kmkat and her kneedles

Back to the salt mines. And a concert.

As of this week I find myself back at work at the accounting factory. I was supposed to start Monday, but we got hit with a blizzard on Sunday with winter storm warnings and travel advisories all the way until Monday evening.

So I stayed at home in my cozy bed and read mysteries and snuggled the cat and surfed the net on my iPad and played computer games with Smokey and occasionally got up for something yummy to eat. And to watch Downton Abbey on Sunday and Hawaii 5-0 on Monday.

No more of that for me. Now it is Spreadsheets! and Tax returns! and Get them out the door! until April 15.

::sigh::

Many years ago I opined that a good job was one that, once you got there in the morning, it wasn't so bad. That is definitely still true. I really wanted to stay at home this year and read mysteries, etc., etc., etc., but it was not to be. And now that I am at work it is not so bad. Almost fun, even. Almost...

[/whine]

* * * * *

Last Friday night Smokey, Matthew, and I saw C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band at the Ordway Center in St. Paul. C.J. is the son of Clifton Chenier, the king of zydeco.

Smokey loves zydeco.

Good blogger that I am, I carefully tucked my camera in my tote bag. Bad blogger that I am, I left my tote bag in the car so had to make do with the camera in my iPod.

The Ordway is a lovely venue.

  My attempt at a panoramic view of the auditorium. 

Here are part of the street and mezzanine levels of the lobby.

They had set up a dance floor over the orchestra pit. First one brave couple, then a few more, then it filled up with people be-bopping their little hearts out.

   

I took a movie. Audio came out better than the video, go figger. The original was inverted because I was holding the iPod upside down, but when I uploaded it to YouTube, that fixed it. Enjoy!

During intermission Matthew let me try on his glasses. I may be getting new ones and I wanted his opinion on horn rims.

My nose is NOT really that big (quite) -- it was how I was holding the camera/iPod. There may be a pair of hornrims in my future...

Monopoly photo credit: Alan Cleaver via photopin cc

The House band (pun intended).

I find myself singing a couple of lines from this song from time to time over the past several years but could never remember any more than I got a song it ain't got no melody // Let the bad guy win everyonce in a while. Finally googled it and got the whole song.

The original performer:

Just for the record: I quite like the Afros.

Thankful Thursday: the real day edition.

This is a Thanksgiving tradition at our house. Back in the '70s and '80s and '90s we had to rely on KQRS, a Twin Cities radio station, to play it. Which they always did -- it was their tradition, too. This year I have it cued up (queued up?) on my iPod.

Here is another video that, if it isn't already, should become a Thanksgiving tradition:

Smokey and I watched that show every week and saw this in 1978. Yes, we are that old.

Thanks to martinimade for the reminder of these traditions.

Have a great day, y'all! 

One more thing. No, two more things. Well, actually, three more things.

This was me at the rally yesterday. We librarians* stand with the teachers whose vocation was disparaged and attacked and made to seem the enemy by the incumbent.

* Even former part-time librarians currently employed as tax accountants.

* * * * *

From Amanda Palmer's latest email update on her fantastically successful Kickstarter-funded album:

... to review the people-who've called list:

rolling stone called, the new york times called, time magazine called, the new yorker called, the wall street journal called, billboard called, and the economist called.

they want their media back.

i might give it to them to borrow, but first i want a picture of 24,883** people holding my naked body aloft on the cover of LIFE.

then we'll talk. 

I LOLed at that, and it was too good not to share.

** The number of people who donated to the Kickstarter project.

* * * * *

What I did on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend:

Yes, that's right, I hung out with my new BFF, Brenda Dayne. She is on a teaching / knitting / family visit / whatever tour of North America and taught several classes at The Yarnery*** in St. Paul. I took her class on how to design and construct a top-down raglan ("Basic Top-Down Daglan (With a Difference)").

And before you ask, no, I did not knit that gray alpaca lace shawl myself. I won it and blogged about it here (scroll down).

*** If you follow the link to The Yarnery, do watch the slide show of drool-worthy yarns on their front page. 

Ten on Tuesday, the happy music edition:

Ten Eleven Songs That Put Me In A Good Mood

1. Old Time Rock & Roll / Bob Seger -- I cannot sit still when this comes on :-)
    
2. Can't Find My Way Home / Blind Faith
   
   
3. Fields of Gold / Sting
    
4. Good Vibrations / Beach Boys
   
   
5. Five Years Time / Noah and the Whales
   
   
6. Shambala / anybody who wants to cover it
    
7. Anything by Queen
    
8. Love Lost / Temper Trap
   
   
9. School's Out / Alice Cooper
   
   
10. Bach Brandenburg Concerto #1 and #2
    
    
11. Big County  / Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
     
12. Don't Look Back / Boston

Lots of others, too many to remember...

Sunday stunning.

 

Courtesy of blackbird's Middle.

