ASC II

No, this isn't going to be a post about ancient forms of electronic art... 

It is going to be about Actual Singing Content, no less, the second post of that name!  Singing in this delightful, almost secret corner of Amsterdam, in fact:

engelse kerk (english church) begijnhof, amsterdam

The music was Ferrandini's 'Il Pianto di Maria' a quite astonishing cantata (which was attributed to Handel for many years) with a lovely group of baroque musicians from Leiden.  I'd been dying to get my chords around this piece since I heard it back in, oh, 1996 or 7.  Back in the days when people still thought it was written by Mr Handel.  I did sing it once about 8 years ago in Germany, but managed to compliment it with a horrendous cold, and just couldn't do it justice, so I was delighted to be able to suggest it as a piece to sing with the Leids Barok Ensemble for a weekend of concerts this Spring.  And extra bonus, I get to take it on tour to Portugal with them this coming Summer!  

Yes.  There will be photos.

But back to Amsterdam.  The English Reformed Church (although now officially of the Church of Scotland) can be found through a door off the street in Spui in the centre of Amsterdam.  I had no idea it was there until this weekend!  Through the door and down a wee passage and you come across a tiny haven of old Amsterdam.  The church is one of the oldest buildings in Amsterdam, and the enclosed courtyard has buildings that you associate with the porcelain and pottery Dutch-style houses you find in any and every souvenir shop here.

The inside was just as charming, and very Presbyterian!

But yes, as you can see, there was a stained glass window!  HUZZAH!  And although the other windows were of plain glass, I think the exterior views made them just as entrancing!

Another of the hidden gems of the church is what I presume was something of a sacristy from the times when the church was of the Catholic faith, before the reformation.  Even now it looks like somewhere just waiting for a lady in Dutch costume and perhaps holding a vase of flowers to come in and be painted by Vermeer, or one of his Amsterdamse contemporaries!

The second concert, in Leiden, was also in a church slightly hidden from normal view:

lokhorstkerk, pieterskerkstraat, leiden - with the white doorway
(the massive church in the background is the pieterskerk)

It looks a little like another posh-fronted building on an ancient street (one the buildings opposite had a build date of 1610:)

but was a little gem inside:

Ah, it was a lovely weekend of music-making!  The Ferrandini is one hell of a piece, and I highly recommend trying to listen to a recording.  There are so many heart-racing moments - the expressive recitatives, the plaint, repeated twice, the amazing second-to-last aria with 4 separate violin parts which give the most scrumptious dissonant harmonies... mmmmmmmmmmm.  That's what music's all about!

 

And the flowers weren't bad, either!

 

 

Tjes

Here in the Netherlands, if you add 'tje' or 'je' to the end of a word, or name, it implies it is a diminutive, and can even be a term of endearment.  Pietertje (Peter-che), for example, is Little Peter.  Worteltjes (vortel-chez) are little wortels, or carrots.  If you call someone liefje (leef-ye), you call them your little love.  It's basically a Germanic version of the French 'ette', and rather endearing, linguistically speaking.

Why do I bring this up?  Well, I've been working on a few little things recently - dingetjes (ding-i-chiz) - and thought it about time to introduce them to the world...

Truitjes (trou [as in ouch] chiz) first - little sweaters!  itisalwaysraining (Elin) on Ravelry put out a call for testers for her new baby cardigan (sorry - I'm a pedant traditionalist - the pattern is called 'Circle Line (Iclandic Yoke Sweater)', but it opens at the front and has a button closure - that's a cardigan, dammit!

Anyhoo, it looked so cute that I had to offer my services (click on the link, and you'll understand), and I figured that it would be a perfect gift for my friend M's new little boy, Baby L.  I love it when a plan comes together

The first effort (above) was slightly flawed, however, as I didn't actually read the directions properly (my, what an excellent tester you are, said no-one), and ended up with a purely stockinette cardi (instead of a stockinette cardi with garter stripes) which had a few technical failings on my part.  Although I was pleased with my first ever button band, which actually turned out well, I didn't quite get the stripes on the sleeves to join up properly, nor did I manage to make an invisible 'make 1', but even with these little hiccoughs, on the whole I was enchanted. 

I was so enchanted, in fact, that I decided to start a second effort, in which I'd actually follow the pattern.  So I did.  And it became this darling thing:

Complete with invisible increases, neat and tidy stripe jogs on the sleeves, another neat button band, and a generous sprinkling of cute!

