February sewing projects

Last week was the Presidents' Week break.  We taught Monday and Tuesday to make up for the Monday and Tuesday we were in California taking the SPA course.  But we took off, starting on Wednesday.  We hauled ourselves down to Oregon to enjoy our vacation with family.  I had two projects I wanted to accomplish.  They've been on my mind for quite a long time, and several days off in the presence of a sewing machine made it possible to get going.

I've been wanting to make Anne and one of our little neighbors matching outfits, and I had a sort of pattern and a sort of color in mind.  The color was orange and white stripes, but when I took my trip to the fabric store around the color, there weren't a ton of options in knit.  So we wound up with cornflower blue and accents of grey with silver polka dots.

Some day blogger is going to make it easier to rotate photos.  Blogger, I'm waiting!!!!

This was only my fourth outing with a sewing machine, although I think I must have some sort of ancestral knowledge from watching my mother sewing for hours in my childhood.

Outing #1: My mom wanted me to learn to sew by machine, so I sewed a kinda boxy jumper one summer in college while being terrified of the speed of the needle.  I wore it a few times and then passed it along to someone else who would enjoy it more than I.  If it hadn't been for that though, I might not have attempted #2.

Outing #2: My sister's belated wedding gift was a pair of pillows which say "Mr." on one and "Mrs." on the other.  I didn't have a sewing machine or a pattern.  I just sort of intuited some directions from a pinterest post and borrowed my sister-in-law's machine for a few days.  They didn't turn out too badly, and I was tickled to see them on display in Emily's bedroom a couple of months ago when we were visiting.

Outing #3: My cousin posted about some company which makes non-girly clothes for girls, like dresses with math or monsters or motors on them.  And I thought, "I could do that."  So Anne and I went to the fabric store this fall and picked out a blue t-shirt and some blue fabric with airplanes, and I sewed the fabric onto the shirt to make a skirt, using my mother-in-law's machine.

The first day of this project  (Outing #4) was hard.  I worked literally all day on it, and I went to sleep dreaming about sewing.  But the two half-days which followed were much easier, and quite fun.  I was sad when I was finished, to put the machine back in its box and return it to the bedroom where it lives.  I was quite enjoying the clackety-clack of the needle, and half considered sewing random seams on scraps to postpone the end of the project.

The second project I had in mind for my vacation was nothing to do with sewing, but was to write an article about teaching artistic string vibrato, and I want to submit it to the Suzuki Journal for publication.  It's been way to long since I've written an article for them, and this is a topic that deserves some attention, based on what I see out there in Suzuki-land.  Jared and I have bandied the topic about for quite some time and have developed some opinions through bits of research here and there over the last few years.  I wrote about ten lines of a rough-draft outline on our vacation, and even though there is lots more to do on that front, I'm glad to have at least pushed the door open.

Fixer-Upper

Our apartment complex has been what you might consider a fixer-upper.  It's not in bad condition exactly, but it's not swanky by any stretch of the imagination.  In our three and a half years here, we've had the management turn over two or three times due to sale of the complex.  It seems that our latest owners are investing quite a lot.

They went through and patched cracks in the parking lot.
They tore out some curbs and speed bumps and re-poured them.
They've repainted the stripes and the parking spot numbers.
They've been replacing a few bits of wood here and there on the outside of buildings.

This is our very own porch, and the white primed area is where they came and pried off wood and nailed on new wood just a few feet away from a lesson I was having with a 6-year-old a couple of weeks ago.  Awesome concentration lesson!  Or not.

They've been drilling holes in building and blowing in more insulation.

This is the building next to us.  I'm pretty sure our building is next, so we're fixing to have a couple more noisy days coming up.

And now it appears they are repainting the outsides.

I've never loved the two-tones-of-mustard scheme with dirt brown trim, although I suppose it has a natural sort of charm.  And I've wished out loud more than once that they'd repaint.

Our half of our building in all its mustard and dirt glory.

Now we're going to have shades of gray with orange.  Definitely more interesting and hip, although I don't think I'd choose it for myself.  Home is going to look very different on the outside!

The half a building test case for the new paint job.

So with all this external curb-appeal work going on, what the residents want to know is, how much is our rent going to go up when our leases turns over????

Hard Words

I've been dragging my feet on my blog for a little while here, not actually having anything I wanted to write about.  And then suddenly I have three posts I want to write and one day to draft them all.

