More on piano

I suppose it's true that the ability to chord and "fill in" (doing stuff like arpeggios in the left hand while chording with the right) may come with time. I suppose I CAN improvise in some sense - I am, after all, able to cook without a recipe and come up with successful combinations of things. (I've never tried baking totally without a recipe, but there are more things that can go wrong in baking if you don't pay attention to the types of chemical reactions that are going on - for example, misreading "baking powder" in a recipe as "baking soda" leads to very bad results.)

And that took a while to get comfortable with. (I have been cooking and baking since I was 6 or so - of course, with heavy supervision early on).

And after knitting socks for a while, I figured out how to "plug in" different stitch patterns and go from there. (I should try "designing" a hat or two, and maybe some fingerless mitts - work my way up to doing a sweater. Oh, I know I probably could design a sweater, at least I could if I used another pattern as a basis for how to get the armhole decreases and such figured.)


But also think sometimes that tiredness, and feeling that there is too much to do, is kind of an enemy of creativity. If I have some kind of problem to solve, the solution is more likely to come when my brain is kind of on "suspend mode" - when I'm in the shower, or when I'm out collecting soil, or when I'm weeding, or when I'm doing something that's NOT sitting at my desk trying to figure out how to juggle grading and teaching prep and advisement and that meeting I need to go to and everything else.

(Actually, I wonder what the modern plugged-in, 24/7 lifestyle may be doing to creativity. Especially for kids. When there was "nothing to do" when I was a kid, I went and made stuff - or went looking for bugs - or tried to invent some kind of proto-Calvinball (before we even knew what Calvinball was) with my brother, or I made up stories. And I wonder if kids with 24/7 internet access (and parents that don't push them to push away from the machine) are affected in negative ways by that. I know I get some students who are uncomfortable with the idea of having to PHYSICALLY go to a library and look for stuff. (Makes me sad; when I was a kid, trips to the library were a weekly thing. And we had the old-fashioned card catalogs back then, the kind that was actually alphabetized cards in a drawer.)

I suppose another thing with improvisation, or whatever I'm trying to learn: you have to know the rules really well before you can begin to break them. They tell writers that; in some cases you can break the rules of grammar if you want a certain effect, but you had better understand what you are doing (or else your writing is just a big mess. And yes, there's a difference between intentionally breaking the rules and simply not knowing or caring about them enough.) I still don't have quite enough familiarity with chord progressions and inversions and what goes with what yet. I guess that comes with time and comfort with the scales.

****

Yesterday was my longest day. (And it was made to seem longer by several issues.)

All I had the energy for last night, knitting-wise, was to pull out the "simple socks" (this being the pair from K1C2 "Ty-Dy Socks") and work a bit on them. I've already started the heel flap on the first sock.

I guess in a way even the simple socks I knit are a sort of improvisation. I don't work from a pattern or instructions (except for the heel turn, but I think I likely have the French (round)* heel turn for a 64 stitch sock memorized by now. But other than that, I decide on the ribbing (or not) for the cuff, how much ribbing to do, what pattern (1 by 1, 2 by 2, or some other combination), whether to do ribbing for the entire leg or just part, and then with the heel flap, whether to do it plain or with garter-stitch edging or whether to use a slipped stitch pattern....and on, and on.

(*And I admit it makes the 12-year-old in me laugh that the French heel turn is also called a "round heel." Well, maybe a 12-year-old from 1890; I guess few people know what the slang word "round heel" applies to any more, or there are even more graphic words used for the same tendency.)

Incidentally, the "cheat sheet" I use (I have about eight copies of it, stashed in different books and knitting bags) is available here. The nice thing is it has several different types of heels, and the math is worked out for a large number of stitch counts. (The are all flapped heels. But then again, the "hourglass" or "bullseye" heel fits my feet poorly so I always knit socks with heel flaps).

***

One thing I want to do tonight is flip through a few patterns I have and write down yarn requirements. I was too tired to do that last night. (And I realized that it was the new season of Dirty Jobs starting, and of course I had to watch that. I missed the show a lot while it was on hiatus.)

I know there's one sweater knit of aran-weight yarn held double (the Polperro jacket) I want to look for yarn for. And I bought the Looper toy pattern a while back, and I want some kind of fun-colored yarn for that. (The nice thing about making non-realistic animal toys is you can use whatever color you want.)

And, I don't know what else. I'm kind of so-far-ahead that it's hard to think specifically. So maybe I'll just wait and see, keeping in mind the amounts I know are the rough requirements for the various types of sweaters I knit. Maybe I'll see something that inspires me.