Ellen: no, no lying in front of doors. Then again, I don't have a drawing room or a tureen to worry about ;) (I do keep most of my amigurumi; right now they are decorating my bedroom. Yes, I realize that most people would view that as kind of childish; I really do not care.)

It was a nice, peaceful weekend. (The best kind, I'm convinced.)

(Piano update is at the very end in case anyone is bored by it and wants to skip that section).

I worked a bit more on the Sock Monkey quilt - all the pieces are cut, the simpler blocks are sewn, and the first of the more-complex blocks (two "pinwheels" set with solid squares) has been made. (No pictures yet; I think I'm going to wait until I lay out the quilt).

I also read a bunch for a fire-ecology class I'm helping teach (and yes, the students have already begun doing the Beavis and Butthead impressions. I think that's kind of required in a fire ecology class).

And I finished my first-ever pair of toe-up socks:

They even fit.

As I said, I'm going to use some Regia that I had deep in the stash (I think I got it on sale somewhere, and when it arrived I was kind of like, yuck, why did I buy this color? so it will be good experimentation yarn) to try out a modification of the pattern with a deeper heel flap. This is an attempt at "perfecting" the fit because I do find I have a couple stitch patterns I want to plug into socks, but that would only really work starting at the toe.

I also started a new scarf:



Diann, remember this? The yarn you said you bought because you liked it and then realized the color was wrong for you? I'm making just a simple feather-and-fan scarf out of it. (I really had planned to for a couple years, but just never got around to starting it).

I like the opal-like quality of the colors and I think it works well with the feather and fan pattern. (Really, sometimes, I think the simple old stitch patterns are the best - this is probably the most basic lace pattern out there)

And here's the January mantel. I like the "icy" effect I've done the past couple years (with candles in all kinds of clear glass holders) that I did it again. Here are all the candles, lit:



(Forgive the shakiness; it was taken with the "extreme night" long exposure time and the "tripod" I jury-rigged out of books wasn't as stable as I thought it was)

Also, one of my favorite things, which always finds a place on my mantel, regardless of how I have it decorated:



These are little copper tealight holders. You can see they have words punched out of them so the candle light shines out through the words. My dad got these for me for Christmas several years ago. They make me very happy.

I did other things - put in a couple more hours of practice on the piano (and discovered that the piano in the Fellowship Hall has a much better tone and doesn't have an annoying "click" in the G above middle C. My church has a great abundance of spinet pianos but most of them haven't been kept up well and they're either badly out of tune or have sustained some damage somewhere).

And you know, I've learned two things already:

1. An hour is the absolute limit I can sit at the piano in one "chunk" and work productively. As I close in on the hour, that's when I begin to make mistakes.

2. My piano teacher was absolutely right when she said that consistent practice is better than a big chunk one day and nothing other days. I didn't disbelieve her on that, after all, she has years of experience and it makes sense - but I really saw it in action this weekend. I think it's like learning anything - if you sleep after learning, somehow it gets "set in" better. I could play the little Mozart piece MUCH BETTER today than I could either yesterday or Friday. I'm even beginning to notice and do things like, "Ease up on the left-hand chords; they are sounding too dominant" and being able to put in legato where there's legato and staccato where there's staccato.

And one of my big worries - and I think this goes back to some bad advice I got from a music teacher years ago (I don't like to speak ill of the dead - and he did pass fairly recently - so I'll just describe it as bad advice). It kind of doomed me to thinking that I could only learn to play "technically proficiently," that I would always play like a machine and not be able to put FEELING into it. But I'm beginning to hear the hints of feeling in my practicing. So maybe there's hope yet.

I am tempted to go a bit "rogue" and see if I can find some copies of the Well-Tempered Clavier books and buy them to have when I feel like messing about on my own. There's one piece extracted from Book 1 at the very end of my performance book. I tried it out today and while I am far, far from perfect on it - it brought me so much joy to be able to do it. To play it, and to hear it, and to recognize it as a piece I've heard before. It's all based on arpeggios so it's not that hard (It's also "arranged," and therefore made less hard. But still).

I may also ask my folks to dig around in the music chest they have at home and see if they can find the old exercise books I had years ago - I think maybe I had one of Clementi's books (did he write for piano? Or did I have that book for clarinet? I don't remember).

I will say I will be so glad when my piano arrives (less than 2 weeks, now.) My plans for my day off tomorrow are to move the necessary furniture and clean so there is a space for it. I envision being able to practice for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning before heading out the door to work, and being able to sit down and "decompress" at the end of the day by practicing. (Right now, I usually switch on the tv to one of the all-news channels. It is probably spiritually healthier for me to sit down at the piano instead. And there's at least a half-hour there most days that's "empty" time otherwise). I know I will be able to make time to practice, especially once the piano is here. (One of the men in my Sunday School class has often commented that "people find time for the things they value" as a response when he hears about someone claiming they "don't have time" for this or that. While that may not be strictly true 100% of the time, I do think there's some truth to it - thinking of all the quilters and knitters out there with far busier lives than I lead, or the people who sing in choirs, or who read far more books than I do.)