This past week in my Bible study we looked at the "Seven Last Plagues," also called the seven bowl judgments.  They're pretty horrific, and are great fodder for some sort of horror or end-of-the-world movie.  (Read it here if you dare.)

One of the questions we were to answer was along the lines of, how do you explain the coexistence of God's love and his fierce wrath?

That's actually something I've thought a lot about in the last maybe twelve years, and I'm not sure I'll ever completely understand the answer.  I know it's a question worth the struggle.  I wrote a little essay on my Bible study page in answer to that question, and here's what I read to our discussion group:

"Sin is bad because it hurts the sinner, it hurts others, and it ultimately leads to death.  God hates sin because of all the harm it causes.  God is longing to restore his perfect creation in love.  He has tried, and will try, everything to show people how evil sin is and to give every person an opportunity to turn from it. As people refuse gentler correction, God must escalate his demonstrations.  Some people will continue choosing to cling to sin no matter what God tries in his efforts to show them the way to life, until sadly, they will choose their own destruction.  That is not what God wants for them, but they have chosen to cling to things which won't last in the new creation."

I want now to add this:

"Friends, let's be sure our hearts are tender toward God and what he wants to teach us!  I'm thinking of Jesus' parable in Matthew 13 about the farmer sowing seeds.  Some landed on the road, some landed on rocky places, some landed among thorns, and some landed on good soil.  He goes on to explain that the farmer is God, the seed is the Good News of the Kingdom, and the different landing places are the conditions of the hearer's hearts...  God has done what he can to bring the Kingdom to all types of people.  Each person, in turn, is responsible for working on the quality of his or her heart soil.  If we are not able to accept God's Good News joyfully and in-depth, we cannot rightly blame God or anyone else.  God is doing all he can to reach each of us, yet he is kind enough never to twist our arms.  He knows what we are facing.  As the author of Hebrews says, 'For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.'  Do not blame God if you do not love him.  Instead, know that he has done, is doing, and will do everything he can to show you his love."

But this terrible thing happened to me, we object.  Or this terrible thing happened to these innocent people, these innocent children, and I read about it in the news every day, we object.

I have to think that all these horrific things make God terribly, incredibly sad.  And I believe he is going to deal justly with all of it in his time.  We need to be patient as God is patient, because he knows that if he put an end to every evil right away, we would have no freedom, no love, no choice.  I believe that God's heart aches much more than mine at every injustice, every hurt, every wound, every terror.  Like a curious two-and-a-half-year-old I know, constantly asking why? is not going to give us a satisfactory answer.  "Why did my car get out of the way in time, but the other car get hit?  Why did my baby die, but the baby conceived out of wedlock live?  Why did one colleague get their dream job, and another get fired for stupid political reasons?"  There is plenty of evil in the world - no one contests that.  And there is plenty of good in the world - no one contests that either.  Some day there will only be good in the world - a good that is only possible for us to be part of, when our hearts are tender toward our God of Great Love, day by day.  Join the team which is guaranteed the victory!

"I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.  Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.  For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I’m not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church.  But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me—and not without results. For I have worked harder than any of the other apostles; yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace."

Those are the words of Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth, which pretty much lay out the Good News about Jesus.

So about studying Revelation - I wasn't sure I wanted to this year:

For quite a while I've known that there are three major positions on interpreting the book of Revelation, and within those interpretive positions, myriad ways of parsing out all the symbols and timelines and such.  This makes studying Revelation a bit controversial, because just for fun, let's say I subscribe to interpretive position A, and the leader subscribes to B...  There is no good way for us to have a conversation.  And yet, in this case, the study was prepared by scholars from those three major interpretive positions plus a fourth I hadn't even heard of or understand called "idealism," and they looked for ways for people of any of these backgrounds plus those without any biblical background at all to get what's important out of the book - and without taking sides.  I think they were mostly successful.

In case you haven't heard of the three interpretive positions, they are:

Preterism: Revelation was written during the Roman persecution of the early Church, and the symbols are about the spiritual triumph of those early believers under very difficult circumstances.  This is the position of many mainline scholars.

Futurism: Revelation is a vision of the things to come at the end of time, and many of the symbols are more literal than figurative.  This is the position of many evangelical scholars.

Historicism: Revelation is a prophecy of the entire Church age, beginning with the time John wrote up through the end of time.  Many symbols have already been fulfilled and many are still to be fulfilled.  This was the position of many of the Protestant Reformers, but is less popular at the moment.

