(nearly) a year in the Treehouse

I can hardly believe I've been in the Treehouse for almost a year already. (January 15, 2012 will officially be one year)

I got the red couches. And the bookcases. I also set up a guest room, painted the downstairs bathroom, and replaced the front rain gutter.

I'm calling this my "observational" gardening year. My front garden did far better than my side patio garden. I did next to nothing to the front garden except cut back the rose bushes. The previous owners were clever with the front garden - it pretty much takes care of itself, and the plants and flowers in it are seasonal, so there's always something new coming up as something else has finished for the year. There was also so much rain this year that I didn't need to do much watering at all. It may need another layer of mulch next year, but that looks to be it.

The side patio garden was more of a headache, er, challenge. The side patio gets a lot of attention, both from afternoon sun and from the local wildlife. My next door neighbors puts out birdseed every morning, which the birds and the squirrels take full advantage of. Then they come next door to my patio for second breakfast. I didn't realize how much digging they were doing in my raised beds until I found one of the seedpods I'd used for seedstarting lying well outside the box. I got some wire hoops and netting for the boxes, which served as a decent deterrent, but the damage was already done, and most of the loot was already stolen, so there wasn't much of a harvest. My tomato box did okay, though, courtesy of Gardener's Supply Catalog's Organic Tomato Success Kit.

Writing

While all that was going on, I got Tempus House published as an ebook. It went through a title change and an unexpected major edit, but it's out there finally. Yay!

The next novel is STILL in revision. I did a major re-write on it and added a character, which certainly made it more interesting. That was a relief because I was beginning to think I would have to abandon the story, and I didn't want to do that because I have an odd faith in it. There is another character, though, that either has to come out or at least be diminished. I used up too much story space on his past with the main character. It explains the main character's motives, but it could be done more succinctly. And while he's meant to be an antagonist, he doesn't have to be such a bloody insufferable one.

I finished a children's novella, and did some digging on e-publishing for children. Just as I ran into problems with a new title for Tempus House, I ran smack into a wall with the cover for this novella. I'm not liking this last-minute calamity pattern. Anyway, a new cover is in the works. I am a slow writer/reviser/editor (or perhaps "an annoyingly/alarmingly thorough" one would be more accurate), and I'm an even slower graphic designer. You do not want to know how long it took me to find the perfect image for the Tempus House cover.

I spent just about all of October outlining the novel I worked on in November for NaNoWriMo. This definitely gave the actual writing a lot more direction, so writing sessions were more productive. Unfortunately, I was plagued by severe right-side neck and shoulder pain for most of the month, so I had to cut back on the daily word count goal. The draft is done though, and acupuncture and physical therapy  helped me do battle with the neck and shoulder pain...which was then all undone by the car accident I was in last week.

Cello

I've worked on the Prelude to Bach's "Suite No. 1 in G major" off and on over the year as a kind of independent study experiment to see what two-and-a-half years' worth of lessons have taught me as I attempt a piece on my own, outside of what I work on for lessons. The result showed me that I can analyze it, recognize the patterns, break it into chunks and layers to work on, listen to versions for comparison, and more or less chip away at it a bit at a time. So it's fair to say I get the concept of "strategy."

However, I was not able to devote as much practice time to it as I had hoped because I hadn't factored in the increasing complexity and length of the pieces I would be working on in my lessons with Ben. Meaning I spent more time on them in my daily practice sessions than I had spent on pieces in my first year of cello study. This is logical of course, and it was silly of me not to have taken it into account ahead of time. So the poor prelude was often pushed aside while I struggled with the other pieces. I humbly apologize to it and to Bach, and I will soldier on with it into the new year.

I've done a bit better with vibrato. I incorporated it into scale practice (I love two-fer efficiency!). Decent first-finger vibrato still eludes me - I'm just overly stiff with that finger, and I swing my arm well into my body, which I don't do with the other fingers - no idea why I think of first finger as its own entity. Consequently, vibrato with the other fingers is improving and starting to feel a little more natural. Only problem is, I often don't think to use it in anything but scales, so it's going on the layering list as a reminder to work on it in actual pieces.


I already have plans for next year, which may or may not be a good idea, although the intent is to keep me productive, happy, and out of trouble. Saving those for the next post.

reluctantly slowing down

I've been pretty diligent with my daily goal of 3000 words. However, the extra sitting and typing isn't doing my neck and shoulder much good. Neither is long stretches of cello practice. In fact, all that is making it worse.

The neck and shoulder pain has been bothering me off and on since the last week of October. It led to an adventure on Wednesday evening. When I was driving home from work, the ache started radiating up to my ear and was making my right arm feel a bit tingly. I had considered getting a doctor's appointment, but the soonest mine can see me is the 28th. Then I considered going to urgent care to see if I could get some pain meds to tide me over until I could see my doctor, but I wasn't sure if this qualified as "urgent." I called the 24/7 nurseline number on my insurance card, and I told the nurse that I'd had this pain off and on for three weeks. I asked if it would be appropriate to go to urgent care.

She said I should call 911 because those symptoms could be heart attack.

This is not a good thing to tell someone with a history of panic attacks. Most of me didn't think I was having a heart attack, but a teeny bit of me started to worry about it because of the family history of heart problems. It was really hard not to listen to that teeny bit, especially when the nurse was so insistent that I call 911.

I realize it's a CYA mentality for the nurse and the insurance company to assume the worst so as not to appear negligent. On the other hand, the nurse discounted much of what I told her, and took the neck pain radiating to ear and arm out of context as the only important things to consider.

So panicky me calls 911, the EMTs show up, I tell them what's going on, they take my vitals, and they tell me they don't think I'm having a heart attack. However, they said if I wanted to go to the ER, they'd be glad to take me. At which point I said I would go, because the only thing that was going to stop me panicking was a doctor telling me that I'm not having a heart attack. They understood, and were as nice as could be about the whole thing. I appreciated that.

I was in the ER for four hours, grappling with waves of panic on top of the neck and shoulder pain. I finally saw a nurse practitioner. She felt around my neck and shoulders, and when she pressed on a particular spot, I could feel the tingling in my right arm. She decided on X-rays, which turned up negative for anything overt that she was looking for, like a bone spur, so she diagnosed it as a pinched nerve, not a heart attack, and recommended that I see an orthopedist. She also gave me a prescription for Flexeril. I've only taken it at night, and while it helps me sleep, I go through most of the next day feeling groggy and drugged. Don't like that.

I saw an orthopedist on Friday, and I've been prescribed four weeks of physical therapy. The pain is now moving around a bit. On Thursday, it felt like it was pulling down on the inside of my ears. Yesterday, it had moved to the back of my neck and radiating up to the crown of my head. Sometimes, I feel it down further in my right shoulder blade. It's less sharp than it has been, but it's still there. And it's affecting how much time I can spend sitting at a desk comfortably writing.