 

Jukebox.

I got a link to this site in today's email. It has been playing to me all day.

(The link takes you to songs played on the radio in 1973, but feel free to explore your favorite years.)

A modest proposal.

First off, have you heard Marc Martel, the singer who can channel Freddie Mercury's voice?

Here he is with some backup singers in 2007.

 Cf the originals:

I have long felt that the death of Freddie Mercury was a tragic loss ot the world of rock 'n' roll and to music in general. He was so, so talented, even beyond the fact of his four-octave range. Queen's music remains some of favorite, as I am sure it is for many (including Wayne and Garth). I mourned the loss of Janis and Jim Morrison and Warren Zevon and Frank Zappa and Jerry Garcia when they died, but imnsho none of them were the monumental talent of Mercury.

This past week we lost another giant when Steve Jobs succumbed to pancreatic cancer. No matter his personal quirks and failings, he was an unparalleled visionary in the computer and electronics field. Quite simply, he changed our world, not once but over and over. The Mac. The iPod. The iPhone. The iPad. Apple can replace a CEO but can they replace his creativity?

Here is my idea. If Freddie Mercury's voice can be re-found in Marc Martel (I cannot speak to the latter's other musical talents, but they seem to be prodigious), how about Steve Job's imagination and dogged pursuit of simplicity and perfection? Let us have a world-wide audition and see what comes of it.

In the immortal words of Click & Clack, The Tappet Brothers, What can it hoit?

On getting old(er).

The Temper Trap: Love Lost.

I heard this song on the Net a couple weeks ago and loved it. Here are three different music videos for it. Which is your favorite?

Finally, the official video.

I think the reason that Love Lost caught my fancy is that it reminds me of this song, a long-time favorite. Although LL loses the reggae beat; I guess it is the falsetto male voice that catches me.

I wanna be elected.

Today is (county and village) election day here in Wisconsin.

And if that song sound vaguely familiar, it might be because of this:

Back to Bach.

#2 Son drove up last weekend to swap cars with me. He, Smokey, and I were sitting in the living room chatting and my iPod was sitting on its dock playing the playlist of mostly Baroque music I had put together for a library event last Friday night (that's another post). This song came on (my version is by Jean Soldan and the Lucerne Festival Strings, conducted by Rudolf Baumgartner, but it is not available on YouTube):

Matthew stopped talking and looked perplexed.

"I know that song," he said.

Then he pulled out his Raspberry (I love calling it that) and played this:

I think I prefer the first version, but the second has much to recommend it...

Happy.

I had a very happy Sunday. I picked up all the stitches for the sleeves on the kimono sweater.

Music to work by:

 

That's a set of $10 speakers Smokey picked up a while back. I committed to provide the recorded music at a library event next month, and I wanted to test them with my iPod. All systems go so far.

 

I really don't know why it took me a week to work up the gumption to do this little task. I don't mind picking up stitches, although knowing I would have clear off the dining room table to have a place to work was a little daunting.

I picked up the all the stitches for each sleeve on its own needle, then decided I should count them to make sure that, 1, I had the same number of stitches for each sleeve, and, b, that I had picked up the same number on front and back. (The sweater, except for the fact that it is a cardigan, is perfectly symmetrical side to side and front to back. Such is the nature of a kimono [sweater].) Turned out I had nowhere near the same number of stitches in corresponding areas, so large parts had to be redone. But math and counting and a wee bit of measuring -- and remembering that 5 rows need 7 picked-up stitches -- saved the day. Each sleeve = 100 stitches.

Now I just need to knit the sleeves, which is perfectly mindless knitting for the first two-thirds or so, then lots of decreasing down to rolled-back garter cuffs. It is entirely possibly that I may get to wear this sweater before the snow melts.

 

The Stones have always been one of my favorite bands, ever since I was in high school in the 60s. For a time in my early 20s when I was plagued by depression, this album -- Let It Bleed -- was the only thing I could stand to listen to when I was down. On Sunday I cued up (queued up?) all the Stones music on my iPod and rocked out whilst picking up stitches. It was highly enjoyable.

* * * * *

#2 Son was here on Saturday and Sunday. He and Smokey spent a fair bit of time out in the garage swapping out new tires on his car and attempting to install a new exhaust system. But they took a little break to fix my office chair first.

For some reason the seat of the chair has been unlevel for several months. A few weeks ago I realized that sitting askew has been part of the reason for my chronic back pain. My resident fix-it experts to the rescue; I had looked under the chair myself and found nothing that looked like I could fix.

Success!

 

While they had the chair upside down, they cleaned the animal hair and other snarf out of the wheels.

 

Snarf that included a piece of yarn. Unbelievable!

2009: That was the year that was.

January.

Well, there was this (bad).

And there was this (good) (from left, Wendy, me, Chris, and Susan).

On the knitting front:


 

February.

