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This merits it own post.

I could say that it doesn’t get much cooler than Bing Futch when it comes to hot electric dulcimer action. But I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Personally, I don’t think I ever looked anywhere that cool when I played the dulcimer– but my heart wasn’t really in it. I did achieve some cool moments on the dulcimer, like sneaking “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel into a church service intermission and playing the guitar bit from Queens “We will rock you” into the bride’s march of a family friend’s ceremony (a small act of rebellion that earned me the awe and respect from the other flower girls but went largely unnoticed by anyone else.)

The one thing I really liked about the dulcimer (which I also like about the guitar) is the range of styles you can play, every thing from classical to appalachian to standards to jazz to funk and beyond. There are no limits– and that is very cool.

My amp is here! It is so cute, loud, sexy and heavy.

Some people might think it a little overboard to baby talk to electronic equipment, but they aren’t in the same room with this thing. They don’t know it like I do, my sweet little Marshall, my darling noisy baby amp.

I ordered a new Duncan Crybaby Wah pedal and some new strings.  And since I’m down to my last Hello Kitty pick, I figured I’d play it safe and ordered a dozen more.

You know, now that I can hear myself play aloud, and not through ear buds, I sound pretty darned adequate.

I had a couple of emails asking about the HK guitars and Squiers, and one comment that I can’t approve because the language was NSFW. Since my answers are all a little redundant they are all going here after the cut.

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You might observe the hour of this posting, and then ask yourself what I might be doing awake at this hour. I’m practicing scales, figuring out my caloric intake for the day, planning schoolwork assignments, throwing another log into the fire, and (somewhat obviously) writing a blog post.

Did I sleep and then wake to do these things, or have I been up and am I planning on sleeping in? Am I vampire? An insomniac? An overachiever? An underachiever? Consumer of way too much caffiene?

I think it’s the carbs, or the lack of carbs really– it’s thrown me all out of whack. I found myself laying in bed actually having fantasies about a bowl of white rice. Not that I don’t feel very healthy and satisfied with the foods that I’ve been eating, it’s just that there’s nothing quite like a bowl of rice for a midnight snack. Oh sure, I have that lovely brown and wild rice mix, but– it’s really not the same. Its like having a crush on George Clooney and being rescued from an evil masher by Val Kilmer– sure they were both Batman, but really– Val is just not George. I just look at my bowl of Val Kilmer brown and wild rice and think “Why bother?”

I’ve moved onto practicing the E Dorian mode. Someone with a clue about music theory can explain it better than I can (I just play the notes) but basically the 3rd and 7th notes lower 1/2 step, it’s kind of jazzy.

It’s true. I am now able to have musical instruments out and not worry about the dogs eating them. This is very exciting stuff for me, Kitty-chan has not been out of the closet for a while.

Yeah, my axe is muffin-bucker bad isn’t it?

Since I haven’t practiced since August, I’m back to E major scales– which may not sound dreadfully fun, but I like E major, it’s uplifting. Even when I was forced to practice my dulcimer (because my parents hated me) I always looked forward to E major, it was a bright spot in an otherwise blighted pre-teen existence. Nothing cures a fit of angst like speeding through E major scales and then free styling a bit, even on a dulcimer.

Holiday shopping is done, gifts are wrapped, and we even snuck in a pre-Christmas early unwrapping tonight before dinner time for the kids. Lexi is a fantastic gift unwrapper, screaming “Oh my favorite, it’s what I always wanted!” before even actually knowing what the gift was. Josey was an equally satisfied customer, although somewhat more restrained. I bought Matt a foot massager thing, and he bought me the Badtz Maru bass guitar and a 10w Marshal practice amp– I didn’t bother concealing his gift at all, since I figured after a long day of Christmas shopping he deserved to use it right away and he hasn’t had a chance to wrap mine since they have yet to arrive.

I’m amazed by my husband sometimes. I feel spoiled. I am spoiled.

…an image is just way too cool to be ignored, and sometimes I get tired of staring at my own designs. What I’m getting around to saying is that I’ve stolen (cough cough) borrowed a celtic dragon design I found online for inspiration. The original is a lovely tile, my copy is punchneedle embroidery.