I've reached 50,000 words on this writing project, so I've met the official NaNoWriMo goal, but I have to slow down the writing pace because of the neck and shoulder pain. This means I won't reach 90,000 words by the end of the month.

I'm very disappointed. I can work on it into December, of course, but I had really latched on to the idea of getting the entire first draft done in a month. It's taken the wind out of my sails to keep working on it at all. In fact, the only reason I have any desire to continue with it is because there's some good stuff that's come out onto the page, and I want to see what happens. It also feels like the story is going to be longer than I'd anticipated. This isn't a bad thing, and who knows what will happen in the editing phase when I start ruthlessly chopping stuff out?

I will still keep posting my daily word counts on Twitter until I finish this draft, and thank you so much to everyone who has popped in to ask how the writing's going and to find out the latest word count. I appreciate it muchly.

a third done

I'm closing in on 39,000 words written. Toward the end of next week, I will hopefully have reached the NaNoWriMo official goal of 50,000 words. However, I've still got a ways to go to get to my personal goal of 90,000 words by the end of the month.

Week 2 was a slog, as predicted. Right-side neck and shoulder pain plagued me all week, which made it painful to type for long periods of time, let alone do much cello practice with the bow. I managed some word sprints with breaks in between, which seemed to help. I had some acupuncture last week, which also helped, and I'm getting a massage tomorrow. I've been using heating pads and ice packs and all that, too.

In addition, week 2 writing resulted in things starting to make themselves plain to me the more I wrote.

Thing 1: my main and impact characters are switching places. This is not a calamity, merely unexpected. And interesting. And worth pursuing. Writing is like that.

Thing 2: At least two characters, possibly three, will need to be re-named, since two sets of characters each have names that begin with the same letter, and sometimes I'm mixing them up. What was I thinking doing that, especially when these sets of characters are often in scenes together? And I need to come up with names for two other minor characters that showed up - I can't keep referring to them as "so-and-so's relative" - it's getting annoying having to type that over and over again. I do a lot of research to come up with character names, and yet I also tend to change them despite the research. As you do.

Thing 3: Two major scenes at the beginning will be switched. Because it will flow better that way. That is all the reasoning I have for the switch.

I still like the story. I like how it's progressing. I'm nearing a plot point where things seem to be going well, but they soon won't, and conflict is always so much more interesting to write anyway. I'm focusing much more on action and dialogue than on description, but I can add more atmosphere when I revise.

Back to it.

fast drafting

At the end of week one of this new story project, I have 15,103 words written. I will add another 3000 words today. So far so good. Next week will be the test - week two is when the "ooh, shiny!" of working on a new story wears off all of sudden, and I'm left with slogging through. Having experienced a similar phenomenon with cello practice, I'm not too worried about it. Yet.

I've managed the increased word count this week by adding a second writing session. I normally get out about 1500 words in the morning, first thing. I considered attempting all 3000 words in the morning, but that would mean getting up even earlier, and with winter coming on, my hibernation instinct is already in full swing, so an earlier rising ain't happenin'. Instead, I do the other 1500 words in an evening writing session after my cello practice. It's worked well so far, seeing as cello puts me into a structural-considering mood, which I can then carry over into writing a scene. It's all working in layers and bits at a time, I tell you. Cello, writing, knitting, life. 's only way I get anything done.

I do have to push myself to do that second writing session though. I'm much less energetic in the evening and not feeling as creative after a day at work, so it takes longer to do that second set of 1500 words. Still, that was the idea of this experiment - to make it more of a challenge. And it is.

I've also had intermittent, right-side neck and shoulder pain this week. That's made not only typing a challenge, but cello practice as well. I've been doing short bursts of typing and practice so as not to further strain the muscle but still be able to get something done in each endeavor.

My outline for this novel is more detailed than usual. With about 60-ish scenes to write, I can write two a day, one in each 1500-word session, and that will get me to 90,000 words and hopefully all scenes written by November 30.

If this higher daily word count approach works, I may adopt it for future projects, whether I'm participating in NaNoWriMo or not. I like being able to get a complete first draft done so quickly. I find that the longer it takes me to do the first draft, the less steam I have for revision and publishing, which ends up causing a backlog of manuscripts that have been drafted, but not polished.

Speaking of which, I've gotten a few questions about The King Tree, which I had intended to publish at the end of the summer. The manuscript is done and formatted. It's the cover that's holding things up. I lucked out big with Tempus House. I found an image I liked, after much searching, and was able to get copyright permission in only a few days. I naively assumed the same would happen with King Tree. But alas, no. Once I had the cover concept perfected, I stupidly set my heart on it. Without copyright permission for the main image, however, I can't publish it. I'm trying to avoid a complete re-do of the cover, but that may be my only option. In a way, I'm not surprised. I had to change the title for Tempus House from the one I'd wanted, so to have to change the cover for King Tree appears to be establishing a tradition. That I don't like. At all.

I've been considering writing goals for next year, and I've decided they will actually be revision and publishing goals instead. That backlog I mentioned? That's what I'm going to tackle next year. It's like having too big a yarn stash languishing in a closet. Makes me twitchy not to have it serving a more useful purpose.

5S: nostalgia knitting in the future

I've been beavering away on Christmas knitting lately,  none of which I can show you.

I can show you this though:

The late-for-spring shawl on the blocking boards. The short sides are now about the width of a queen-size bed (which is what the blocking boards are laying on, that's how I know). Yep, huge. I have 900 yards of yarn in a dark green colorway, so there will be another huge shawl project in my future.

Here's a closer view of one side:

I can also show you the yarn for a future sock-knitting project:

Look familiar?

No?

How about when it's knit up into a swatch?

Still no?

Final clue:

The colorway is called Time Traveler, from Knit Picks' Felici line, and I could not resist it.

Tom Baker was my first Doctor. I started watching the show with my dad back in the early 80s - a fun kind of father-daughter bonding time. I even remember our collective gasp when Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison (whom I also thought made a darn good Doctor).

I'd knit this up into socks for Dad, but he's not one for brightly colored footwear. However, there is a TARDIS pattern, in a more guy-friendly dark blue, so I might make those for him.

I'm itching to start knitting this yarn into socks, but I'm waiting until I've finished my Christmas knitting. I just got Clara Parkes' new book, The Knitter's Book of Socks, and there are several patterns in there that I might use for these socks. One pattern is called "Firefly," which amuses me, because really, would there have been a Firefly series without Doctor Who? Particularly when it comes to the humor in the latter series? There's also a pattern called "Salted Caramels," which is probably as close as we'll get to a Jelly Babies pattern, I think.

