A scarf maybe, or some gloves, but never socks. So forget it. It will not happen. Note the nice even rows and the neat casting on and binding off. Easily identified as a stockingette stitch as shown, see the knit side, the purl side, and the tendency to curl. I said stockingette, not stockings. No way am I knitting any stockings. There is actually a bit of the old Xmas rush going on. The annual boomlet that exceeds the GNP of most nations on Earth. Despite being Karaoke night and receiving some personal invitations, I’m staying home. That’s what makes sense to me. That’s what I get for living in a working class town. These people are so working class they don’t know it.
I had gone out this AM for non-essential supplies, but came back empty-handed. There were no bargains out there and that includes K-Mart. Have you seen their prices lately? I had coffee at BK beside the people that say grace over their Whoppers. And then I patronized the library for an hour. I’m probably antsy about spending Xmas without a date, this is what, eight years in a row. Yeah, that’s right, it has been that long since the first and only time I’d ever been in Florida hospital.
That’s a reflection of many major changes since 2003. At home I don’t eat beef but I’ve become a tea-drinker. I never did learn to watch TV, but you can blame TV for that. I spend twice as much time playing music as the previous decade, that is, now around 500 hours per year. My newfound spare time has increased my reading by double that. Automobile mileage has dropped to zero.
A good chunk of my reading time is intense study, rivaling my college days. Except back then, I would often take 20 consecutive hours and read an entire text book in one sitting. Can’t do that no more. Study is easier, but it is still an activity that many people find less than joyful. But that’s correct, studying is easier as in accomplished with less mental effort. No pain, no gain is the rule, it just gets better once you know you are over the peak of the learning curve.
I’m totally liking the book on sock knitting. I found my old 6mm needles in the shed, in perfect condition. It’s been a wonderful distraction and I’ve learned a ton of new terms about socks. In that sense, it is similar to electronics. Half the battle isn’t the knowledge, it is figuring out what the instructions are trying to say. Have you ever heard of positive ease and negative ease? That is the way a garment hangs. If it gets wider at the bottom like a dress, that is positive ease. If it tapers like a cowboy shirt, you have negative ease. Note that most cowboys are tapered the other way.
With my guitar act, I’ve hit a plateau. The hard part is to steer away from the awesome tendency to play everything with the same (or similar) strum. I’ve taken to practicing each song at half speed to concentrate on the strumming. This takes untold time and I keep telling myself it will pay off on stage. Like bass playing, those who say it is easy are doing it wrong.
Another tactic is arranging the tunes for solo work. I’ve really not seen too many musicians in this town make the effort, or it may be they don’t know how. They settle on the first guitar chop they find that remotely sounds like the cover. Over time, this bores the audience and the staff. I now see more of the reasons guitar players want to do certain songs certain ways. And I don’t appreciate it at all.
I tend to analyze the strum from a piano viewpoint then adapt back to the guitar. The guitar part in isolation tends to omit tiny musical nuances provided by other instruments. By paying attention to those details, you don’t fatigue the audience. Put another way, if I can use this method to play bass for two years at the same joint without boring the crowd, just you wait until I learn this here gee-tar.
For trivia, dial this phone number, (877) 504-8423. It is the fictitious number used in movies to, according to Dan Lewis, “lend an air of realism”. Try it, you get a recording that tells you so.