It's simple and lovely and well worth spending a meagre $4 to own the pattern!

The second lot of jes are the laarsjes (lars-yiz), or little boots (the closest I could get to 'bootees'!).

My sister has a friend in the States that has just given birth to a premature baby girl.  She is a much-longed-for little body, and although a preemie, is doing very well indeed.  DS asked if I'd make some booties for the new little human, and who was I to say no, especially as all the patterns seem to be equipped with an added aw-cute factor!

The pattern above is Saartjes Bootees - a very popular pattern on Ravelry, and this two-tone pink pair were one of 12,853 currently registered on the site!  The second pair is very simple indeed, and I beg your indulgence if I don't link the pattern, but it was pretty badly written.  Had I not just completed the other pair beforehand, I wouldn't have had much of a clue.  Never-the-less, here are a pair of Mary-Janes:

 

 

They are currently winging their way over the water to Scotland, then will cross the bigger pond, onto the feet of a precious bundle of new American.  That makes me feel kinda good, I have to say!

 

Lustrum Concessions

You know, I hadn't even heard of the word 'lustrum' before I moved to Holland - they use here it to celebrate or commemorate a 5 year period between big events.  It was, according to the internet so it must be true, originally to mean the period of time between censuses being taken in Ancient Rome - 5 years.  Nowadays an orchestra, or company, for example, can celebrate its lustrum every 5 years after its founding.  And when cake's involved, I heartily embrace this tradition.  And cake is frequently involved, at least over here in Clog-land.

But here it is - my first Ravelversary Lustrum (if one may mix these up a bit) and the first lustrum of my blog.  Hell yeah!  Has it really five years already?

I can't give everyone cake, much as I'd like to try, but I must celebrate this momentous occasion, and why not by giving five lustra to all.  

...

Okay, what I really mean is that all my patterns have 25% (see what I did there?!) off from now until after the second lustra of February!  Okay, I'm getting a little too taken with the whole lustrum thing...  So, from NOW until the 14th of February all my patterns will have 25% off.  No special codes or coupons needed!
 

It's a LUSTRUM SALE!  But in case it's not obvious enough:

You can find a link to the design page with all the patterns HERE!  

And to make the checkout much simpler, I've changed all the prices to Euros to stop the problems people were having if they were buying patterns in a mixture of € or $.  Sock pattern buying: now with new added simplicity! ;-)

p.s. lustrum

Beethoven's Wingspan

I thought I'd start the new year with an actual finished object!  Yes indeedy - I'm a-hurrying with the old knitting this year because... well, because I've joined a 13 items for 2013 type thingy on Ravelry.  A glutton for punishment, I hear you ask.  It appears so...

 wingspan by maylin tri'coterie designs
noro 'kureyon sock' no.236

I actually started this just before Christmas when I was doing my first Beethoven 9.  (Beethoven's Ninth 'Choral' Symphony for those not it the know - the last movement uses four soloists and a massive choir.  I can imagine it caused a bit of a ruckus at the very first concert!)  Needless to say, I wasn't embarking on this new project while I was on stage of course (although having to sit through the first three movements...  the distraction would have been welcome!  I'm not a fan of sitting on stage with nothing to do except try not to attract the attention of the audience, especially as we soloists weren't hiding beside the choir at the back, but were placed off to the side in full view of the watching public!)  But I hope this at least explains the title of this post.  I'm pretty sure good ol' Ludwig wasn't of the feathery-armed persuasion.

Wingspan is really a shawl, and I first saw the pattern at the end of 2011 I think, and just fell head-over-heels with some of the projects on the pattern page.  It did take me a while to get round to it, but on deciding to make it using the DK pattern but with fingering-weight yarn to make more scarf-like in appearance, it turned out to be excellent time-before-concerts/tv-watching finger-fodder!  I snaffled another person's idea to add the eyelets and I'm glad I did as they add some really nice pinpricks of light over an otherwise muted scarf.  (The photo above is about as close to the actual colours as my camera would allow - in real life it's all really rather green, but the rest of the photos are rather orange-centric, which I (as a non-orange-loving person) would never use!  Do feel free to click on the photos to embiggen!