As for a nickname for this sock project, I'm leaning toward Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey socks, just as a nod to the newer incarnations of the series, which I've also enjoyed. I'm open to suggestions, though. Maybe Allons-y socks? Or Still-Not-Ginger socks? What do you think?

And here's a bit 'o trivia: Clara Parkes and I have the same birthday. We also share a birthday with fictional detective Albert Campion (and his creator), ably portrayed by the above-mentioned Peter Davison. Heh heh, these socks are going to be heavy with connections.

music mapping

Warning: This post contains Cello Geekery. If that's not your thing, I won't be offended if you choose to look for something else to read.

I haven't written a cello post in awhile. No particular reason, other than I'm carrying on in the roll-up-your-sleeves-for-the-long-slog bit of transitioning from a beginner to an intermediate cello student. I'm starting to work on what my teacher calls "real music" (ie, not just little exercises and etudes that are meant for technique practice and don't necessarily sound nice or like real music...or something).

My current piece is La Cinquantaine. I've read Michael's blog posts on this piece, and he kindly put together a master list of stuff to wrassle with when learning it. I think #6 is my favorite. And also #4. I printed the list and taped it to the wall next to my music stand.

In addition to my cello lessons, Ben has been coaching me in music theory. I won't pretend that I thoroughly understand it all, but I get the gist (usually), and now we're starting to apply it to "real music," so the concepts are starting to make sense.

We're at that part of theory that gets into the nuances of structure and form, and I got a real-time demonstration when Ben mapped out Cinquantaine for me:

(I suggest clicking for big if you want to read it.)

Basically, the piece has two main sections (A and B) with sub-sections (a,a1, b, b1, c, etc.). The numbers represent measures, and there are key changes as well.

This map helps with practicing since I can practice in chunks and apply the practice techniques elsewhere in the piece where similar patterns show up. I can also add the bowing pattern as another layer on the map for hyper-analytical kicks.

I'm fascinated with this music mapping concept because it reminds me so much of novel outlining (at least the way I do it). If you wander through a novel without any sort of scrutiny, you miss so much. A novel is made up of chapters. Chapters are made up of scenes. Scenes are made up of layers of description, action, and dialogue. You can structure the pace of a novel by the patterns you put into each scene in a chapter - action that builds to a climax, dialogue that starts out innocently and rises to an argument or a revealing of secrets, narration/description/explanation that slows things down and orients you to the setting and the situation.

Musical structure can show you the same thing - how the composer is carrying the listener, as well as the musician, along to keep both interested, settle you into patterns, change the patterns for interest, and bring you home with a satisfying ending (Ben was explaining circle progressions to me - vi-ii-V-I).

I'm looking forward to more music mapping. The Breval Sonata is in my near future (hint hint, could do with another list for that one, Michael).

5S: finished objects!

No idea how I managed to miss posting last week. To make up for it, you get a two-fer this week.

First, the late-for-spring shawl is off the needles!

Here it is unblocked:

It has a wingspan of 55 inches, and a length of 26 inches from top middle to bottom tip. That means when it's blocked, it will be far larger than that (read: HUGE!). That's the idea though - it's meant to be shawl to wrap up in in the winter.

This took about one and three-quarters skeins of yarn. I still have another skein and the leftover quarter, so I can probably get another smaller shawl out of what's left.

I also finished the fallberry scarf:

Blocking really makes the pattern pop out. The Cascade 220 Sport Superwash has a nice drape to it. I've got more of it in a beige color, so that will be another scarf at some point.

Loved the pattern - easy but interesting, and it knit up quickly.

I am well into Christmas knitting, so knitting posts may be skimpy for awhile because the recipients of my Christmas knitting read this blog, so I won't be able to post progress pictures until after the holidays. Posting will also be skimpy in November because I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, and will be attempting to write 3000 words a day, which is double my usual daily word count. My hands are going to be very tired by the end of this year.

October is for outlining

Fall never fails to put me in the mood to nest. All I want to do is make a lot of soup, knit, and write. And now that I'm ensconced in the Treehouse, I see a lot of squirrels burying food (and also unburying it) and birds landing on the windowsills to show off to the cats the latest twig or piece of straw they've found. The cats "ack ack ack" at them, in what sounds like some sort of conversation or approval.

I've worked on writing all summer, although I've blogged more about knitting than anything else lately, now that I think about it, and I've got several things close to publishing. It's the formatting and front cover stuff that is a real slog and slows things down, and I have a bad habit of doing major edits as I clean up formatting problems. Probably why I've not blogged about it - how many interesting ways are there to say "wrote x number of words this week, revised x number of scenes this week?"

A couple of weeks ago, I had several story ideas brewing, so I started outlining. If it does nothing else, outlining tells me if the ideas would be novel length or short story length. This is helpful because if I start writing a story assuming it will be a novel and then things run dry, it's frustrating trying to find more story to tell, when in fact the idea may have been better suited to a short story all along. If I can figure out ahead of time which story type it is, then the writing process is a lot less stressful.

Anyway, after some outlining, it looks like I have another novel and several short stories. Seeing as November will be here in a minute, I think I will write the rough draft of the novel as part of National Novel Writing Month. And I think I'm going to increase my word count goal.

NaNoWriMo considers a draft of a novel to be 50,000 words. This is based on the program founder's oh-so-scientific analysis of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (the thinnest book on his bookshelf), which is about that length. However, the average amount of words for most novels is more like 90,000, but 50,000 probably sounded more do-able when he first got the idea for this project. I admit that when I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2005, 50,000 words in a month seemed impossible, and yet I did it with a day to spare while working full-time and going to a week-long medical conference.

I've participated several times since then and have yet to miss the 50,000-word mark, but I always feel like I only have half a novel written, so I usually spend December writing the other half. To write 50,000 words in 30 days, you need to write a minimum of 1667 words a day. Now that I've done it several times, I don't find this to be a difficult daily task. So I thought I'd try to write 90,000 words in November, which is 3000 words a day (if I did the math right). It's more of a challenge since it's nearly double the usual word count, but I think it's still possible. And I can get an entire novel drafted in one month instead of two.

This year's NaNoWriMo project will be a doozy. A Southern gothic tale, into which I can still include some of my beloved magical realism, along with tragedy, family secrets, an abandoned abbey, and other juicy stuff. I may go for all-out decadent with this one, just for kicks.

