To Zip or Not to Zip?

My first podcast is actually not out as a 'cast. Instead I'm doing the first couple of months as youtube slideshows with audio as I build my podcasting skills.

Part1: Folk, Foxes and Francisco

Part2: Folk, Foxes and Francisco

We are all so gosh-darned environmentally conscientious these days. Everybody’s got a view on the best method for saving the planet. And most of us are involved in our own plan for doing our bit. Are you getting tired of hearing about how all your friends are greener than you are?

There was that woman standing next to me at the Menlo Park Farmer’s market, for example. She was complaining about the prices. Fifty cents more, she said angrily, than the price at the Redwood City Saturday market. I remarked that the farmers pay more for the stalls at our downtown market, than they do one city north.

“I wouldn’t think it would be worth the gas to drive to Redwood City, to save fifty cents on a bouquet of sunflowers.” I tried to say it politely.

“I’ll get there in my hybrid,” she replied smugly. Well it’s pretty clear she is doing her duty by the earth!

I had to grit my teeth together, fighting the impulse to attempt to one-up her. Clearly she doesn’t consider the cost to the environment of producing a brand new car. I also forebore to tell her that, I always walk or bike to the weekly market. How much charm could there really be in showing up somebody who is that much of a dope?

It’s not that I never drive. I just manage to limit doing it. Both my husband and I can get away with it, because neither of us has a commute that requires driving. That’s not an option for everybody, and it certainly hasn’t always been an option for me. You do what you can. I can walk or bike to two grocery stores, a photocopy place and a pharmacy. So most days I do the family shopping in bits and pieces, and my husband makes one big Costco run a week for the heavy stuff. There’s days and evenings when I need a car. I take music and technology classes at the local community colleges, and our public transportation system isn’t well integrated with those campuses, if you live where I live. (I know because I’ve tried it, and pumped the local bus drivers for ideas.) So I drive to my classes.

My neighbor Jen and I have both downsized to one car. A bike racer and regular long-distance rider, Jen bikes everywhere. She ferries her children, via Burley, amazing distances. She and her husband both commute by bike. She also walks to the grocery store most days.

This didn’t start out as a plan to be greener-than-thou. Each of us had two cars until recently. But Jen’s lovely old purple sedan got crunched by another driver in a hurry. Stop signs were apparently not made for everyone. The insurance company gave her $900 for a car that had worked just fine and required little maintenance. My daughter was determined to be a good bike commuter at college, but it just didn’t work out for her. Sometimes you need a car. We are left with reliable Old Blue, the elderly mini van.

If pushed to it, we could each acquire a second vehicle. And that second vehicle, like each of our first ones, would spend a lot of time in our respective driveways. A waste of money neither of us is dying to spend. A waste of space in our none-too-sizable drives. An unnecessary drain on the planets resources, - yes mam - even if we got hybrids.

What would be nice, I thought, would be that Zip Car program. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Didn’t it start on college campuses? A fleet of cars I rent a share in. Access to a car only when I need it. Another expense, but less than that of purchasing a new or used car.

So do either Jen or I Zip?

In a way we do. We setup our own Zip. Each of us already has one car we rarely use. So we back each other up. On the rare occasion when both spouses need the car, and it does happen, we check in with our neighbor.

“Going to be using your car Saturday night, Jen? I’ve got a piano recital at school and Dave needs to drive down south.”

“No bike race this weekend. You’re on. And by the way, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment Tuesday afternoon and Mark needs to take the car, so he can drive down to San Jose after work. That’s not an afternoon when you have class, right?”

It’s not. My Old Blue will get her over to the doctor’s.

Sewing- The Never Too Many White Shirts Project: 1 IMAGINING The Perfect Shirt

December is a kinda extra-special busy time for anybody involved in music performance. But I managed to slip in an hour yesterday. And next week I'm definitely, absolutely, positively going to schedule time in. Fifteen minutes to a half an hour after piano practicing will move me along.

