My b-mum sent me a note before Christmas to let me know she’d sent me a small package by snail mail, but when I got back from CA, it wasn’t there. I was bummed because I thought the neighbourhood vandals had struck again and nicked it off the porch. But! It turns out the post was just really, really slow. Got the package today and had a lot of fun trying to get into her mad packaging (re-using bits of an old amazon box and lots and lots of packing tape!). I’ve been giggling and grinning for the past half hour at one of the items in the package… a Discworld wall calendar. Hee! 🙂
Did my first TDL training as lead instructor today. Was really glad the TDL rep was there for the first hour or so, because, true to Murphy’s Law, as soon as we started our first hands-on exercise something went wrong on their server. Took half an hour to find a solution, which, scarily, was to add our training log-ins to their production server.
I bought a Rosca de Reyes (King Cake, to non-Spanish speakers) today, to share with my housemates on the occasion of Epiphany. In Mexico, King Cake is eaten on Ephiphany, which is the celebration of when the Three Wise Men arrived to worship Jesus. Which makes sense to me, with a name like “King Cake”. In the Mexican tradition, whoever gets the slice with the figurine of the baby in it, has to throw the Mardis Gras party later in the year.
Went to CA for Christmas to see the family. Got to see my sister-in-law and older nephew for the first time in a couple of years. They’ve been at work the last couple of times I’ve been by. I decided to drive, as renting a car for the week ended up being about the same price as a flight, and this way I’d have more independence. The day itself was quite nice, though my brother wasn’t able to join us, as he was called away to work. 🙁 So I drove up to Palmdale to pick up my sister-in-law and my younger nephew (older nephew was going to his girlfriend’s… first time for any sort of major celebration!!), as my sister-in-law doesn’t drive on freeways. We also had my mother’s housemate’s son and his family. He and his wife had their second baby four days earlier, so we weren’t sure if they were all going to get to come.
Got to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader while I was in CA. I was both pleased and disappointed. Most of the elements of the book are included in the film (e.g. all the islands they visit), but they’re out of order. And the whole main plot of the film (green mist, seven swords), is entirely new. I enjoyed the film for its own merits, but it’s not a particularly good adaptation, in my opinion.
Working on a new project for Ignatius Press… a critical edition of Mansfield Park; the full text of MP, some contemporary opinions that Austen herself collected, and various criticisms. For Iambik I’m doing a book called Getting Sassy for their Crime collection. It’s about a woman trying to get the money to keep her mother in a nice assisted living facility who resorts to kidnapping a thoroughbred racehorse’s goat companion (the title character, Sassy). Also still working on Sense and Sensibility for LV, though since both of these projects are due quite soon, it’s not getting as much attention as otherwise.
I had been planning on stage managing Barefoot in the Park starting next month at the Civ, but I just heard that the original director has stepped down, and I don’t know if the new guy will want me or if he has someone else in mind. I don’t really mind either way. If I do it, I get a bit of extra cash, if I don’t, and I get a role in My Fair Lady, which comes right after it, I wouldn’t end up doing two shows in a row.
Because I don’t know how many other entries there were in the two categories, but I won first place Knitted Garment for the Twist & Shout jacket and second place Knitted Accessory for the knitted twelve pointed ball at the county fair. 🙂
I entered knitting in the HOT Fair again this year (my second entry). Once again we were limited to one item per category, so I entered the Twist & Shout in the knitted garment category, and the twelve-pointed ball, which turned out really cute, in the knitted accessory category. I originally meant to put a jingle bell or some other noise-maker in the centre, but didn’t think about it when I went to buy the stuffing, so it’ll have to go in the next one (I bought three skeins of the same yarn in different colours).
After I finished the ball, I started the Elizabeth of York pattern from Alice Starmore’s Tudor Roses book. I haven’t gotten very far though. It’s on hold while I work on my Hallowe’en costume for this year’s Masquerade Ball at the theatre. This year I’ve decided to go as Susan Sto Helit (Death’s granddaughter from the Discworld books); specifically Susan as depicted in Hogfather. To that end, I’m making a long, full skirt and a fitted vest (both black); I found a white shirt with a plain, stand-up collar at Goodwill, and some “Mary Poppins” shoes at Sears or Penneys (can’t remember which I was in). I need to find a white wig that I can paint a black stripe on and style into a bun and I’m going to borrow a poker from a friend who has a fireplace. I’m pretty excited about this year’s costume. 🙂
Rehearsals for Noises Off are coming along well. We have close to a completed set now, which makes things much easier. We’re re-using part of the Best Little Whorehouse set, but the stairs had been taken down, so the three doors downstairs were having to do double and triple duty (there are meant to be four openings downstairs and four upstairs).
Haven’t been able to do as much recording as usual. Had a cold a two or three weeks ago and now my allergies have started acting up. I was having to stop every other sentence or so, during my recording session yesterday, to clear my throat or rub my itching nose. I hate allergies.
It turns out that the director from Little Shop will not be directing Noises Off! after all. Add to that, the new director has decided to do the show in dialect (British dialect, that is), and I ended up getting cast as the female lead!! This is a first for me. I will be following such greats as Patricia Routledge, Patti LuPone and Carol Burnett in the role of Dotty Otley. I know about half the cast, and they’re all really good actors, but I’ve never heard them do an English accent. First read-through is tomorrow. Really looking forward to it.
Just finished my first audiobook for a new publishing company called Iambik. The book was No Lease on Life by Lynne Tillman. All I had when I made my decision was what you can find on the amazon page, the first few pages and the publisher’s summary. It did sound interesting, so I went for it, though it would have been nice to have the whole book to glance through beforehand.
