Fingerless gloves for fiddling

Bed is beckoning. To be tucked cozily in the blankets listening to the heavy wind and rain, hearing music in my head.

After a week of preparing and stressing about this day, I'm vibrating with fulfillment and happiness.

My violin worlds sometimes collide: classical and bluegrass. They're not easy companions to practice side by side and yet there are times I need to concentrate equally on each. This autumn the small ensemble I'm in is playing Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, No. 4. This is stuff I loved playing from the very first read-through. It's a joy to practice and work through! After a week of working to nail the harder passages I so looked forward to putting it all together at yesterday's practice session. To my dismay, we didn't touch it! The director decided to spend the session working on our sight reading skill. So, she trotted out Beethoven's Scherzo. Yikes, that seriously tests my timing skills - or rather, the lack of them. (The playlist on the left is the music we did today, as well as for some previous gigs.)


Meanwhile, I had to seriously practice bluegrass, and knit a pair of fingerless gloves for tonight's gig. Black Silk from Debbie Bliss. Wonderful smooth, glossy stuff that's extremely hard to knit in the evening light, which is knitting time. I didn't like any one pattern so combined different things from several differnt patterns ending up with a left hand glove with a 9 stitch lace pattern. My very first lace! :-)We'd heard that the place we were playing in this evening would be cold and it's hard to play fast fiddle when fingers are freezing so I wanted a pair of fingerless gloves that stopped at the crease in the palm of my hand so there's no bunching when playing. (It's hard to see the lace but it's there.) This was a very satisfying project in a couple of ways: The lace turned out great - remembering the pattern and understanding why the yo and k2t were where they were was exhilarating; And basically working up my own fingerless glove pattern felt rather empowering.

Crooked Finger Band had a double-booking today. Take it on the road folks! The first was a two hour gig at the nearby retirement center. The folks were friendly and enthusiatic and the pay good. :-)My d-i-l is in the band so she was there with Faith, and her mom who used to work at the Towers and knows most of the residents. She showed Faith off to one and all. Immmediately afterwards we packed up and headed into the blustery hills for an evening gig, up Crooked Finger Rd. One of the locals has an annual get together of all the neighbors along Crooked Finger. We began with one of our standard fiddle tunes, a favourite with most audiences. Looking out at the people I recognized most of them and my heart sang with happiness. What a thrill and honor to play for people who've kind of heard of the band but had never heard us play together. When members of a band are in sync and hitting the notes together it is an amazing high, a tremendous reward for all the hours of practicing. So many times I'm close to quitting the violin - she's a demanding taskmaster who isn't often kind. But then a day comes along like today where most of the notes are easily found by the fingers and it all feels so right and good.