I'm not sure where the story idea came from. I've read Southern gothic novels in the past, so I'm familiar with the genre, but it's not been my recent reading. I read The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood in one sitting two Saturday mornings ago. I'm also reading the second Claude Izner novel. I'm listening to a radio adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. And I'm working my way through Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. I saw the BBC adaptation several years ago (my introduction to Richard Armitage, who was unbearably good as a dark, smouldering, and tempermental John Thornton), and I'd wanted to read the book ever since. I like it so far. It reminds me of Pride and Prejudice in its plot points, but with a layer of Dickens-like illustration of and commentary on the suffering of the working poor as the age of industrialization gets more of a grip on the nation, not to mention the string of deaths that occur. P&P was published 40 years before N&S, so possibly Gaskell read it and/or used it as a model - although she's more closely associated with the Brontes than with Austen - and apparently Dickens edited the magazine in which N&S was serialized, so he may have had some influence on its writing.) Fascinating reading, whatever its origins and influencers.

So, 3000 words a day, every day, in November. I'll post daily word counts on Twitter, which you should be able to see in the right-hand side bar here on the blog (if you scroll down a bit). I might do quick weekly posts to tell you about my agony, er, progress. We'll see...

5S: purple project

Scarf/Shawl/Sock/Sweater Saturday (or Sunday)

I finished the Fallberry scarf yesterday afternoon. I even soaked it and pinned it out. Twenty-four hours later, it's still slightly damp, so I don't want to unpin it yet.

I'm still slogging through the middle section of the late-for-spring shawl, but I'm nearing the end of that.

Instead, I've got another of my startitis projects to show you.

This is the beginning of the Stacy Shawl by Wendy Johnson, from her new book.

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn, but I'm using worsted weight, which is slightly thicker. I've got just over 500 yards of it. The yarn was recycled from a sweater, and is 100% wool. I love the color. Since this shawl won't be worn next to the skin, I'm not worried about the scratchiness of the yarn. In other words, it's a layering piece that would go over other clothes.

The picture above represents the first of four charts. I got through it in an evening. It's an interesting pattern in that it starts at the top middle and is worked outward toward the bottom edge.

The only problem I'm having with it is that I'm always two stitches short on the right-side rows. I poked around on ravelry, and found a post from someone else who had the same problem. However, there's no explanation as to how to fix it. So I'm winging it by adding a stitch where needed. So far, it seems to be a good solution.

I've also altered the middle section. Rather than a yarnover spine (yarnover, knit 2, yarnover) as shown in the original, I'm just knitting the four stitches, which you can see in the picture above. I'm not going to do the bottom border from the pattern either. I might just do plain garter stitch instead.

There are two other shawls in the book that I want to make, and I already have the yarn for them in my stash. It's definitely going to be a stash-busting winter.

5S: sushi sweater starter

Scarf/Shawl/Sock/Sweater Saturday (or Sunday)

October 1, and the weather is appropriately chilly and brisk. Fall knitting season has begun!

I, um, anticipated it (ie, gave in to startitis) by making a swatch for a cardigan early last month (a cardigan is a type of sweater, so I'm counting it as an S - my blog, my rules).

I had some Knit Picks Merino Style DK weight yarn in the Edamame colorway in my stash. It's a cleverly named colorway, I think. It looks like the color of steamed soybeans. It also reminds me of the horseradish you get with sushi (hence the Sushi Sweater nickname).

I hunted for a pattern on ravelry, found one I liked, and cast on for the swatch.* If I have to adjust needle size to get gauge, I usually only have to go up or down one size. This time, it was more like four needle sizes, which seemed odd to me and resulted in a swatch of overly loose-looking stitches. I didn't like the way it looked at all.

I did more research on ravelry and started reading posts by other knitters who had made this project. Apparently, the yarn the test knitter used for the prototype was a worsted weight yarn, even though it was labeled DK weight (DK is thinner than worsted). Lots of knitters were using true DK weight yarn and were having the same gauge-getting problems I was.

I had a choice: I could change out the yarn for a worsted weight yarn so I could still use the pattern, or I could change the pattern so I could still use the DK weight yarn. I chose the latter option.

Back to pattern searching on ravelry. Found another pattern I liked, double-checked that DK weight yarn would work, and swatched again. (I just added to the previous swatch, but with a different needle size.)

I'm still working on a 4 x 4 swatch of garter stitch just to be sure, but so far, the gauge is correct.

This is the Greenfield Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre from the book New England Knits. Top-down (meaning start at the neck), garter stitch, with a nice leaf motif along the bottom for some visual interest and to break up all that garter stitch. And the prototype is green, so I have a fair idea of what mine will look like in a similar colorway.

I'm going to make the neck slightly more narrow, and I'm going to make full-length sleeves. I don't look good in three-quarter sleeves - they make my arms look stubby. I may do buttons all the way down.

I'm hoping this knits up as fast as I think it will.

I'm also nearly done with the Fallberry scarf and the Late-for-Spring shawl. Hope to show one or both of those off the needles and blocked next week.

*For non-knitters, a swatch is 4-inch by 4-inch (or preferably larger) sample knitted piece using the yarn and needles you intend to use for a larger project. Patterns list a suggested yarn weight and needle size. You knit a sample with those to see what you get and adjust from there.

A swatch serves three purposes. First, it lets you see how the yarn you've chosen knits up, so you can decide sooner rather than later if you like how it looks and if the yarn or needles annoys you in any way. Nothing worse than bitching your way through an entire project because you don't like the materials you' re using. All that frustration ends up knitted into the garment and gives it bad energy, so you don't want to see it or wear it, even after all the work you put into it.

Second, you can try out any stitch patterns used in the garment to get a sense of how easy or hard they are, and if you like doing them. You'll be committed to doing them on a larger area if you decide to go ahead with the pattern, so best to find out early what you're in for.

Third, a swatch helps you determine gauge - how many stitches per inch you get with a certain yarn weight and needle size combination. This is important when you choose the size of garment you're going to make. Most knitted garment patterns will list what the gauge should be for the sizes of that project. However, gauge is individual to the knitter - some knit more tightly or loosely than others. So whoever knit the prototype for the pattern then used their gauge for all the measurements and stitch counts listed in the pattern.

Bottom line: you must get the gauge listed in the pattern to have any hope in Hades of a properly sized garment. If you have too many stitches per inch compared to the listed gauge in the pattern, your garment will end up bigger. Fewer stitches per inch compared to listed gauge will make the garment smaller. To get it just right, you often have to go up or down a needle size or two (or more) depending on how tightly or loosely you knit compared to the test knitter.

Lots of things affect gauge. If you're tense or tired when you knit your swatch, you may end up knitting more tightly or loosely than you normally do. If the pattern's test knitter used wood needles, and you're using plastic or metal needles, the drag of the yarn on the different needle types may cause slightly more or less yarn to get into each stitch. If the prototype was made with wool yarn, and you're using acrylic or cotton or some sort of fiber blend, the stretchiness, or lack thereof, of the yarn can change the gauge.

A swatch tells you volumes before you even start in on the project proper. Always worth doing, as it helps you avoid a lot of frustration and gives you a sense of what the project will be like.

4S: I confess...

