Holiday Jam Session/Birthday Party
Sunday, July 4th, 2004Aaah, summer! It is Independence Day here in the USA and many of us celebrated by gathering with friends. Brian and I went to a jam session, some people we see only a few times a year. It was wonderful. These folks are singers, they do long lyrical songs that are sometimes hard to play along with if you haven’t studied that song before. But often I know the words and melody, so I just sing along and don’t bother trying to figure out what notes to play.
It was Christye’s birthday (she is here in the second jam session photo, playing upright bass). She asked me if I would dance for her, and so I did. I was bummed, I usually carry my finger cymbals in my bag. However, yesterday I took them out for the parade and they got put back in the bag with my costume. Yet Christye wanted a dance, so I taught my musician friends how to create the beat called a beledi, and they made this beat by tapping on their guitars and other creative methods of getting percussion out of a non-percussion instrument. And I danced for her, and she enjoyed it. I was honored. Next time I will come prepared!
You can see that at least two of the partygoers are serious artists with food. On the left is a fruit dessert, handmade by one woman I just met tonight and whose name I don’t remember. She said the recipe was from her German grandmother. It looked luscious. The cake was made by Alma, using a from-scratch recipe she got from her aunt, a recipe the aunt has used for decades. The center of the cake was bright red, but sort of chocolate red. Brian had some. He said it was delicious and not too sweet. I thought decorating with flowers was just a wonderful touch! Isn’t the cake/torte photo inviting?
On the way out, it was mostly dark, but I could not resist checking out Christye’s sheep. They were loudly bleating at us and I had to check them out. I took a photo in the dark twilight, and so in order for you to see them at all I had to play with PhotoShop a little. Here is my attempt at a Monet version of the sheep. They sure didn’t know what to think of me, they knew I was not bringing anything to eat! They sort of got away from the front fence but were too curious to run away entirely.
Oh, in knitting content… I am too funny! I have only one and a half afterthought heels left on my purple Reggio sox from Yarn for Ewe, and they will be done. And I have another pair for me waiting for heels, as well. And a pair for Ulyana waiting for heels. I think I see a pattern here! So of course, decreasing means paying attention and I don’t do that well in a crowd. So today I took along yet another pair, these for Brian.
I actually had barely started these one other time when we went out in public. I had one sock about 1″ of the rib knit, and had cast on the wrong number of stitches for a second sock and knit maybe 5 rows. So I ripped that out and I actually ended up with two socks where at least half of each cuff is done. These are of Regia 4fadig, Patch Antik Colors, one of the colorways that comes in one 100gm ball. I got the yarn at Heritage Spinning when I taught polymer clay there.
This yarn is absolutely gorgeous. I don’t like large balls of yarn, I prefer two 50gm balls because I knit two sox at a time and therefore I need to rewind about half a ball before I get started at all, and then I need to be sure to knit from the same direction on both sox so the stripes aren’t reversed on the second sock. But this colorway is so wonderful I went ahead and bought it. It’s two variations on sage green (medium and light) and a sort of yellower version of the lighter green. And the jacquard bands are white and dark green rather than gray. Brian wears a lot of that sort of army green, and these will be right up his alley, I predict.