Right now I'm sewing the perfect white shirt.

It's perfect because, well I haven't actually put the pedal to the metal (actually, my pedal goes down on terra cotta tile) on this garment.

Nor have I cut anything out.

I haven't decided on a pattern yet.

But it tumbles around in my mind when I'm walking or driving. Mentally, I sort through the white shirts I've made in the past. And I DO wear them a lot. I've worn several out. Even though each one has things I'd will change in this perfect shirt.

I need to finally figure out something about fitting around the shoulders. My standard yoked shirt pattern that mostly fits, drags back from the shoulders. I think that means the armscythe (sp?) is too deep. But my arms aren't small and I always worry about having my sleeves be roomy. Maybe it's not the armscythe. I need to find a visual fitting tutorial. I see that Robin at A Little Sewing has the opposite challenge. I think I might learn something from thinking contrary 'wise by reading her entry. Nice drawings Robin!

Also I need to look at the gathering on my favorite L.L. Bean green shirt. I've had that since my now 20 year old daughter was 3. I love that shirt and it always gets a lot of compliments. It has gathered sleeves on a kind of dropped shoulder. It's very romantic, but it's got a stand up collar and a yoke. It's definitely a shirt and I love it. I need to do some measuring on that shirt.

I could cut up that old denim shirt that was comfortable and pretty for so long - now where did I put that.... It's really, really worn out and stained. Time for it to move into pattern land. I can do some comparisons with the shirt pattern that pulls back from the shoulders and also the gathered green sleeves.

I think I will make a first attempt in good old plain white muslin. It will be a muslin, but one that I can wear too. Also I have some muslin in my stash. So, I can feel pretty virtuous starting with that. I will focus on fitting with the muslin. Then just do simple recycled men's shirt buttons and machine buttonholes. I can move onto more elegant buttons when I go for version number 2 in some kind of dreamy, elegant white material.

I like the word 'material' so much better than 'fabric'. It's the word I grew up using. I was a kid in the 60's and came of age in the 70's.

Right now the shirt is a vision. A vision I will start on AFTER I finish sewing a forever-more already cut out project. You know that project? Oh yes, that's right it's leftover as a halfway-done from last cold season. And it seemed rather simple last year too. But somehow it wasn't. Then it got warm. Ugh! Who wants to sew fleece in California in April?

It's a nice golden mustard fleece vest, with a kinda breast-welt pocket embellished with a piece of beautiful French trim decorated with blue and turquoise Phoenix birds (from Brittex in San Francisco - those trims make me shiver). It zips up the front. Also I have a long sleeved teeshirt cutout to go with it that is not sewn at all. The fleecy vest has it's zipper in. Yes, I had to finish it off by hand because with the double thickness fleece, I couldn't get the zipper all machine sewed in. I've finally moved onto doing the lining for the back of the vest. Then I have to figure out what to do about making some kind of neat band around the bottom. Then sew on the collar. It's already to go. THEN I will make the teeshirt.

I invented the vest pattern from my favorite fleece jacket pattern, so I have to reinvent how to make it. I sure hope that bottom band comes out right. Maybe a little elastic...

Trying really, really hard to sew down my stash. It's working but it's slow. Also it sure is nice to make things I get a lot of wearing out of . This combination should see some serious time this winter. But I have to get it done this winter.

Then onto my vision of a white shirt!

....

This entry represents one sewers progress (or lack thereof)

in the Never Too Many White Shirts Project at http://sewingontheedge.blogspot.com/

A Milk Can Remembers

Please click on the picture above

to enjoy more detailed milk can memories.

How many days, in her day after day never ending job, did Whilhelmina get up at 3 or 4 in the morning, to go out to the barn? The dozen patient Holsteins knew her touch so well. It was a rare day when she had to fix the stanchion in place to keep them still. Bucket after bucket filled to the brim, were poured into the big metal can. Did she sing “Springfield Mountain” to them while she worked? Or did she maybe whistle the jaunty little air she’d played on the piano the night before?

