knitting neels

Here’s how Kiri is getting on:

It’s growing quite monstrous. It’s very hard to judge just how monstrous it is, though. I’m beginning to think maybe I should cast off now or it might be too big to wear at all.

I am not knitting anything else right now because… well a few things. I have gotten some accompaniment gigs for exams, I have a music technology assignment due tomorrow, and my concerto is next Tuesday. So I have to practice, try and throw a project together, and learn lots of music at short notice. I’m thankful that the learning at short notice is becoming so easy that I accepted a gig yesterday for this morning. I looked at the piece for about 20 minutes, rehearsed with the cellist for half an hour and did the exam this morning. Easy money! That’s another thing I’ve learned this year – how to charge appropriately. If anything, I usually charge on the low side. However, if something works out to be hassle, then I charge more. Hassle to me includes travelling time and dealing with horrible people. It’s business! I’m doing two singing exams tomorrow. Singers are generally the worst to work with. They’re divas, they can’t count, and they blame all their mistakes on you. I think in the future I will charge more for singers than other instruments, on principle. I had a rehearsal with one of the singers on Tuesday, and although I charged well for it, I ended up having to teach her one of her exercises because she hadn’t done it with her teacher. Not my job!

The other reason I am not knitting anything else is because I am still waiting on my wool from Phildar. I’m not blaming Phildar because it was shipped on May 29th (the Monday before last) and last weekend was a bank holiday. At the same time, my loom was shipped last Tuesday and it’s only coming from Scotland so it really should be here by now. I am most anxious about my Phildar stuff because the Knitting World Cup starts tomorrow and I won’t be able to cast on if I don’t get it tomorrow! I’ll have to wait until Monday!

In other news, I posted my secret pal’s package off yesterday. It turns out she is really into Ireland (in general, it seems) – she posted a picture of all these books about Ireland she has, and pictures of Daniel O’Connell and Dev’s signatures. So I got my thinking cap on today and figured that maybe she would like a copy of this book I have called Celtic Knotwork, since she is into all things ancient-irelandy. I picked it up on Inis Mór but have seen it around. It basically shows you how to do the intricate knotwork and celtic animals like that of the Book of Kells. I bought it when I learned calligraphy and had great fun learning how to do it. It’s great to do as a border around a photograph on a card or something. She is into paper crafts so she might enjoy this book.

My neighbour decided to start screaming at her partner out in the back garden last night. I couldn’t get back to sleep after it so the eyes are falling out of my head today :/ I got some music in the post for one of those exams tomorrow so I had better go have a look at it.