I’m using a single thread in a fine needle to lay out the black lines, once those are finished then I’ll be able to go back in and flesh out the negative space using a background color (yet to be decided) and then start working on the small detail areas of the dragon. The rest can be filled in like coloring in a coloring book.

Since August every second of my spare time has revolved mainly around my new dogs and making sure my children didn’t feel neglected due to my spending so much time with the dogs. The spindles and wheels went into the closet along with my yarn, fibers, needles, guitar, nice trousers, and paint supplies. In part, because I’m interested in having mannerly dogs and that means taking the time to train them and in part because I took on two untrained dogs that were capable of doing great damage to all my earthly possessions should I take my eyes off them even for a moment.

My decision, I’ll live with it.

Now that the girls are all rather nice dogs that come when called and don’t (usually) jump up on people, know how to sit and stay nicely, and head for their chew toys when they want a nice soothing nibble I’m starting to feel confident that they can be around my little treasures without causing too much damage.

We still have a few issues though, it’s impossible to do any gentle art with a 130 lbs Great Dane on my lap, I’ve had Greta for 8+ years and have still yet to fully convince her of this point, although if I tell her to go lay on the bed she will happily comply. Georgia on the other hand is completely unconvinced that an entire queen sized bed is just as good as my lap, or that I really want to pay attention to a bunch of string or fabric instead of devoting every waking moment towards staring into her deep soulful eyes and feeding her tripe. Sadie (aka the dog formerly known as Sydney) prefers her little love seat in my bedroom so needlework isn’t much of an issue with her, for some reason the spinning wheel sets her off into a series of long and mournful howls which is then repeated in chorus (and in a different key) throughout the neighborhood; this limits my spinning to daylight hours, away from Sadie, in an undisclosed secure location with the shades drawn.

The typical view of my craft efforts includes a dog nose. A very large dog nose connected to a very large dog.

I’m not quite to the point where I feel comfortable taking my nice clothes, paintings or guitar out of the closet, but I can sneak in a little knitting and needlework if I’m careful to put it all away when I’m done.

I don’t know how or if I can actually justify my fascination with punch-needle work. Like everything sincerely fun and cool igolochkoy was horribly abused by those people who do rustic and primitive craft thingies straight from kits purchased “as seen on TV.”

Inevitably there’s a rule of craft tools. When one, such as myself, decides she no longer has an interest in continuing with a craft and sells off all her supplies for said craft it’s just a matter of time before a major brainstorm and those supplies would have (if they were in the person’s possession) been put to good use once more.

This makes me reconsider everything. After all, that knitting machine that I’ve been not using may be the next thing. Right now it’s a cobweb decorated white buffalo, but sometime in the future it might actually become some sort of necessity. Then again, if I keep it around I may never have that stroke of genius that actually justifies it’s presence.

Dammit. There really should be a kind of reverse rental service, people could come and take my junk away until I decide I need it, then they could give it back to me. Wouldn’t that simplify things?

I digress.

This is a 3.5×3.5 inch square, I’ve run completely out of the light blue that I was using for the background. All those little loops eat a lot of embroidery floss. I’ll have to get more first thing in the morning as I’m eager to get this off of the hoop and start something new.

Three days ago Matt and I went to go see two Great Danes, fully intending on taking home just one(if any, we’re picky like that.) I even gave Matt a standard speech about how same sex bonded pairs of dogs were more or less a myth, the results of humans anthropomorphizing dog emotions into a complex foster-sibling relationship that does not exist. The dogs really don’t care if they’ve been buddies for however long because biologically they were meant to go off and create their own social circles based on their reproductive opportunities.

I just want you all to know that when I decided we should take both dogs, it was not because of a flawed pop-ethology theory of doggie buddies. Obviously, the dogs had decided to lace their drool with a psycho-reactive mind control drug and used state of the art hypnotic suggestion technology on me. I was helpless to resist.

Right, so want to see the babies?

Sydney, Georgia and me on their first night

The marle (gray & black in the foreground) is Sydney, and the fawn (standing next to me) is Georgia. I decided that since they weren’t trained (at all) and didn’t recognize their original names that it would be better to give rechristen them, both are 18 months so adapting to their new identities was a fairly graceful affair. According to the original owners neither is leash trained, housebroken, or obedience trained but they are “kinda” crate trained (and I have a huge neon sign saying “Sucker” across my forehead.)