Not a bad start to the year, methinks!  It's a great (free) pattern that doesn't ask for much brain power or concentration, but still gives a great end result!  Just how I like it! ;-)

 

Pre-Apocalyptic Roundup

I joined, perhaps in a state of optimism, a small thread on Ravelry dedicated to finishing 12 knitted items in 2012.  Pff, thought, I (optimistically) 12 finished items in 2012?  A piece of p*ss, as they say.  12 months later, (almost) and I have barely scraped through...  I am in hope of finishing a 13th item, but boy, I'm cutting things fine.  I'm aiming for Christmas for this 13th item, though, so I'm perhaps not cutting it fine for 2012.  Unless, of course, 2012 ends on Friday.  Maybe I'll have the item blocked by then.  It would be a shame to go out with unblocked items lying around.  What would extra-terrestrial archeologists of the future think of us, when they find caches of unfinished items of the knitted sort, languishing on bent and battered (and by then, ancient) needles.  That the the human race never finished anything?  That we lived by a code of ooh-shininess?  

(Actually...)

But, they are done.  Huzzah.  And they're not 'just' socks.  No-hoh.  There are 3 - count them - THREE shawls in this.  (Meh, okay, so they're shawlettes, but there's still an astonishing amount of stitching going on in them.)  Maybe even 4, if you count the neck-shoulder warmer I finished last week.  Them's a lot of knitting, eyellhavyoono. 

From the top, we have Dellezig, which is basically a zigzag neck/shoulder warmer with a ribbed neck, by DROPS designs.  I'm not going to link to the pattern, because I find it ridiculously badly written.  The item itself is pretty, though, and should do a fine job of keeping my Mum nice and warm! I used Eden Cottage Yarns 'Fantasia' in Delle.

Next is a very pretty shawlette I worked on as a test piece for the designer.  The Samaras Shawlette is a pattern by Nancy Totten, and a very quick knit for for such a pretty little shawl.  It should have a nice scalloped edge, but I didn't have enough pins.  It does, however, still block nicely with a more traditional spiky edge!  I used Malabrigo Yarn 'Sock' in Violeta Africana.  

Following on are my dear Hippie Hippie Socks, using Noro 'Kureyon Sock' in 256.  (You can find a whole post about this pattern in the links to the right.)

Oblique and Acute socks (mine again) are close behind the Hippies.  Oblique uses Munchkin Knitworks 'String of Pearls Plus' in Hodgeberry stain, and the Acute socks use King Cole 'Riot' in Riot.

I go back in time for the next project - another version of my first ever pattern 'Traffic Island Socks'.  Aw, bless! This time I used Eden Cottage Yarns 'Tempo' in Bit of a Goth.

Another of my new 2012 patterns - this time Cherry Garni.  I made these using Araucania 'Ranco Solid' in PT485 and a touch here and there of The Yarn Side 'Walker Merino' in Red Lentil Evenings.

I volunteered for another test shawl earlier on in the year - this time it was a Stepped Laceline Shawl by Venita Kidwai.  Very pretty, slightly boring to make, but the end result is worth the monotony. 

 

 

My sister gave me the yarn for the next project.  She wanted socks.  Who was I to not indulge this adorable trait?  I made a mistake choosing the pattern, though - Kalajoki - it was fiddly to make over 3 needles, especially considering it was a DK pattern.  I ended up changing the toe structure to something that didn't break my fingers.  The yarn is Stylecraft 'Life DK' in Honey.

Doornroosje came next - a pretty shawl pattern by a real-life friend (as opposed to all the ones in my internet).  I made it with King Cole 'Mirage' in 874 Oslo.  I gave it as a birthday gift to a singer friend of mine, who uses it as a 'throat-warmer'!

My tragic 'Where Corals Lie' bag comes next in the collage.  Ah, I had such high hopes. You can see the full story here and here.  I used what I thought was Noro 'Kureyon' in 196, but it appears to have been a bag of knock-off fake Noro.  Sad, sad, sad.

Finally there's Rambling - a great semi-improvised pattern for a scarf.  I made the mistake of not making it wide enough, even though I knew I was using acrylic and I'd never get it to block.  Cygent '100% Acrylic Aran' in 185 Denim, to be precise.  It is, however, still being used by the person for whom it was made, so not a disaster by any means!

I'm kinda hoping we're not going to suffer the Mayan prophecy of doom, because I've just started a Wingspan shawl, and I'd really like to be able to wear it in the not-too-distant (non 999 degree apocalyptic) future.

To be continued...  Hopefully with a 13 for 2013 (optimistic) goal...