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday)

Startitis got me. I made a major mistake on the late-for-spring shawl, so once I tinked back two rows, I needed a break from working on it, so that was my excuse to start something new.

Anne Hanson released a new pattern called Fallberry. It's a hat, scarf, and fingerless mitt set. I'm just making the scarf.

I have enough of the yarn to make the scarf a little wider and somewhat longer. The yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash Sport. The colorway is 811 - a deep, jeweltone teal blue (which my camera isn't reading well for some reason). It's 100% merino wool, so it's quite soft.

The pattern is a 16-row repeat, and eight of those rows are just knit and purl across.

Translation: This thing is flying off the needles. I started it last Saturday, and I've got 13 of the recommended 20 pattern repeats done already. I'll do more repeats until I run out of yarn.

Looks a lot like fish scales at the moment, but once it's blocked, the yarnovers, which you can barely see now, will show more and give it a lacier look. I'm looking forward to having a new scarf for fall.

4S: fighting startitis

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday if I forget to post on Saturday)

Suddenly, we have fall weather. This causes many a knitter to fall prey to startitis. For non-knitters, startitis is the overwhelming urge to start lots of projects. I think there are two reasons for this: fall is high season for knitting, and knitters panic when they realize how close the winter holidays are and how little they've accomplished on gift-knitting goals.

I'm doing my best to resist startitis, but I must confess to casting on another pair of socks and a wrap, as well as winding yarn for two scarf projects. These are classic symptoms.

However, in my efforts to ignore the call of new projects, I've made good progress on the late-for-spring shawl.

Tristan is supervising:

I'm about halfway through the middle section, which is chart B. This is just under four repeats of the chart:

Chart B looks like lattice work to me. I like the look of it, but it seems like an abrupt change from the edging of chart A. If I were to make this pattern again, I'd try to find a design to put between these two for a more subtle transition.

Four more repeats and one round of chart C to go.

4S: we pause again

It doesn't seem appropriate to do a knitting update today. There will be one next week.

Instead, I would just like to say that I am grateful to have things like knitting and cello playing and writing to provide distraction and comfort when I encounter, either directly or indirectly, evidence of people doing insane things to each other.

I am also grateful to have found a knitting group of people with whom I can sit and chat amicably despite any and all ideological/religious/political/everything else differences we may have. It reminds me that it IS possible to have civil conversations with people who have different views.

Be well, and we'll get back to knitting next weekend.

4S: late for spring

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday if I forget to post on Saturday)

We had fun times at the Treehouse last weekend. Got quite a soaking from Irene - enough to prompt me to bring in the patio furniture and weigh down the outside basement window covers with bricks before she arrived. She left a mess of leaves and branches strewn everywhere, which in my densely tree'd neighborhood is quite a lot for clean-up. The floor drain in my basement overflowed and soaked the nearby rug. The power went out a few times, but thankfully came back on. No sleep at all on Saturday night for all the noise from the wind and rain. In short, a hopping time was had by all, which did not leave me in a fit state for blogging about knitting or anything else.

If you had to deal with Irene, I hope the damage was minimal to none.

The up-side to being stuck inside during a storm and unable to sleep was that I made some decent progress on the late-for-spring shawl:

I'm 2 rows away from completing chart A, which was a 56-row section. Then it's on to six or seven repeats of chart B, which is an easier chart to follow, and is only 12 rows.

I tried to resist buying a copy of Wendy Johnson's new lace book, but I made the mistake of looking through a copy that another knitter brought to knitting group, so I crumbled and ordered my own copy. It's a beautiful book with great patterns. I don't buy pattern books or knitting magazines unless I like and would actually make at least half the patterns in them. Otherwise, it's a waste of money. So it's always a big deal when I come across a book like Wendy's. When my copy arrives, I might do something similar to Carin, who is knitting her way through Cookie A's sock books.

Maybe that will be a knitting goal next year - a whole year of lace knitting. Maybe a project a month? There are a bunch of Anne Hanson lace patterns in my queue as well as ones by Wendy. A mark II of this for mom, one of these, and this, and this, and maybe this.

Knitting lace and socks through this spring and summer was a great idea. I wasn't sweltering under heavy yarn, I got to work on smaller needles for a change, I made leaps and bounds improvement in my chart-reading skills, I got some good brain workouts, and I managed lots of de-stashing. There's quite a bit of room in the storage bins in my yarn closet now. Just in time for my knitting group's yarn swap at the end of the month.

re-Kindle'd

I got tired of waiting for Smashwords to hook itself up to the Kindle system on Amazon, so I uploaded Tempus House to Kindle myself.

Yay!

Here it is. And still only 99 cents.

My next book has hit some picture problems, but they are being sorted out, and I hope to have it published soon.

4S: a solemn pause

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday if I forget to post on Saturday)

I apologize for not posting last weekend. There was a death in the family, so I drove up to Ohio to go to the funeral. I was glad to see family, even though it was for a sad reason. If you wouldn't mind thinking a good thought or saying a prayer for a dear old uncle who lost his devoted wife after 55 years of marriage, I'd appreciate it. It still makes my eyes sting to think of the sight of him struggling to stand up from his wheelchair, putting a shaking, wrinkled hand to his face, and sobbing over my aunt's casket while three of his sons held him up and sobbed with him.

He and his 10 children and my grandmother (his sister) all wore something pink to the funeral. It was my aunt's favorite color.

My grandmother's pink sweater had a stitch pattern that I couldn't take my eyes off of. It occurred to me that I've not knit anything for her yet, so I think the blue-gray shawl I'm working on will go to her for Christmas. (It gets damn cold up in Ohio in the winter - lake effect and all that.) She doesn't read this blog, not being one for using the Internet, so it'll be okay to write about it and post pictures, I think. I'd ask all of my family who do read this blog to keep quiet about it please.

You'll be seeing the shawl inch along because I can't show you the other project I'm working on until the recipient, who does reads this blog, receives it.

I can at least show you one finished project:

I can't seem to get good pictures of this yarn. I've tried it in all kinds of light, and it just doesn't cooperate. It's brighter than it appears in any of the pictures I've attempted to take of it.

This is the wool/soysilk/cotton/chitin blend yarn I mentioned in a previous post. I like the color pattern, although it pools at the top of the instep since I didn't bother to do an afterthought heel, which would have preserved the color progression. S'okay, though. I don't mind it.

For non-knitters, an afterthought heel is just what it sounds like - you knit one row on the back of the sock in a different yarn to mark where the heel would be started, and then you complete the sock in the original yarn. You undo the marker yarn and put the stitches back on the needles to knit the wedge that makes the heel. It's great for striping yarn to keep the stripes from going all wonky when you increase and decrease at the heel. I have some striping yarn, so when I get around to using it, I'll do an afterthought heel and take progress pictures, which might better illustrate the concept.

