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Really Big Zowie
Look what arrived in the post today.
Wow. Zowie. Gosh. Gee.
A long time ago now Blogmom said that some of the forum members were contemplating making individual squares toward putting together a quilt for me and was that all right? Sure, I said, my beady little eyes lighting up with anticipatory glee, not to say greed. (I love the whole quilt thing.)
And then I pretty much forgot about it. As I say, it’s been a while. And today when a Mysteriously Large and Lightweight Box arrived from Writers House I was entirely baffled.* Boxes from WH tend to be heavy.**
Even as I began lifting large heavy folds of fabric out of the box I had no clue. And then the letter from Bonnie Holmes (Holmes44 on the forum) fell out.
So. Anyway. Wow.
Bonnie put it together and backed it and as you can see it is really gorgeous. Skating Librarian wins the Overachiever’s Award: Bonnie says she painted the lovely flowery side panels, and she also made two amazing squares. This one is, well, very amazing: 
And then, not content with her achivements, she produced one of the hellhounds: 
Awwwwwwww.
(And, since I have to assume Wordpress is going to cram all my text up at the top again rather than leaving it where I put it next to individual photos, I’m going to save this post and put the rest of the close ups in another one. Of course there are going to be close ups of all the individual squares.)
* * *
* It arrived about five minutes before my handbellers did, while I was trying to hoover the floor. I was looking bemusedly at the Mysterious Box when Colin was early so the box did not get opened nor did the floor get hoovered. But we rang a lot of handbells. Niall has actually discovered a New Approach to being a sneaky, conniving ratbag and has got me ringing stuff that isn’t plain bob minor. He may be a sneaky, conniving ratbag^ but I’m secretly grateful not to be ringing exclusively plain bob minor on handbells for the rest of my life.
^ Who is going ON HOLIDAY FOR TEN DAYS STARTING TOMORROW MORNING leaving me in charge of tower practise TWO FRIDAYS. Not just one, TWO Fridays. +
+ I told him the next time he wants a handbell ringer at the last minute for the cathedral the answer is no. Especially if there’s a rock band tuning up twenty feet away.
** The last box from WH was full of lovely golden SUNSHINEs.
Quilt, continued
I hope these are self-explanatory. You will notice that the runner-up Overachiever Awards go to Susan from Athens and blondviolinist, both of whom made two squares. (The name labels should be legible if you bigify the photos.) But with Wordpress’ text-placement megrims in mind, I’m just going to run the rest of the individual-square photos reading from the quilt’s left to right, top to bottom. (If Wordpress starts to spit and creak, I’ll run onto a third post.) You can check against the first photo in the previous post to see how they all fit together again.
And I hope some of you are still in touch with the people–like Susan from Athens–whom we haven’t seen on the forum in a while. (Or maybe they’re all still posting to Talk, or Playing with Your Food.) But if anyone can find them, PLEASE TELL THEM TO COME LOOK AT THEMSELVES IN ALL THEIR SPLENDIFEROUS GLORY. And thank you all, very much!
Quilt, final
Okay, better safe than sorry. Especially since Wordpress logged me out in the middle of loading one of the photos in the last post, and refused to recognise either me or my password. Anyone who heard strange phantom screams a few minutes ago . . .
I Have the Nicest Mods in the Universe*
I overslept this morning.** Hellhounds and I got back*** to the cottage after our morning [sic] hurtle and found: 
It’s from my mods. Congratulating me on getting the frelling† corrections on PEGASUS done on time.††
THANK YOU. YOU ARE WONDERFUL HUMAN BEINGS.†††
I was hoping to save some of the wrapping paper which you will note has roses on it, but it’s so damn fragile I’m hoping it’s biodegradable to comfort me for failing. And while I love the new standard cut-flower delivery thing where they come with their stems in actual water . . . there is the little matter of removing the bulge of plastic wrapping that contains the water . . . remember I said about fragile? There was language. As well as water all over the floor.
But hey. There are flowers. Beauuuuuutiful flowers. Beam. Awwwwwww.
I may have to post another photo tomorrow after I, you know, arrange them. It’s been a ridiculously busy day. I have no idea what I’ve been doing.‡ I was going to spend all day on the sofa. Pardon me, what happened? I got about twenty minutes on the sofa. Hellhounds couldn’t believe it when I turfed them off again after less than half an hour.
And I was still almost late for bell practise tonight. Niall after a mere fortnight as Ringing Master is rapidly morphing into a major demonic fiend. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I don’t recall Machiavelli mentioning the horns and the spinal plates. I’m sure I can see the glitter of incipient green and purple scales on Niall’s forehead and his teeth are definitely growing. There were only six of us plus two beginners so we were ringing pretty much all the time, but because I am also Niall’s partner in handbell crime he picks on me.‡‡ You, do thus and such, he says. —Regretfully repressed rude gestures.‡‡‡
Including making me ring Kent. I haven’t rung Kent in at least a couple of months. Leo is also learning Kent, but he’s rung it more recently; last time we had a good enough band I rang Stedman. I grabbed the treble and held on, which worked the first time through, while Leo got his practise in . . . although I hadn’t actually rung the complex treble on a treble-bob method in probably two months either, so it was a little more exciting than was strictly desirable. I then slunk off to rememorize the inside line frantically in case Niall remembered me later, except I kept getting dragged out of my corner to ring rounds with beginners. Somebody else can do it! I’m busy! You, said Niall. Ring the four. Fiend.