Good intentions.

 

Snow and cold.

Knitting:

March.

Winter melted away.

Knitting.

April.

Spring arrived in earnest.

Yarnover.

End of tax season.

Taste of St. Croix.
 

Knitting resumed after tax season.

 

May.

I scored big at Macy's sale racks, I helped Norm go away, I celebrated Mother's Day in an eco-friendly way, the bears and the ticks came out of hibernation, I picked up trash, I enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend, I bid farewell to our local librarian, and Hannibal discovered the joys of catnip.

Knitting was primarily of a stealth nature, but did include scientific swatching and the F'ing of a couple of O's that had been OTN for nearly, and over a year, respectively. (I am rather proud of that sentence -- and its punctuation -- awkward though it may be.)

 

June

June was for knitting and vacation and celebrating that brief magical time that is summer in the north woods.

 

 

Lots of knitting.

 

 

July.

July was for more vacation -- the rest of the one in Wyoming and another on the North Shore.

And summer.
 

And injuries.
 

And knitting.

 

August.

It was a very good month. I turned 60, had a contest, and laughed. We went to a concert.
 

I learned the difference between eagles and turkey vultures, and I had surgery to remove some extra/unneeded bits and pieces and repair that torn cartilage in my knee.
 

Knitknitknit.

 

September.

In September I had lots of cats on the blog, it was my turn to give the prayer at the beginning of the monthly county board meeting, the county budget process blew up, and the most gloriously gorgeous month of the year was here.

 

The knitting, she continued.

 

October.

I became a biker by proxy,

more new-to-me music found its way into my iTunes, and we celebrated 35 years together

by not-camping on Lake Superior.

The kneedles continued to fly.
 
 

November.

The van that took us on some wonderful vacations met up with an unfortunate bear on the road and was replaced by an older but bigger and more customized van.

Cold weather arrived, and once more I cooked and baked.

 

Mostly, though, I knitted.




Apparently I can crank out hats like other knitters crank out... sweaters

December.

I continued to be thankful (there is a lot to be thankful for).

With the help of Matthew and Maggie, I decorated for Christmas. This decorating thing is never a given.

I showed you my ornaments, y'all showed me yours.

 

We ate well.
 

A bit more knitting* for others.

I pretty much finished my Christmas knitting. (Shhh, the Calorimetry is a surprise.)


The medical mittens are still OTN -- stay tuned.

*For someone who doesn't like pink, I sure knit a lot of it lately...

Dirty deeds done with sheep.

Ruth posted something about AC/DC t'other day, then Smokey showed me this. Apparently Angus&Friends are on EVERYBODY'S mind!

The Halleluia Chorus, as you have never *heard* it.

Cheerfully stolen from Ann.

Cello, meet computer. Computer, meet cello.

Readers, meet Zoe Keating.

I am not a big fan of avant garde music. John Cage sets my teeth on edge. John Coltrane and Theolonius Monk make me want to change the channel. I do like a bit of Philip Glass occasionally, also Steve Reich. but in general I prefer the 17th and 18th century classics.

Then I heard Zoe Keating on Radio Lab. Maybe it is because I find cello music to be orgasmic (figuratively speaking; I'm not THAT weird), maybe it is because her music reminds me of Philip Glass, maybe (probably) it is because she does not completely abandon melodic themes, but I instantly fell in love with her music, so much so that I scurried off to the iTunes store and bought one of her albums, something I do very, very rarely. (Heh. Diagram THAT sentence.)

No-Hater Rolling Dance Super Bike Mega Party!

From Facebook:

omgmrj = #2 son

He borrowed a bike trailer from a friend and has been towing around the speakers (above), amp, and a car battery so that he had MUSIC! when he rides. The whole things must weigh at least 70 pounds. Source music comes from his iPod. Smokey has promised to get me a photo but it hasn't happened yet.  To me it kind of defeats one of the reasons a person might enjoy bike riding -- to enjoy the quiet and listen to the birds, etc. But that's just me.

He says he gets some really strange looks when he rides, pulling this contraction. No, really?

But I love the idea of the rolling bike/dance party, especially the "no-hater" part. That's-a my boy!

So if you are a Twin Cities biker who likes to stay up late and doesn't mind getting wet (rain in the forecast), head on over to the West River Road bike path under Hennepin Avenue at 9 pm Friday night.

And say Hey! to this [slightly dorky-lookin'] guy:

Rockapella: Shambala!

I love this! Especially the bass. I guess I am into joyous music these days. Do I need a pick-me-up? Perhaps...

Music! Joy!

#2 son introduced me to Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. This particular piece is one of the most unabashedly joyous pieces of music I have ever had the pleasure to listen to.

* * * * *

Speaking of joy, have you ever visited this site? It is a powerful antidote to that other site I gave you.

ETA: thanks to IBOL guy for posting the GMH link on his blog.