I'm tempted to start a sweater, but it's still too warm out to have heavier yarn in one's lap, so I'm putting it off until late September at the earliest. I've got the yarn for it already, though, and the pattern. The colorway of the yarn I'm going to use is called Edamame, and it really does look like soybean pod green. It also reminds me of the green horseradish and the avocado you get with sushi, so I've already started to refer to it as my Sushi Sweater.

I'll have some late-for-spring shawl progress for you next week.

4S: friends again

Scarf/shawl/sock Saturday (or Sunday, if I forget to post on Saturday)

Here's the veggie shawl off the blocking board:

It turned out well, and it will be great to wear in the dead of winter when I'm desperate for some color.

Last week, I reported on some frustrations with the late-for-spring shawl. After ripping back the row for the tenth time, I was able to correct it based on the information I got from another knitter on Ravelry who had knit the pattern and verified the mistake in the written instructions.

The offending row was finally conquered, and I was ready for the upcoming row that required the stitch marker dance again, so no yarn was beaten with a tree branch after all. The shawl and I have made our peace with each other.

Progress so far:

The pattern is knit from the bottom hem up, which is definitely my favorite way to knit these things. You start out with a huge number of stitches and decrease the number on every other row until you're down to only a few stitches for bind off at the top center.

This will be bigger than the veggie shawl. I had more yarn than the pattern called for, so I did some math and worked out how many pattern repeats I could add in (two on each side of the center).

The yarn is Cascade Heritage. The color is 5602, a nice blue grey in a tight twist, so the stitch definition is showing up nicely.

Really loving the Signature needles for lace work. Well worth the money, and made in the USA! The pair in the picture are size 6.

4S: it's not me, it's you

Scarf/shawl/sock Saturday (or Sunday, if I forget to post on Saturday)

The veggie shawl is finished!

Here it is unblocked, about two and a half feet wide and a foot and a bit long:

Here it is on the rack, er, blocking board, now at just under four feet wide and two feet long:

I am rather merciless when I block lace.

The new shawl I started was going along swimmingly until I hit row 15 of the first chart, and then I ended up with an extra stitch where there shouldn't be one. I re-checked my work on the row below, and it was correct. The stitch markers hadn't worked their way under a stitch, which can sometimes happen and cause stitch counts to be off in a section. I re-checked my work on the active row, and that was correct, too.

I re-read the instructions, which mentioned having to move stitch markers around on four rows where there are double decreases. However, the row numbers listed for this in the instructions didn't match what I saw on the chart (ie, the designer made a boo boo when typing the instructions and was a row off, and the tech editor didn't catch it). Working on this late at night didn't help matters.

Funnily enough, while I was calling the project unladylike names, an old episode of Fawlty Towers was on. It was my favorite episode, which contains this scene, which I immediately related to:

Bless you, John Cleese, for showing me the absurdity of yelling at yarn. (And living mere feet away from a patch of woods means I could have run out the front door, found a sturdy tree branch, yanked it off the tree, and run back inside to beat the yarn. However, it was late at night, I was in my jim jams, and whatever would the neighbors think?) Instead, I calmly wrote out a post on Ravelry asking if anyone had encountered this problem while knitting this pattern. Then I went to bed.

Sleep being the great healer it is, I was in a better frame of mind to face the blasted project this morning. I also found a response to my post, which confirmed my suspicion of typing error, and the extra stitch is accounted for since it's on a double decrease row, which requires deliberately moving stitch markers.

There are three other rows on which this spiciness will occur, but I'm ready for them now.

practice with the moon and stars

I had a cello lesson tonight, and it occurred to me that it's been awhile since I posted any cello progress updates.

I'm going to have hour-long lessons starting in September. Looking forward to that.

I'm working on a Bach minuet, an etude, and the E flat major scale. I learn a new scale every few weeks, and I've racked up quite a few. I like scales. Nothing has helped me attack my intonation problems more than scales, and I also use them to practice vibrato, shifts, extensions, and bow direction changes.

Lately, whenever he assigns me a new piece, Ben asks me how I might go about learning it. Since I have two years' worth of study under my belt, I seem to have learned enough about practice approach to have a little more say in it. The layering method is working well for me, and really helps avoid mindless practice that usually results in frustration rather than progress. So when I tell him my plan, it's in that framework.

We've also added the "targeted approach" to the layers - once I'm familiar enough with a layer, it's time to really zero in on the details I might be tripping over. In other words, an even more thorough learning of a layer. For me, this is usually extracting a tiny section in a line to work on in isolation, and then gradually adding in a note before and after that section until the whole line is added back in. It's sounds tedious and laborious, but I don't mind it, and pieces aren't feeling so slippery under my fingers these days.

I also recently encountered an etude (Dotzauer Grant #120) that I got the hang of right away. The note pattern, slur pattern, and fingering pattern all made sense at first glance. This has never happened before. Ever. Even Ben noticed that I wasn't struggling with it.

Which isn't to say that this etude sounds good when I play it, because it doesn't. Playing the right notes at the right time with the right slurs isn't the entirety of making music. But the fact that I could analyze it and figure out the technical aspects and the structure without help is a milestone for me.

It's a nice little confidence boost to know that my usual slowness and stupidity at this cello stuff is absent for a change. It will likely come back with a vengeance, but for now, I'm enjoying the holiday away from it.

4S: knit your vegetables

Scarf/shawl/sock Saturday (or Sunday, if I forget to post on Saturday)

Welcome back to 4S! No socks this week. I bring you a shawl-in-progress instead.

The knit-along Mystery Shawlette was my test drive of one of Wendy Johnson's lace patterns. I liked it enough that I decided my next shawl project would be another of her patterns - the Japanese Garden shawl. All of the money she got from the sale of the pattern went to Japan's earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. She raised more than $6000!

I had some Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in the Springtime colorway that I thought would be good for this pattern. (I seem to be on a Knit Picks yarn kick. I do have other yarn brands to get to this summer. Promise.)

Is it just me, or does this color look like lettuce and other munchy greens?

I've taken to calling it my veggie shawl because the green reminds me of celery and cabbage. Nearly finished with chart B. Just chart C and the bind off to do, and then a soak and block.

I had the sudden urge to cast on another shawl since I'm so near the end of this one. I have some lovely blue gray Cascade yarn (see!), and I figure a three-fer is as good as a rest, so I went for Wendy's Vernal Equinox shawl, which I'm calling my late-for-spring shawl. I'll probably have it finished by the time her book comes out at the end of August. 

Yes, I admit it. I'm now a lace knitting addict, but it's all her fault.

4S: and again with the socks

Scarf/shawl/sock Saturday (or Sunday, if I forget to post on Saturday)


Hello friends! We are back up and running after last week's techno-hiccough.


