About Me ColorJoy Home Page Free Stuff About Me Contact Me
ColorJoy Home Page
ColorJoy Home The ColorJoy Blog Buy Patterns, Recipe Books, CDs Patterns Schedule & Potential Classes Recipes & Food Information The LynnH SockTour LynnH Polymer Clay The Fabulous Heftones - Lynn & Brian

Archive for August 9th, 2006

Music, Music, Music

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006

family musicOnce more, we’ve had a music-full week. Saturday we went to Brian’s family reunion on Lake Michigan. His family is very musical. We had several spontaneous musical performances, and there were more than a few jam sessions that I watched from afar. Here you can see varying arrangements of Brian’s aunts and uncles (and one cousin) playing music and dancing along.

In unrelated news (other than both are musical), Brian and I went to Dagwood’s Tavern in Lansing on Tuesday night. Our friend, Jen Sygit, hosts a low-key open mic there every Tuesday. During the school year, I seem to have a guild or knit in almost every Tuesday, but in the summer I have fewer options. We had a great time.

Now, I’m not fond of alcohol and I don’t like the smoke in a bar much, so we don’t go in bars unless there is some music draw. It’s sort of like going to a foreign country to walk into a bar if you are me. But I love the people at this place (and it’s really cool early-60s funky decor, never been changed since it opened)… we knew many folks so it felt home-like right away.

family musicPete is behind the bar, and of course we know Jen. Devon, who we met at Great Lakes Folk Fest a year or two ago, was there (she was at the Gone Wired gig also). She’s a ballroom/swing dancer and she did a Charleston to one of our songs. So fun.

We knew several musicians there and met several more. We met a couple who were out on a date while their kids had a special event, and it turned out I knew her aunt. Small world.

Dagwood's Tavern musicAnd I took photos. It was dark, so most of them blurred but some in an artful way. Here’s a friend playing accordion on the main stage, and then a shot of the altar, um, I mean bar, with all the lit up bottles being so etherial and beautiful. They know how to entice the eye, don’t they? Maybe it only looks like that to an unfamiliar eye like mine…

family music…I danced, most of the time alone. I have a good time wherever I find music. I think I look drunk to the unknowing observer, though Diet Coke was my chemical(s) of choice that night. Brian and I did dance together once to the accordion, this amazing klezmer music which is just begging for dancers. We don’t know how folks are supposed to dance to it, but we dance anyway. It was a grand time.

Oh, knitting content… finishing the last sample shawl for the Perfect Hug pattern, in a beautiful flamingo-pink Rio de la Plata. It’s more than half done so perhaps will complete yet tonight. I knit at the bar so it smells like smoke, will have to wash thoroughly at blocking time but I’m OK with that. Diana sent a photo of her in the Goddess version of the shawl, knit in Artful Yarns Reality. Photos of the Goddess shawl version perhaps tomorrow.