Just in case you were worried I was getting indoctrinated into the "Left Behind" dogma or any other dogma you don't like... I'm not.

Modern Music Critics

Saturday night I went with Linda to hear the Seattle Symphony.  The orchestra opened with Don Juan.  Then they were joined by Yefim Bronfman playing the 2nd Beethoven Piano Concerto.  Both enjoyable!  The possible highlight for me was his encore, which was the last movement of the Prokofiev Sonata No. 7.  It was the first time I heard it, and I was struck by his interpretation of the jazz motifs and the insistent rhythm.  If you'd like to experience it, you can hear Martha Argerich's stunning interpretation on this youtube clip, starting at 13:23:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSeriQx3RLM

The second half of the program was the Berio Sinfonia, which was also new to me.  I read the program notes, and I've heard some Berio before, so I had an idea what to expect.  Before the orchestra performed it, they played a several-minutes long video of the conductor speaking about the style of the piece, its history, video clips from events associated with its composition and early performances, clips from this week's rehearsals, and discussion of what was game-changing about the work and why it was still important to present difficult pieces.  He ended by saying it was an amazing journey to be on, and they were so excited to take us along with them.  They did so much to help the audience be open-minded and ready to enjoy it.

Linda and I did enjoyed it thoroughly.  I won't say it's a piece that I love or would want to buy a recording of.  Music is so different live than it is coming out of even the best speaker system, and the Sinfonia is very much in that category.  It is so coloristic and even conversational.  The orchestra is arranged differently on stage than is traditional, and there are also eight singers mixed into the orchestra.  They sing some, yes, but they also speak and make various vocal noises, which contribute to the texture of the music.  Much of the text is not exactly relevant to the meaning of the work, but contributes to a stream-of-conciousness effect, and quite a bit of it is intentionally obscured, because it is more textural than textual.

After the second movement of the five, audience members started walking out.  At the very end, roughly one third of the audience left without clapping, leaving the remaining two-thirds to give a standing ovation.  I've  been at other concerts with modern or contemporary works where audience members started walking out, and I know they'll be back next week to hear their favorite Brahms and Beethoven and what-have-you.  Mainly I felt sad for the walkers that they were not willing to exercise their imaginations and gain something from the experience, whether they end up "liking" the piece or not.  I felt like maybe they are not able to appreciate many of the gifts of life because they don't look or sound or feel a certain way.

Berio and Ligeti are similar in certain ways, although I would not mistake one for the other.  You may well be familiar with Ligeti, if you happen to have seen 2001 Space Odyssey.  He borrowed a few older works for the soundtrack, but all the weird and wonderful space music you hear is classic Ligeti.  This is not a "purist" point of view, but it got me to thinking that if some amazing film director created an artistic silent film to play along with the Berio Sinfonia, I imagine almost all the audience would have sat through it and raved about it afterward.  The music was so colorful, it almost demanded images in my mind.

Bach Concertos Recital

Last weekend I played my first recital since we lived in Rochester.  I did get several paying gigs in Huntsville and Birmingham, including quite a bit of orchestra and chamber music, but in Washington I've had enough performing gigs to count on exactly one hand in our 3 1/2 years here.  There are a variety of good and bad reasons for that.  This was my first full-blown collaborative/solo performance in quite some time.  I picked easier music than I often do, for a variety of reasons, and it's a good thing given my parameters of teaching, travel, and raising a toddler.  I did practice as much as I could squeeze in, particularly in the last week, and it was exhausting.

 Two of the best things that happened to my playing were having my sound post lengthened last Wednesday at Carraba's and Jared's giving me the Wittner Isny shoulder pad for Christmas.  Those two events combined pretty much gave me a new violin in terms of tonal clarity and quality of sound.  If you are a violinist and I haven't told you about how much I love the Isny yet, don't worry - I'll give you the full rundown!

I had nine collaborators, ages nine through fifty-something, and it was fun to have quite the variety.  We had around sixty people in attendance, which meant some of my collaborators, relatives, and students were running around the Wesley Home searching for more chairs as 7:30 was rolling around.  AND... Jared's parents decided at the last minute to come up for the weekend, and I'm not quite sure how we could have done it without them, since they managed Anne at all the right moments.

As soon as we finished, some of my fellow musicians asked when the next one was going to be scheduled.  And it sounds fun, but I mainly wanted to sleep on the couch for the month of February and catch up on some other things.  However, I'm sure this isn't the last recital I plan to put together.