So, I finished these:

And I gave them to my sister, who is a handmade socks convert. She wore out the previous pair I'd made for her last Christmas. That's the best thing you can ever do for knitters - wear out what they knit for you. They don't spend all that time and all those thousands of stitches to have the finished object just sit on a shelf or in a drawer because "it's too pretty to use." I look forward to hearing that the blanket I made recently for the making-her-appearance-any-day-now owlet has had food spilled on it, and has been spit up on and drooled on and dragged around, and gets washed so many times that it pills, and the colors fade. That's what knitting is for.


I started another pair out of TOFUtsies yarn, which I also got from the yarn swap. It's superwash wool, soysilk (get it?), cotton, and chitin. I avoid knitting with pure cotton yarn because it's so hard on the hands, but blended in with other fibers, it isn't too bad. Still a bit squeaky though. 


More bright colors, although my camera isn't doing them justice:

I also have more of this yarn brand in a strange shade of pink. I have enough of it to make several pairs of socks. I'll see if my sister likes the feel of the yarn, and if she does, I'll make a pair for her and a pair for me. It's handy that my sister, my mom, and I all wear the same shoe size. If I make a pair of socks to fit me, they'll fit either of them.


I have quite a bit of veggie shawl to show you next week.

4S: not wounded, sire, but dead

Scarf/shawl/sock Saturday (or Sunday, if I forget to post on Saturday)

There's been a slight hitch in the proceedings. Namely, my laptop gave up the ghost last night. (I'm writing this on my iTouch.)

I made several attempts to save the old girl, but to no avail. The new laptop isn't arriving until late next week.

I have photos of the socks I showed you last week. They turned out well. I finished them and gave them to my sister. I also have photos of the shawl I'm working on. All the photos are on my camera, and I can't download them until I re-install the software on the new laptop.

Hopefully next week we'll return to regularly scheduled knitting progress reports.

4S: lace socks

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday if I forget to post on Saturday)

My first sock post for 4S.

I've been knitting socks for a few years now, and I've refined my recipe quite a bit. Lately, this involves starting with a size 1 needle for the toe section, switching to a 2 for the foot and heel depending on how stretchy the design for the instep is, and then to the next largest needle for the leg, and maybe even one more size up for the cuff. I do this because the first pair of socks I made for myself were a little too tight in places.

One thing that hasn't changed is that I knit both socks at once toe-up on a long circular needle - ie, the "magic loop" technique. (I can't wait until Signature comes out with sock needle sizes in their circular line.) I love this method of sock knitting, and it works for sleeves as well. My knitting method is cobbled from Melissa Morgan Oakes' Toe-up Two-at-a-Time Socks and Wendy Johnson's Socks From the Toe Up (particularly the pattern for the gusset heel - no more picking up stitches!)

My latest pair are knit from yarn I got at a yarn swap.

Rather bright, aren't they? I pulled this yarn from my stash when I was working on my mom's scarf, which was white, and my stepdad's socks, which were brown. We were also having quite a lot of rain on a near-daily basis for what seemed like weeks on end, so days were often dull gray. I suppose I needed something colorful to work on to brighten things up.

The label is skimpy on details, but I can tell you that it's 75% wool/25% nylon, and there's no official colorway name other than 528. The brand is called Vinca, which I've never heard of. The two skeins I got were from the same dye lot, but the color repeats start and end in different places. Trying to make them match up is more trouble than it's worth, so the socks will be somewhat mis-matched, which is fine by me.

The pattern is Wendy Johnson's "Dead Simple Lace Socks" from the Socks From the Toe Up book. It is indeed a dead simple pattern - a two-row repeat, easily memorized. Good TV or sociable knitting.

oh, and another one...

I had my first cello lesson two years ago yesterday.

As far as progress goes, this post that I wrote recently sums it up nicely.

Excuse me, but I need to go roll up my sleeves for another lesson this afternoon. That Scherzo is slowly but surely finding out that it is NOT the boss of me.

4S: fernfrost

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday if I forget to post on Saturday)


Welcome to the second edition of 4S.

I recently finished this Fernfrost scarf for my mom:

I've made several of Anne Hanson's sock patterns, and really liked them, so I was eager to try one of her lace patterns. Mom picked the pattern and the yarn color. (Apparently, this is the "wrong" side of the pattern, but I actually prefer it to the "right" side, which shows all the purl stitches. If you click on the Fernfrost link above, you can see what the "right" side looks like.)

That there is eleven-and-a-quarter repeats of a 32-row pattern. Here's a close-up of a 32-row section:

I used Knit Picks Palette yarn in the Cream colorway and their size 5 Harmony wood needles. There is pattern work on every row, so no purl resting row. This is probably the most complicated lace knitting I've done so far. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the complexity, it gave me a lot of focus and relaxation. I will definitely try more of Anne's lace patterns.

children's e-book question

Seeing as today was filled with news about JK Rowling's announcement that she's (finally!) releasing the Harry Potter series as e-books on Pottermore, it seems appropriate to ask a question about children's e-books.

The background to this question:

I'm finishing edits to my next e-book. It's a children's novella for the 9 to 12 age group. Obviously, there will be a cover image.

Here's the question:

For a children's e-book, is a cover image enough, or do you think there should be some illustrations within the story, or does it matter?

If you have children who read e-books, or know children who read them, I'd especially like to hear from you. And your children, or the children you know. Feel free to ask them their opinion on this question. Also feel free to forward this question to anyone you think might have an opinion on it - I'm data gathering, you see.

4S premier

Scarf/Shawl/Sock Saturday (or Sunday if I forget to post on Saturday)

I'm totally cribbing this themed-post idea from Gwen's T-shirt Tuesday posts. She's okay with it, though.

I can't remember the last time I showed you any knitting progress, let alone finished objects. To remedy that, you lucky readers you, I'm going to attempt weekly posts on Saturdays (or Sundays) with photo updates of projects I'm working on.

I generally have at least one scarf, shawl, or pair of socks on the needles, hence the S theme. These three projects are my favorites to knit because they fulfill the three Ps - portable, practical, pretty. (I promise to stop with the alliteration now.) The materials for all three project types don't take up much room, so they fit into a small bag you can keep with you all the time so you can knit on them when you have a few spare minutes or fifty. These project types can all keep you warm as well as make you look spiffy. And there's so much pattern variety, both simple and complex, to keep your visual interest.

All of them are good for spring and summer knitting, too, because you don't have a lot of heavy yarn in your lap like you do when you knit a blanket or a sweater. (Ooh, this may renamed 5S in the fall, when I start knitting sweaters again.)

I'm going to start 4S with a photo essay of a shawlette knit-along I recently finished. I tweeted updates and pics after each section was completed, but I realize not everyone is on Twitter.

