A little recommendation

You know me: I'm usually a classical-music person. But of late, I've been using the "hip-hop/smooth jazz" mashup that is this YouTube live channel:



It's good for background noise when reading or just going about your life. Very, very rarely there's a little spoken word* at the start of a piece, but it's mostly all instrumental.

(*I think a lot of these pieces rely heavily on "mash-up" - taking snippets from various things - because I've heard familiar melodies and some of the spoken-word stuff seems to be from movies)

I know lots of people know about this, it's pretty famous, but it really is good "background" type music, it's helped defuse some of my anxiety in recent days, I think because the bpm is a little slower than my natural heartbeat (?maybe?) and it helps me calm down.

***

At home for the nonce. I have pretty much everything I need to keep going (I did realize I was short on panko crumbs - which I use to make my favorite black bean patties - but rather than playing "Frontier House" and trying to either crunch up the (few and probably stale) crackers I had, or consider cooking rice and using that as a binder instead, I ordered some off of Amazon** and will do something else for dinner tonight; I can make the bean patties later on)

(**yes, it's a terrible octopus that kills small businesses and the like - BUT - at this time when the idea of running out to the store for just one missing ingredient (because you might be putting yourself at risk, or might get stuck waiting in long lines) is less appealing.)

I will say I will be throwing money in the direction of various online sellers since I can't shop - I ordered yarn last week from Loopy Ewe and Simply Sock Yarn, and I ordered a skein of yarn from a dyer I know on Ravelry who was going to the DFW Fiber Fest (now cancelled: I wasn't planning on going)

Quixotic Fibers - the closest thing I have to a local yarn shop - does online sales and I am hoping very hard that helps them to stay open while we are all locked down. And they will also do "curbside service" for people within driving distance but unwilling to walk into the store.

***

My other goal for now is to pull out stalled projects and do the little push on finishing them. Working on a simple ribbed cowl today, and I found a sockyarn hat I forgot about, and the hat I am calling the Not-Bankhead Hat (because I messed up the stitch pattern - it still works as a hat, but it's not the Bankhead pattern). Some of these may wind up donated somewhere later on, or maybe, given as gifts to people.

(That said: I may not be going to the post office to mail stuff any time soon. I have little gifts for people - one for my brother's birthday, and Purlewe, I got you a little something, but it would have to go to your workplace and I don't know if you are WAH right now or not. At any rate - maybe I hang on to those things and send them later when we can ease up on the social distancing).

I am maybe being overly paranoid about it, but....I have heard of enough people who are not taking this seriously (some who think it's an outright hoax! Which is amazing to me) and so I feel like I need to take it EXTRA seriously. Also because I have asthma and also possibly because I have hypertension.

But anyway. Later on I may be mailing off hats and mitts and cowls and things to people, maybe even as late as early fall 2020 if we have to hole up 'til then.

But for now, I'm gonna listen to the Chilled Cow and knit