familiarity, a recognizability, like so much of Mozart, or even Dickens or Jane Austen.)

The girls and I watched our new "Cinderella" DVD last night, while I knitted.  They were frightened by the stepmother -- that gloomy hallway, with her wicked eyes glowing in the shadows of the bedcurtains -- and they laughed out loud at the clever mice outwitting that mean old cat.  Laura's face as she watched Cinderella's transformation from servant girl to princess was as beautiful and moving as the moment.

By the way; there is an interesting article at Mouse Planet (where this image is from) about the story, its various versions and what Walt Disney took from each, and lessons to be learned from the story.