A cosy kindle

I finished sewing my kindle cover yesterday, and I love it! Very functional + cute. I used this tutorial: Make a custom Kindle cover, and fabric from my stash. The cartoon-books fabric was intended for a bag to haul library books around, but I can do a patchwork-style bag with the leftovers. I cut up two old diary/planners for the stiff cardboard inserts, so it was a good recycling exercise. :)

Propped up for reading

Folded flat for hand-held reading

The back (with cute fabric!)

All tidied away

As with all of my sewing adventures there were a few moments of frustration, but for once the problems were easily solved (i.e. cutting down the cardboard inserts when I discovered the fabric sleeve was too narrow). If I ever make another, I'll add padding to the inside surfaces for extra protection in case of clumsiness.

Sight-singing

One of my weak spots in singing is sight-reading, i.e. singing what's on the page in front of you without having seen or heard it before. It's a very handy skill for learning new music in a group (saves time teaching each person/section their part), and it's a normal (and scary) part of auditions. So I've resolved to work at getting better at it, and I have a plan...

Robert suggested I practise sight-reading the tenor parts of Bach chorales, because they jump around in interesting ways, and so I acquired a book of Bach's chorale harmonisations. There are 371 in the book, so that's plenty to be going on with. My plan is to do one chorale per day, which should be easy enough to fit in. I'm up to Day 10 today. :)

I've been starting with the soprano part, as a gentle start - they're just simple hymn tunes, without many jumps. Then I do the alto part, the tenor part (which is usually the trickiest), and the bass part (up an octave). Bass parts tend to have big jumps, so they're good practice for me.

(a nice short one)

The only problem with the book I'm using (the old Riemenschneider edition) is that it doesn't have the text of the chorales written in. I'll have to find something else in addition to practise sight-singing with words. :p

A musical treat

Yesterday afternoon Willie and I went to a concert of 17thC viol music. Getting more than a couple of viol players together is rare in Wellington, so this was definitely a special treat! The performers were Loren Ludwig and Polly Sussex on both treble and bass viols, Robert Oliver on bass viol, and Douglas Mews on organ. For the five-part viol pieces, they were joined by Kevin Wilkinson and Susan Alexander on tenor viols. Last year, Olivia and I performed some consort songs with Robert, Loren, and Kevin. It was great to be able to relax and enjoy the music this time without being nervous about my own pieces. :)

My favourite items in the concert were the Christopher Simpson Fantasias 'Winter', 'May', and 'June'; the five-part Fantasia by John Jenkins; and the Suite by Anthony Holborne. Lively and well-played, and the sound of the viols together was just luxurious.

Seeing the treble viols in action made me want to take up playing again. During my past flirtation with viol playing, I went for the bass instrument, but I think part of my difficulty with it is that my arms and legs are really too short for it. I think a treble is more my size...

Handmade: Day 2

This morning I had choir as usual at St Mary's, but with a couple of incidents that weren't entirely usual. During Mass, Olivia and I sang the Monteverdi duet we'd been working on (a 'Salve Regina' setting), and it went really well. We'd had a good run-through before Mass, which helped our confidence a lot. I'm even getting more used to leading now. But alas, Olivia is departing to Berlin to pursue her art career. The choir had a farewell lunch (bring-a-plate style), and it was all a bit sad. But she has promised to return after a year or so, and keep us up-to-date with her adventures via email.

Afterwards, I headed over to Te Papa for more crafting at the knit lounge. I hadn't signed up for any classes for today, so I just hung out and did some spinning and knitting and chatting. A couple of people had brought their spinning wheels, which was cool to watch. I started spinning some rainbow merino on my wee turkish spindle (both recently acquired).

When I got sick of spinning, I switched to working on the little knitted bag that I started at yesterday's two-handed knitting class. Happily, I still remembered how to do it! Still awkward, but I shall keep practising. Eventually I started making mistakes and dropping needles, so I took a hint and called it a day. Time to curl up with a pot of tea and my kindle... :)

Handmade: Day 1

First up, Willie accompanied me to a lecture about the history of knitting: "Proud Knitters: A History of Communities of Strangers". It was really fascinating! I didn't know people used to write in to magazines and answer each other's crafting questions, much like we now do online. Or that paper shortages during the war affected how detailed patterns in magazines instructions could be - that explains the extreme brevity of many older patterns, which are so hard for us to figure out today. We're used to being given much more detail!

After the lecture, Willie headed out to a family lunch and I went to the 'knit lounge' to hang out before my afternoon class. I tried out some GIANT knitting needles, which were rather hard on one's arms (bloody cool though)...

I had brought a knitting project to work on, but I noticed no-one was spinning, so I decided to get out my spindle and represent. ;) I got a few curious folks watching and asking questions, and one little boy tested my fibre for softness by rubbing it on his nose (eww). The Holland Road Yarn Co folks had lots of yarn and fibre and needles and things for sale, and I fell in love with this merino spinning fibre:

I'm a sucker for pretty colours.

My afternoon class was over in the town hall, so some of us trooped over there together. I'm glad I booked early for "Two-Handed Stranded Knitting", because it sold out. It was definitely worth seeing the technique in person rather that from a book, because it was a bit tricky to get my head around. We started making our little bags by knitting 'normally', and then learned to knit with our other hand. In my case this meant holding the yarn in my left hand and scooping it off my left index finger to make each stitch.

Once we'd mostly got the hang of that, the teacher (Morag of Vintage Purls) showed us how to alternate stitches with the two strands of yarn held in one-in-each-hand. It actually wasn't too awkward after the practice I'd had knitting with my left hand, although I was knitting tighter than usual. After the alternating stripes, we started on a charted picture of two birds, learning how to secure the long floats at the back as we went. I didn't get very far on the birds, but it'll be good to keep practising so I don't forget what I've learned.