How many pounds of butter did she make? How many children on her farm, or just down the road in the new town, where people didn’t have enough land to keep a cow, flourished on the milk?

Even the metal remains of the old milk can, carry me back through time.

The Assemblage: Dawning of The Music (Part 2 of 2)

To enjoy using this illustration as a beautiful bookmark or gift tag*, click on the image, copy to computer desktop, then print on a piece of card stock paper (available at stationary and photocopy stores).

Permission is granted for non-commericial use only.

Did you miss? Part 1: Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony!

Part 2: The Assemblage: Dawning of The Music

The assemblage is when the music discovers itself. The term ‘assemblage’ is not in my music dictionary, but it’s the most basic and important part of the communal musical experience. Its sense of building expectation makes it my favorite part of concert time. After the pre-concert talk, and long before the concert mistress rises to her feet and calls for attention, the audience is introduced to, or reacquainted with, the players. They stroll on stage, sit down, do a little light tuning, and begin to warm-up their instruments, and practice the solo bits. This night was a particularly fine assemblage. It formed the base of a fantastical, illusory composition.

Like any great work, each instrument enters in her own time. In the case of the assemblage, that arrival is based on absolutely natural timing. Conditions of wind, rain, parking lot perambulation, and the length of the bathroom line each affected the arrival of a player on the scene. He finds his chair, greets his fellows, and begins the ritual of mouthpiece maintenance. She tightens her bow and smoothes on the rosin. The music is coming to life all around her. A flute begins to flutter in excitement, then shrieks, and suddenly drops down in a rapidly descending scale. Vigorous blasts of tooting brass, clear and warm the cold chambers of trumpet, trombone and french horn. Bows dash back and forth with no regularity of motion, each moving on its own path, creating small crescendos and evolving separate tunes out of the mass of sound. I would recognize these abundantly practiced bits later in the great works, but the sense of the individual’s hard-won, repeated effort would be missing.

A really great assemblage captures the spirit that came before the bison’s skin was stretched taut across the void, that would some day emerge as a great kettle drum. It feels the first breath from the first bow that drew across the violin’s ancient forebearer, Grandma Rebec. It is the resurrection of the dawning of music, when a welter of pipes configured itself into a horn.

Just for a moment I wished that I could be recording this. Yet the real joy of this time is that it never can be captured or repeated. The very awareness of anyone’s interest in it as a whole, would compromise the music that emerges on it’s own. The assemblage is the best piece of all. It is live music walking through the door, unstructured and unplanned. It is the quintessential chance composition. It will never be heard again.

It is the perfect jam.

* The wonderful vintage luggage tag background I used for this project is a free public download from the HauntingVisionsStock site. Thank you D-O-H!

Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony! (Part 1 of 2)

Want a closer look at the music? Go ahead and click on the picture above.

Part1: Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony!

The “Polovetsian Dances” drew me to Redwood Symphony’s most recent concert. I wasn’t disappointed. The orchestra clearly loves playing this piece, and no one seems to enjoy it more than the director, Eric Kujawsky. During this piece, the maestro handed over th podium to assistant director, Kirstin Link, and moved back to join the percussionists, at the cymbal stand. The look on his face, each time the music crested to meet those great bells, told the audience that he was immersed in the delicious bursts that reverberated when he closed his instrument in a burst of copper, red bronze, nickel silver and zinc alloy.

I also encountered a new, to me, favorite composer, Lee Actor in the rambunctious piece ”Dance Rhapsody”. My ear heard stories from different individuals, bustling, strolling and interacting in a variety of urban social patterns, in this modern work that combines waltz, tango and fandango rhythms. I’ll be looking for the Redwood Symphony take on this in iTunes.

I could make comments about every piece on the program, such as the lure of Peter Stahl on the English horn in Sibelius’ “The Swan of Tuanela”. Not only could I easily envision the swan craning her neck, but Peter’s music told me just the sensation I’m searching for, when I draw the air up from the base of my spine, past my larynx, into the upper reaches of my soft palette and beyond. That's just the feeling I’m reaching for to get the true flavor of the high G in that Alessandro Scarlatti aria I’m working on. First soprano tutorial , whodda’ thunk it?