I've read Wendy Johnson's blog for awhile now, and I've always admired her lace patterns. She's got a new lace knitting book coming out in August and ahead of that, she's been doing a few group knit-alongs. For non-knitters, a knit-along is just what it sounds like - a group of people knit the same pattern and compare notes in the process. Everyone's using different yarn in different colors and maybe even different needle sizes, so despite it being the same pattern, there is lots of variety in the finished results.

It gets even more interesting if it's a mystery knit-along. You know what the finished object will be, but not what it will look like in detail. Sections of the pattern are released (in order) at regular intervals. The good thing about this process is that you work on the project a bit at a time, and it seems far more manageable that way. There's no real deadline, so you knit at your normal pace. There's no problem if you fall behind because the next pattern clues will still be available when you catch up.

For this mystery lace shawlette knit-along, Wendy suggested fingering weight yarn without too much varigation, and size 5 or 6 needles. I decided to use Knit Picks Stroll in the Tidepool Heather colorway.

(All photos taken with the Instagram app on my iTouch - I'm having a little too much fun with the retro pic options on that app.)


This is 239 stitches cast on with two rows knit.

Unfortunately, I had to rip all this out because the stitch count was incorrect in the pattern. It was supposed to be 241 stitches. Wendy discovered it pretty quickly and alerted the group. She even had a fix if you'd cast on the 239, but it only worked if you hadn't started the first lace row, which I had, so after a short visit to the frog pond, I was able to re-cast on with the correct number of stitches.

First 14 rows:

Twelve rows added:

Tristan wanted to help:

Another 72 rows added:

The last 20 rows added and the whole thing bound off:

Blocked! (For non-knitters, blocking means stretching a piece and pinning it to get it sized correctly, and for a lace project, to get the pattern to pop out and not look like lumpy tangled noodles.

I think it turned out nicely, and I'd probably knit it again. The only changes I'd make are to take out the "spine," since I generally don't like that look in shawls (it's easily done by omitting the yarnovers on either side of it that make the line of holes), and I'd make it a little bigger since the average yardage of fingering weight yarn that I buy would easily cover another pattern repeat or two.

anniversary

Oscar-the-cello and I have been together for a year.

It's been a good relationship so far. Oscar sounds better in the new practice space (the room with the moon and stars). It's a smaller and cozier room, so I can hear his tones a whole lot better.

We're up to fourth position and about to dive into thumb positions. Our vibrato is coming along nicely. Well, all but first finger vibrato, but we're working on that. We have a better bow hold, too. A nagging ganglion cyst on my left wrist sometimes gets in the way of developing our relationship. However, my left hand grip is a lot looser than it used to be, so the cyst doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

The kitties like Oscar, too. They take turns hanging out in the room during my practice sessions.

Appropriately enough, I had a cello lesson tonight. More work on the Scherzo. Funny how relaxed you have to be to play the frenzied bits so they sound convincing.

Oscar puts up with me even on my bad days when I'm cranky or tired or depressed or angry or doubtful or dejected. Some days we sound truly awful together, and we can occasionally find humor in that. Some days I tell him I don't feel like practicing and can only manage a scale or two. He's okay with that because he knows that more often than not just getting started with a scale can be enough momentum to get me to stay seated and continue with an étude and maybe even wander over to tackle a bit of the current full piece I'm working on.

Here's to many more years together with Oscar.

the ugly teenage phase

I'd mentioned on Twitter and Facebook that Ben gave me a pep talk during today's lesson. Several people asked me what it was about.

For background, during this lesson, we were working on an etude and a minuet. Both involve moving in and out of a lot of positions. This can be tricky with an instrument that doesn't have frets on it. You have to go by sound alone. You can cheat a bit and use a tuner to tell you if you're too sharp or too flat, but eventually, you play so many notes over and over that you start to recognize when they are too sharp, too flat, or just right.

The etude focuses on going from first to fourth position and back again. I thought I'd been doing fine in my practice sessions with it, but when Ben played the second cello part along with me, it was obvious I was playing a hair too sharp in first position and a hair too flat in fourth position. This really threw me, and I got flustered with how to fix it. (I did figure out that since the width of the fingerspace in positions narrows as you go down the fingerboard, I'm overcompensating for it when I change positions.)

I've been working on this etude for awhile, and I was starting to doubt my ability to improve on it, ie, I wasn't sure what to work on anymore, sharpness and flatness aside. I can play the right notes at speed, and my shifts are a lot better (no pausing to get from one to the other). However, it's nowhere near the joy-to-listen-to point. In fact, nothing I play gets to that point.

Ben said that I'm at that stage where the novelty of learning to play the cello has worn off, and I'm not satisifed anymore with "it's okay to sound bad since I'm a beginner anyway," but I've also not had anywhere near enough experience with the instrument yet to show deep mastery of anything. What he sees and hears in my lessons is that I'm in the thick of rolling up my sleeves and working at fundamentals and details so I can eventually get to the I-sound-and-feel-like-I-know-what-I'm-doing stage.

I heard a similar statement from one of my art teachers years ago. She said all creative works go through an "ugly teenage phase," where the shiny new project enthusiasm fades, and you have to work and develop the substance that turns it into something worth looking at (or in the case of music, worth listening to). That can be a long and tedious slog that requires the P word.

Patience.

I've never minded doing the work to get good at something, since I am more process-oriented than product-oriented when it comes to creative endeavors, but there comes a point where it gets hard to sit down every day and do the work when it seems like I only see a drop of improvement every once in awhile. (My latest drop was getting a quick eighth-note run in the minuet to sound and feel accurate, smooth, and comfortable enough that even I thought it sounded good.)

I suspect that's why Ben makes me keep a cello journal. He's forever pointing out how many pages I've filled and saying, "look what you were working on a year ago that seemed impossible, and now you can do it easily." It's his way of saying that I may be good about not resting on my laurels, but I suffer from a serious case of not acknowledging what I've accomplished.

His advice was to "keep being consistent and organized." Practice every day, no matter what, and continue to write down what I do. Approach a piece in layers so it's less daunting, which results in less procrastinating about even starting it - focus on one thing until I have it, and then add another layer, and then another - pizzicato to get the left hand comfortable, then bow in rhythm on open strings, then add the left hand back in, then add slurs and dynamics. It's the least stressful way to learn a piece thoroughly and not get permanently hung up on any one thing, and it sneaks patience in there at the same time.

Now he's assigned me a frenzied, someone's-had-caffeine-haven't-they scherzo to work on for the next few weeks. I've overcome tripping over eighth notes. On to sixteenth notes.

"You'll get there," he says. "And remember, we're doing this because it's fun!"

Never underestimate the power of others having faith in you when you run low on your own reserves of it.