Summer Knitting and little Music

What a marvelous life.  A perfect summer day in the garden followed by a perfect summer evening. 

We had tickets for the Berkshire Choral Festival, in Sheffield, about an hour and a quarter’s drive, preceded by a patron dinner, so we finished our garden work and left a little after 4 PM.  The upper Taconic Parkway is a beautiful drive in all but the most foul of weather and yesterday was no exception.  The crystal blue skies, the clear views of the Catskills in the distance – what a joy.

I took both of my current knitting projects with me.  On the ride to Sheffield I worked on the socks.  It was admittedly hard to work too intently on my knitting as I was also busy peering out the window and absorbing the scenery.  I see that there are multiple advantages to sock knitting.  Each needle acts something like a row in that you finish knitting the stitches off one needle and feel like you have accomplished something.  Another needle done, you say to yourself, I think I will look out the window.  Yes, yes I know it is a not a row, but I am obviously too easily pleased.  You fold up the needles and put the sock in your lap.  It collapses so neatly into such a pleasant little bundle of straight needles lined up like a little package with sock neatly controlled underneath.  Then, you open it up – three dimensional space – a square, add the fifth needle and get a pentagon, look at the needles angling here and there.  It is all like playing with an erector set again.  The time passes so quickly.  Very little sock seems to get knitted.

This is actually not true but the rows pass very slowly.  I haven’t counted the actual  row gauge, the standard gauge was about 8.87 stitches/inch. I am not sure I want to know, but I seem to knit round and round before I get anywhere – not quite an inch yet after 13 rows, the pattern suggests 2 inches I think.  I am using the most basic sock from Lucy Neatby’s Cool Socks Warm Feet. I am actually enjoying the process too much to worry about when I will finish, but I am eagerly anticipating the heel.

Usually we take a picnic to Sheffield with us, but tonight we were invited to one of the Patron’s dinners which we enjoyed.  It was held in a courtyard framed by two of the school’s buildings.  We were the only “listeners” at our table and that made it a very interesting dinner as far as I was concerned.  It was nice to listen to the choristers talk about their week, what they learned, which conductors they like, when they are coming back next year (there will be a new conductor) and what wonderful choral pieces we have to look forward to hearing.  I loved listening to the talk of the nights works and the week of lessons and practicing. 

I love choral music even though I can’t sing.  George sings beautifully but can’t read music.  We are a great pair aren’t we?

The concert was really spectacular.  The audience was a little on the sparse side to my reckoning.  The place was not empty, but it was by no means near to full.  I suspect that next week’s program, Bach’s B Minor Mass, will be packed as it is a wonderful and popular piece.  We decided not to go, we have heard it so many times and there were other interesting programs this year, things we get to hear less frequently.

Ahhh, but I am neglecting the program, intentionally actually since I am sure that you are more interested in general life and knitting other than the specifics of Dvorak and Stravinsky.  If you want to know more, you can read my notes on the concert here: Download berkshirechoral723.pdf

On the knitting front I did knit during the second half of the concert and this was not to imply that I enjoyed this part less, If anything I enjoyed the Stravinsky more.  The music was divine and attention grabbing.  The seating was far more mundane and led to massive amounts of fidgeting.  I have never managed to learn to sit still, until I took up knitting that is.   Concert knitting is not usually the most speedy knitting, I keep stopping to absorb particularly beautiful or intense passages, the knitting slows and speeds up with portions of the music.  The concerts become woven into the fabric of the garment and I remember them fondly with each wearing.  Stravinsky socks?? Well, we’ll see.

Sock knitting did not seem feasible in the car on the trip home.  It was dark, I was more tired.  I worked on the Phildar shell.  Even that was not completely darkness-appropriate knitting.  I knitted with a flashlight clipped to my seatbelt, aimed down at my lap, to insure that the decreases and increases were lined up correctly in their proper locales.

I don’t like the little float across the bottom of the stockinette section in the middle where I picked up two stitches to begin the center panel.  This was obviously caused by my "make1" technique when repeated twice.  I have been thinking that II need to research different ways of doing this, and drop those rows down and reknit those stitches.  Somehow it doesn’t look quite as bad here in the photo as it does when I am staring at it on my needles.  Still, I suspect that it is one of those little details that will bother me no end.  So why have I waited to so long to fix it?