Still working on Sense and Sensibility for LibriVox. I’m about a third of the way through. And I’m about halfway through Edith Stein and Companions: On the Way to Auschwitz for Ignatius. I intend to get a fair bit more done on it today, as I have the day off.
I’m a bit more than halfway through my next knitting project (Celestine Sox). It’s a twelve-pointed ball. You start with a single point and then, on each successive one, you pick up stitches on the adjoining points, so there’s no seaming! Yay! The amount of seaming involved is why I’ve not done anymore stuffed toys since Toby. It’s also a single skein project, which makes my pocketbook happy.
I finished the third baby item of the summer today. Whenever I go visit my mother, I always take the opportunity to go to the LYS near her work. Waco’s generally a nice town, but is sadly lacking in yarn shops. When I was there a few months ago, I found a cute pattern for a cabled hoodie, and I decided to do that for the third object, rather than a second one of the fair isle sweaters. The finishing on the pattern was a bit simplistic, I think to make it accessible to newer knitters, so I made some changes. If I’d read all the way through the finishing instructions first, I’d have made a couple more.
The pattern says to knit the five main sections (back, 2 fronts, 2 sleeves), then do the button and buttonhole bands on the two fronts, then pick up stitches on the fronts and back for the hood, then do a band along the front of the hood, then sew the seams. The hood is knit up to a certain length, then a third of the stitches are cast off on either side, and you continue on the middle third, then sew it to the cast off sides.
If I’d read through the finishing instructions first, I’d have done the button, buttonhole and hood bands as one piece. But I’d already finished the two front bands before I read through the hood instructions, and didn’t feel like frogging them. I did avoid seaming on the hood and to attach the hood band to the front bands (seaming is my least favourite part of knitting). I used this technique on a lace shawl to attach the outside edge to the middle section a few years ago. Instead of casting off the stitches on the two edges of the hood, when I got to that point, I knit to the last middle stitch and knit it together with the first edge stitch, then turned the work and knit back to the next edge and did the same thing, and just continued like that until I ran out of edge stitches. I did the same thing for the bands by picking up a few stitches on the top of the front bands when I started the hood band. Would have looked better if I’d done it all as one piece, but I think it looks better than sewing the seams.
And I found some really cute hippo buttons for it. 🙂
I’ve done a bit more work on the Twist & Shout jacket. After wearing it at work (where it’s freezing!) for about a week, I decided I didn’t like how the sleeves fit. They were too long, the arm hole was too big, and they were just generally sort of floppy. So I brought it back home, detached the sleeves, frogged them and re-knit them. I’d already done the smallest size of the pattern, so I had to wing it. I did them in the round (avoiding seaming, again!) using the Magic Loop technique, as I didn’t have any dpns in that needle size. It was the second time I’d tried it, but only the first since I got my knitpicks interchangeable circulars, and I really enjoyed the technique this time. The cable of these needles is much more flexible. I may never use dpns again!
Audition for Noises Off! tomorrow. Same director that did Little Shop. I get the feeling he doesn’t like me, because he has yet to learn my name. During the show he called me variously Donna, Margaret, You, and Nurse (I was in the dentist scene). Still, I’m interested in the show, and the worst that can happen is that I won’t get cast.
I finally gathered my courage and steeked the armholes of the little fair isle sweater. After that, all I had left was the collar. I’m quite pleased with it. 🙂
I also finally (finally!!) finished the Twist & Shout sweater from the Fall 2008 Knitty. I had to do the collar twice because I picked up too many stitches the first time and it came down too far on the left. Picture’s not too great, because I didn’t have anyone around to take a picture of me in it, and I was too impatient to wait.
Now off to Ravelry to mark them both complete.
I’ve rearranged almost all the furniture in my loft and my poor dog doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s figured out where her bed is, at least.
I’d been thinking about doing this for a few weeks now. I have new housemates, and the one directly below my “office” (it’s an attic loft, spaces are designated by furniture arrangements) has been running the bathroom extractor much more than the previous one. The roof vent for the extractor is right above the office, which means that when it’s running, I can’t record. So I’d been thinking of moving the office to the space catty-corner from where it had been, which just happened to be the “bedroom”; unfortunately, it couldn’t be a straight swap, because there’s a column in the office corner that makes that space smaller than the rest of the corners, so I had to move three corners… bedroom to “dining room/spare bedroom”; spare bedroom to office, dining room to open space in the middle of the loft, office to bedroom.
While I was going to be moving stuff around, I figured I’d try to make myself a better recording booth. Several months ago I built a frame for a booth out of 1″ PVC pipe. It looked ok just by itself, but when I covered it with soundproofing blankets it got a bit saggy. It ended up being a glorified dog house for Lucy. Then I had another idea. Pegboard sheets (I can get 2′ x 4′ sheets at the hardware store) covered with acoustic foam tiles, attached in pairs with binder rings (which I had been using to hold up the blankets in the first booth). The tiles came at the end of last week, and I finished attaching them to the pegboards Friday afternoon. I used adhesive spray, but I think I’m going to have to go back with a hot glue gun, because a few have already come loose. I’ll need to test it first, though, to make sure it won’t melt the foam.
I started off with eight pegboards, which made a 4′ square. On the floor inside I laid four interlocking rubber mats (like you see in children’s playrooms), but once I had the four panel pairs up around it, and the mic inside, I found it a bit cramped, so I added the final two mats (which I’d been saving for blocking knitting projects) to make a 4′ x 6′ little room, and hung two of the sound-blocking blankets across the spaces between the pegboards.
I’m quite chuffed. I need to get a small table, and a second monitor to go with the secondary keyboard and mouse I already have, so I’ll be able to leave the laptop outside the booth, but still be able to read off the screen, and control it from inside. And maybe a little stool instead of the chair.