The first thing Georgia did (post-butt sniffing) was check out the kennel (which our dogs don’t use, because they have our nice comfy bed to take over in the middle of the night.) Danes are not outside dogs, and Labs really are way too social to want to sleep alone, so the kennel is more or less for the benefit of Elle, the chicken, who thinks it’s a swimmingly great vacation home when she needs a break from her coop.

Wouldn’t you know it? When we brought Sydney into the mix, and all the butts were sniffed she went right over and started checking out the kennel.

Georgia

Georgia is unconvinced that the big pillow on the floor is actually meant for her use. Because she’s such a big girl (seriously huge– even in Dane terms) at such a young age, we have to be very careful with her joints– which means convincing her that the pads and pillows around the house are for her use.

Syd and her blankie

And then there’s Syd, who is only too happy to declare that everything is hers. Sydney’s a sweety but she’s under socialized with other dogs, hates/fears leashes, distracted by every little thing, insecure and possessive. On the upside; she likes people, she’s already more confident and really digs training. I’m going to ignore the leash thing for a while and just work on her basic manners and obedience skills, I hate putting off something as important as leash training but I don’t want to traumatize her by forcing the issue.

Greta seems to have taken over the potty training for the young’uns– so there haven’t been any accidents in the house. I never trained her to keep an eye on other dogs, but for some reason she’s taken it upon herself to alert us when someone needs to go outside and to reward them when they are done with a barrage of head nuzzles and licks. There is no doubt, Greta is the most awesome dog– ever.

The collar is now on Lexi’s dress, and the sleeves are basted on but still need to be serged. The pixies’ work ethic seems to leave a little something to be desired since they keep getting distracted by things like watching movies, making soap, taking the dogs for walks, reading books and buying holiday print fabric. Those darned pixies are much better at buying things than finishing projects.

Have you ever seen a fabric and thought “Wow that is perfect for X project, I’ll get it!” and then you pay for it and get it home and can’t effing remember what project you had in mind? Yeah, that’s exactly what I did– twice now. I have two different sets of coordinating Christmas fabrics in 1 yard, 1/2 yard and 1&1/2 yard lengths– and now I don’t know what I intended to make. But it must be good enough to make at least two– I have no clue.

I’ll probably remember, on Christmas Eve. I think the holiday stress from last year is finally catching up with me.

Whatever the project is, I know it requires quilt batting, because when I picked out the first set of fabrics, I also made a point of getting low loft poly quilt batting, which is weird because I actually have cotton quilt batting. I seem to have lost my mind, if you see it would you kindly return it to me? I miss it.

The pixies also found a nice online source for loaf molds for soap making and faster than you can clap your hands and say “I believe in fairies” they were ready to order. (I’m liking the pixies because blaming them for everything means I don’t have to take personal responsibility– pixies are awesome.) I’ll post when my order comes in, but I believe they use USPS priority mail, the prices are great; my only real complaint is that Spiritcrafts isn’t very well advertised, so I haven’t found it till now. If I’d found them sooner I would have molds and cutters already– instead I’ve been using a plastic bin for my cold pour mold (which, granted does work, but doesn’t make my soap very pretty.)

So right now I’m working on: a batch of castile soap (which is taking an agonizingly long time to saponify, typical for non-pomace olive oil), Lexi’s dress, trying to remember the mysterious forgotten intended holiday project, and reading “the Ghost Map” by Steven Johnson.

Today is Lexi’s birthday, the Lex monster is 5 years old. Right now she’s celebrating by eating a small box of white chocolate. 5 year old + sugar= oh dear what have I done!?

Her birthday party was on the 2nd, so today is more or less going to be a quiet affair with some cupcakes, a stroll down to the park and library, and if the weather permits some running through the sprinkler.

I have Lexi’s latest dress cut, pieces surged, sleeves basted, pin fitted, and darnit– it’s just not finished. My last excuse was that I didn’t have the zipper and I needed new blades (upper and lower) for the Babylock. I have the zipper now, and the blades did come in the mail, but I haven’t put them in the machine yet. I briefly considered adding eyelet lace but that would be a poor excuse for my procrastination since I think I actually have eyelet lace somewhere.

I’m on the verge of breaking down and admitting that pixies are not going to sneak in and finish my sewing projects. I’m not quite there yet, just very close.