But…. my very favorite bit of the concert came before the program began. It came, in fact, during the assemblage.

Tomorrow – Part 2: The Assemblage: Dawning of Music

Even a Stopped Clock Shows The Right Time Twice a Day (Cut-Fold-Make your own Stopped Clock)

PLEASE click on this clock project picture to bring up the fully detailed

print'able migonette clock

I was inspired to create this migonette clock after my friend Marilyn and I went to see the Cartier exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Though we enjoyed taking in the wealth (no kidding!) of glorious and exotic luxury items on display, after a while we both felt a little jaded. It's an odd feeling to think of such a concentration of money being in the hands of such a small group of people.

My favorite items were not the lavish necklaces and opulent rings. They were the clocks. I was particularly struck by a collection of tiny migonette clocks all made, of course, from precious gems and layers of pricey stone. One particular gem-of-a-clock was sheeted in blue and white stripes.

It doesn't really matter to me whether a clock is made from alabaster and pearls, or resin and simple beads. With their obvious time portal abilities, I just like timepieces. So I designed and created my own blue and white striped masterpiece from card stock, using the box-outline template that Victoria magazine artist-in-residence Olivia Kanaley, used to create little fall-themed boxes in the October issue of Victoria. Olivia kindly granted me permission to use her box-shaped template in this project and make it available to others on this page.

Keeping in mind, as the poet says, that 'even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day' (a lot of people seem to be in disagreement about which poet said that), I hope you enjoy constructing your own stopped migonette clock. Feel free to use it either as a time portal or a little container for treats, for you or a friend.

My newly constructed migonette clock is sitting temptingly on my desk. That Henry Purcell piano piece has been rather challenging. I'm thinking that a quick trip back in time, for a Baroque era music lesson with the maestro is in order.

The Simple Romantic recommends that, after your click on the picture to bring up the full view, that you then print this project on a piece of card stock paper. You can get card stock at an office supply store in packages, or often you can buy individual sheets at a large photocopy store

Time on My Hands:Whither Shall I Wander?

Please click on the door above,

to better acquaint yourself with this California time portal

If I step through this Californian Spanish-colonial doorway, an obvious time portal, where will I land? I might expect to end up like Isabella of Castille (of Ferdinand and Isabella fame) in the palace at Segovia shortly before 1492. Yet, I’ve found time travel, like it's mainstream cousin, often drops me off in spots other than those I’d expected.

Like the rabbit that comes out her back door while I'm sitting glued to the entrance she went in, I tend to start out on one simple project and end up in a totally unexpected place.

a) I was supposed to fly to Texas and ended up spending five hours in the Mexico City airport. Every word of Spanish conversation I’d ever employed ABSOLUTELY deserted me as I wandered around in circles attempting to understand how to acquire two tickets to Costa Rica, nearly ending up in Nicaragua. I’m sure there were English speaking people in that airport, but I never found them. Which shouldn’t have been a problem, because normally, my Spanish speaking confidence is high.

On that day, I was reduced to drawing pictures to communicate my needs.

b) In the ‘midst of beginning vocal skill study, the solo voice class accompanist encouraged me to start studying piano, and do so right away. It’s not that these skills are unrelated. I just wasn’t expecting to need to go out and buy a piano. Six years later I am still studying piano, and voice.

Oh - and I ended up studying Italian as well. Again, it's not that it isn't related. It just wasn't in the plan book.

c) I took an intensive class in Photoshop last spring and that led to a fascination with writing apps, for which I’m having to learn a programming language I didn’t know before.

* * *

Think I’ll just open that red door, and see where it takes me. Segovia in 1492, perhaps? Then again Peron’s Argentina, or Cuba in the 1960’s may be just on the other side.