But I got through Kent. It was, as I have a habit of saying about touches I’ve been ringing in, not a thing of beauty, but we got to the end. I was trying not to congratulate myself audibly when Richard started giving me one of his little frelling essays on ringing—I like Richard’s essays, and I particularly like the way he presents them in this calm, reasonable tone of voice as if you have half a clue what he’s talking about—but this one began with the shocking declaration that the line for Kent was easy to learn, it was the practicalities of ringing it accurately that are the problem, and I lost focus a trifle. Easy to learn. There speaks someone who has been ringing for sixty years.
I’m not going to get my day on the sofa tomorrow either. I have a frelling wedding to ring at Ditherington. Never mind. I will come home to flowers.§
* * *
* No, I haven’t warned them to brace themselves for a deeply embarrassing public expression of appreciation. What would be the fun in that?
** Don’t even ask.
*** And it’s been a beautiful day. April in February, as I said on Twitter earlier. Nearly shirtsleeve weather and sunny.^ Wha’? Huh? Hellhounds and I couldn’t cope. We tottered around feeling unstrung and looking nervously in the shadows. Sunlight produces such dramatic shadows. And shivering keeps you awake.
^ Mud to the ankles though. Whew. Some connection with familiar reality.
† The card does not say ‘frelling’. I’m not sure if this is restraint on the mods’ part or an understandable desire not to complicate matters. That’s f, r, e, l, l . . . oh, never mind. I know from experience florists’ clerks can be rather creative even when you spell things out really carefully.
†† They apparently arrived in English, too, which is a bonus. I wasn’t at all sure. By the time I hit the ‘send’ button yesterday evening the stuff on the screen was starting to swim around and form strange new clusters, racemes and inflorescences hitherto unknown to science, botany, or human visual range. But I got a note from my editor’s assistant today saying that she was working her way through them and while you can’t get bloodstains on email it didn’t break off in the middle of a word or anything.
††† There are moments when this frelling blog is worth it.
‡ Oversleeping. And I had another cup of tea with Oisin. Who is going all mean and fierce and telling me he’s expecting something musical out of me next week. Just because I got my novel turned in! What a big bully!^ He had even finally got me my own copy of the Capriol Suite^^. Mind you there is no reason I couldn’t go on playing off the photocopies he’d made for me^^^. I also may have led him on a little because I said that some of my blog people had suggested I set the lullaby at the beginning of PEGASUS and he replied kindly and sympathetically that while he will look forward to it, the thought of what I might consider a suitable lullaby for a three-armed witch and a feminist dragon gives him pause. Ha ha ha ha very frelling funny ha ha. You be nice or I’ll write it for organ.
^ Blondel will probably whap me around on Tuesday too
^^ Which has been OS at the publisher forever. Sheet music publishers make book publishers look like unfallen archangels and shiny harp-plucking seraphim.
^^^And because I am a lazy slut I will undoubtedly continue to play off the photocopies for some time because they’ve got all my painfully worked out fingering on them, and the large red slashes that mean pay attention to this bit, you idiot, and I’m going to resist going to the extra effort to move it all over. Aside from the fact that I am intimidated by all those glossy new clean pages with, you know, covers on either end.
‡‡ I am surrounded by musical male bullies.^ Where did I go wrong?
^ Of course this includes the hellhounds. It does not include Peter, however, who is slightly prouder of being unmusical than the facts support. But it will do for keeping him off this list.
‡‡‡Vicky would not approve of rude gestures. Our tower is even cleaner than this blog. Sigh.
§ More beaming. More awwwwwww.
Silly Canon
This all began . . . a lot of weeks ago. (I’m slow.) But there was a thread on the forum that for reasons which now escape me indulged in a sudden burst of composing epitaphs for Black Bear.* This was happening right around the time Oisin suggested I write a canon. I sat down at the piano thinking about Row Row Row Your Boat and J S Bach, and somehow rowing your boat won. I’m also now sort of half on the lookout for short, not too horrifyingly profound and/or literary** poems to set and mental slippage in the McKinley polity is normal so I found myself idly toying in a canonical sort of way with one or two of the epigraphs from the forum . . . and discovered they were too long and complicated. I wanted about two lines for my canon . . . and I also already had a semi-cantering rhythm in my head—aaugh! Too late! You want the words first!***—so I hastily wrote a couple. Of very silly lines. And set them.
And here they are. It’s taken me this long partly because once it occurred to me I wanted to post this I wanted Oisin to look at it with an eye to my not making a complete fool† of myself, which has meant that I have to keep waiting till next Friday for my music lesson—that, and wrestling with Finale over various things. ††
This is only the sheet music, I’m afraid—anyone out there who sings SAT or B and has three friends who sing the others, please have a go. ††† Oisin said that I’ll get complaints about the octave leaps . . . but they’re nice straightforward octaves, not anything alarming like diminished sevenths and demisemihemiquavers or something that you have to think about. Oisin also said that the tenor ‘beware’ is hard to sing . . . and then promptly sang it himself, so I’m not too impressed.
But mainly this is for a giggle. So I’m not going to worry about it.
And . . . it’s Black Bear’s birthday today. Just by the way. Most of what I’ve written about writing the Silly Canon is sheer truth, but it is also true that when I realised her birthday was coming up I jiggery-pokeried a bit so I could post it today, and give her a really nasty shock . . . I mean, a lovely surprise. ‡
Happy Birthday, Black Bear!
Download sheet music (PDF)
* Yes. Very weird. As I say, I don’t remember why.
** Special exception for people you’re married to, and Anonymous can’t complain.
*** Well, I do, if I’m going to use words
† A semi-fool is acceptable, and probably inevitable
†† Arrrgh. As per previous blog entries. Also I’m also just slow. Slow, slow, slow. Well, I’m supposed to be finishing a novel too.
††† And then record it and send me a link.
‡ And you don’t have to download it: you can just read it on your screen.
