Festive Three

Festive Two

Festive One

Sing it Kids! Exalt them Valleys- Why Don’t Ya? (Messiah Sing-Alongs)

Pleeaasseee click on the picture above. It's just lovely up close

I’m heading off shortly to my second

*

sing-along-Messiah of the festive season. Tonight it’s at Stanford University’s Memorial Chapel. Yum!I’ve got some lovely compositions based on photos I took from that stage, when I sang in Beethoven’s 9’th and the Verdi Requiem, as part of the Stanford Summer Chorus. I went for the Beethoven (Just One More Daughter outta' Elysium ). I still don’t get the appeal of the Verdi. Give me another decade and I will.

Memorial Chapel ought to be pretty darn nice for Messiah –

Spanish colonial style,

gorgeous stained glass windows, sandstone walls and ornaments. I want architecture when I’m singing baroque stuff. I want to imagine I’m in one of the original performances. The first one was in Ireland, to benefit a hospital. I remember that much. Can’t find my useful little Messiah Book for more details though.

For me, singing Messiah, and other Christmas music, is not about belief in a religious tradition. It’s getting caught up in a historical, western musical experience. It’s about telling a story. I can tell the story of Little Bear without being a bear. I can read aloud from Little House on the Prairie without having traveled across it in a covered wagon, even if my ancestors were living in Samoa or El Salvador at the time. I can sing Messiah and not be a Christian.

Me-oh-my those choruses. Ok, "Hallelujah" is a given. Nobody would sing it who didn't adore that one. In most sing-alongs you get to do it twice. So that gives me a total of six fixes this season. "Every Valley Shall be Exalted" - you bet! My favorite is, “Oh thou that tellst’ good tidings from Zion” Just reading through the soprano part again gets my heart racing.

. . .

My first podcast is actually not out as a 'cast. Instead I'm doing the first couple of months as youtube audio- slideshows as I build my podcasting skills. Please go and see and listen. And let me know what you think (you can leave comments here)

Part1: Folk, Foxes and Francisco

Part2: Folk, Foxes and Francisco

. . .

* I’m planning to do a third Messiah sing-along this month as well- when they plan it, we will sing it!

Printable Tags for Festive Occasions (free download)

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

TAGS!

From the pages of this art journal, a collection of original tags designed by The Simple Romantic herself (!)

a) Just in time for the final night of Hanukkah

b) Great for a vintage Christmas look

c) So handy for general birthday and other ‘gifting

d) Also make gorgeous bookmarks

These look mighty fine printed on a piece of postcard stock, which you can usually buy at a stationary, office supply store or a photocopy center. The photocopy stores often sell them individually. Around here I think they might be fifteen or twenty cents for a piece of postcard stock.

Click on any or all of these links for your own Simple Romantic tags. When you get there make sure to click on the tag image, to bring it up in full and glorious printable detail.

• The Assemblage, Dawning of the Music

• A bit of beauty from the Alcazar Palace (Spain)

Other illustrations of and pieces about Spain

• My Favorite Chicken

• Daisy’s Duds

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/