Music Monday V2.4

Quickly before I miss any more sun, here are some of the songs that I've been obsessing over this past week.

another musical Monday

Feast your ears on a few discoveries I've made recently!

1. The Living Sisters are Eleni Mandell, who previously shared the LA Weekly best songwriter award with Elliot Smith in 2003, Inara George who is also an accomplished solo artist as well as half of the bands 'Bird and the Bee' and 'Merrick', and Becky Starck, who sang the role of Margaret on the Decemberists' latest album. Excited about this trio yet? They just so happen to do a cover of a favourite oldie of mine...

2. The Carolina Chocolate Drops. They learned music from an 80-year-old fiddler named Joe Thompson, who played on his porch after a day of working the fields. They then decided to form a band, take his traditional music, make it their own, and pass it on for a younger generation to enjoy. I enjoy.

3. Neal Halstead's voice is incredibly soothing to me, and what can I say, I'm just a sucker for a good beard.


4. Last and definitely least: me! I recorded this song recently and put it up on youtube, and I figured I should put it on the blog. One day I'll get some proper recording equipment and get over my fear of writing music, one day...


Have a lovely Monday guys n gals.

the fireman's pole (rated PG)

Julia had herself a little mishap last week.Instead of spending the morning playing at the church Primary activity, we got to spend it at the ER in hope of her nose not being broken. She's fine now, it's amazing how fast kids heal up.

When we went to pick up our bicycles at church I decided to take the long way home with the girls and swing by the park. We went into the petting zoo where I hurried the kids past the pigs so I could stalk the incredibly hot dad with the pilot shades on in front of us, and afterwards we made a stop at the Ot&Sien playground. I watched the girls head straight for the swings and I took a sunny seat next to a young couple. Now, when I say the couple was young, I'm talking too young to have kids of their own, they must have been about 19 or 20. At first I was mystified by the appeal of a place like a noisy playground for a couple of their age. They didn't seem to be babysitting because their eyes were hardly actually on the playground and mostly on each other. As I sat there next to them I couldn't help but pick up bits and pieces of their conversation. After a silence during which the girl rested her head on his lap, the boy suddenly said 'I want a fireman's pole in our house'. They then had a 15 minute logical debate of the pros and cons of pros and cons having a fireman's pole in your house, and the jury was still out at the very end of it. She thought it was silly and impractical, he thought it was the best idea he had ever come up with in his life. When asked why, he simply said 'Because it would be great!' and that's all it took for her to consider it seriously. 

It took me straight back to my first appartment and how completely drunk on freedom I was when I got the key to that place. I didn't get a fireman's pole but I would have probably let my boyfriend install one if I had had one at the time, and he had suggested it. But I definitely remember the other ways I took advantage of all that freedom. I remember going to the playground around the corner after dark and spending hours all by myself on the swingset when all the little kids had long been tucked into bed. Or the entire Saturdays I would spend in my bed, just wasting time. And oh when I met Sander and we would have midnight drives in his car to the big empty parking lot by the Wassenaarse Slag. He would teach me how to drive and I felt like such a grown up. 

I was, of course, a stupid kid who didn't have a clue. I had a plastic blow up sofa and nearly burned the place down one night by falling asleep with a candle still burning. To this day, waking up to 3 fully geared firemen standing at the foot of my bed staring down at my undies and asking me if I was OK, is the most embarassing experience ever. And the hygiene, oh the hygiene. There simply was none. I knew Sander was a keeper after he came into my appartment with me for the first time and actually wanted to come back a second time. 

And now I still feel like a stupid kid who is just playing house. The hygiene has increased somewhat, and I don't leave candles burning anymore. Spending Saturdays in bed is a definite impossibility, as are midnight drives. But you  know what? I still might let Sander install a fireman's pole if he suggested it.

18 and clueless

the knitty gritty (ha ha)

I've been talking about how I'm still knitting and crocheting quite a bit and today I figured I'd add some walk to that talk. Of course I've been crocheting for years now, but the knitting is pretty new. I learned the basics as a child from my grandmother but it recently began with the ravelry website and hundreds of seemingly incredibly simple youtube how-to's. I cast on my first project, a seemingly simple vintage pattern for a baby pixie hat, and from then on I have not been able to get knitting off my brain.

 In the first place literally because the pixie hat went horribly wrong and turned out so big I have to wear it (Lara uses it as a play hat now). In the second place because I'm brainwashed. I wake up in the morning and literally the first thing I think about is all the things I could knit. Did you know you can knit on circular needles? Or on 5 double pointed needles at the same time? It's very intense. I've been trying my hand at all of it:

Cables.

Little infant beanies.

This last one is my top secret project on my beautiful new bamboo douple points. I know it makes it slightly less secret, revealing the yarn I'm using, but it could still be anything. When I'm done with this project, I'm making the exact same thing for myself, I like it so much! 

I've also been combining my knitting these past few days with episodes of Mad Men. Good golly that show is beautiful isn't it? And the dialogue is priceless! For instance: 'Try not to be intimidated by all this technology (pointing at a typewriter). It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.' I also love it because the decorating looks like my grandparents appartment and I miss that place, and them, a lot.

Alright, I haven't knit in 30 minutes, gotta go.

being out of focus

Insomnia feels like

Tingly extremeties

Nostalgia

Numb cheeks

A block of concrete on my head

Having my eyes set to slow shutter speed and high ISO

Thick, slow blood

Apathy

Being high, but with extra gravity

8-)

Proof of the new glasses, and of my ongoing Randy Newman obsession. If the peaking kills your ear drums, I apologise.

you thought they got me didnt you?

Never. We were just on a bit of a Mexican bender this past while, I'll spare you the deets (which is Annoying for details) because they're too gross, and me not wanting to talk about it should tip you off that it's really too disgusting to put into words. Besides, I don't want to relive it, I just want to bury it in the past and pretend none of it ever happened.

 Poor kids suffered the worst. They kept tricking us into thinking they were all better and then SURPRISE! Not really better after all! Speaking of surprises... I am having suuuuuch a hard time not talking about this top secret project I'm working on. It's turning out better than I thought it would (I really have little faith in my own abilities it seems) and I want to show you! I bet you're all dying to see it too, but you'll have to wait two more weeks... hang in there.

So what can I tell you about? Well I can tell you that Elliot now is the proud owner of 3 teeth, or that Max is starting to want to keep his diaper off, or that we watched a few hundred episodes of Criminal Minds and that I was knitting during most of them. I feel cooler about knitting when I watch serial killers being hunted down, I may have mentioned this before. Also, I learned a few new bad jokes, got a new pair of glasses (they're HUGE! Pictures soon I promise) and watched a movie that went straight into my top 10 favourite movies ever: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

I've also been digging lots of new music as of late so expect a Music Monday sometime at the end of this week.