"Road Trip" knitted hat and scarf set

My noble spouse did about three-quarters of the driving so I could get in a bit of knitting on the way to and from Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. 

I rarely get around to such things when I'm home, so it was a real treat to have some uninterrupted time with sticks and string.

I had two skeins of Patons Classic Wool in Cognac Heather which worked up to 4 1/2 stitches per inch on #8's.

First I made a simple roll-brim hat (simple being an advantage since we left Tuesday after work so were driving in the dark).

Then, once the hat was completed on Wednesday morning, the rest of the yarn and the rest of the trip went into a nice long scarf.  The beaded rib pattern is from "The Sweater Workshop" by Jacqueline Fee.








Now I'm ready for winter!

Thanksgiving at the farm

Three generations

We're just back from a trek to Himself's family homestead in northwest Pennsylvania.  Two days of driving for two days there, but boy, was it nice to have everyone together.  My dear father-in-law; my mother-in-law, who, though in late stages of Alzheimer's is still home; Himself's older brother and his 17-year-old son; and his older sister, her husband, and their two boys, 15 and 19.

My kids are the youngest of the grandchildren.  Thing Two had to hold her own against all those young men.  Does anyone remember the book "Eight Cousins" by Louisa May Alcott? 

My brother-in-law's boy, the one in the middle, looks so much like my father-in-law did when he was 19 it's startling.






 
My brother-in-law and his son, who live in the old farmhouse, grow pumpkins and squash on the flats of French Creek, behind the barn, and sell them from a cart on the side of the road.

Himself's parents live up the hill from the old place.

The farm has been in the family for several generations. The narrative is remarkably similar to that handed down on my side: poverty, backbreaking and ceaseless labor, a certain grim, joyless faith (substitute Methodist for Baptist).

Story goes that Himself's grandfather dug a ditch, by hand, the length of this field behind the house.  I wonder if he enjoyed the view over the valley while he was at it.

Midcoast Maine and rural northwest Pennsylvania are, culturally speaking, worlds apart.  There's a shared love of the outdoors, but it's the difference between Cabela's and L.L. Bean.  Down there, deer season opens the Monday after Thanksgiving so it's pretty much all everyone was talking about. 

The older boys took Thing One deer spotting and target shooting. 

This almost - almost - made up for the lack of WiFi.

Thing Two enjoyed her first visit to a taxidermist.

Okay, perhaps "enjoyed" is not the best choice of word.

The weather in Pennsylvania was unseasonably mild, while coastal Maine enjoyed a white Thanksgiving.  

Okay, perhaps "enjoyed" is not the best choice of word.

I am thankful for family, for family history, for a sense of time and place;

for the fact that my home decor does not include dead wildlife;

for the insurance which allows my mother-in-law to be cared for at home;

for having reached the point in my life where I can cook a turkey dinner for 12 in someone else's kitchen and not stress out about it;

for the friends we were able to spend time with, including my voice and conducting professors and the Rev. Dr. S., who even though laid up with a broken leg can still cream my kids at poker;

for audio books, which make almost thirty hours in the car go by faster;

and for the unrestrained joy with which our dogs and cats greeted us upon our return. 

Life is good.

High School Musical

Our school district really does the arts in a big way. 

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Not that we don't have a great sports program, but our 660-student high school is sort of the anti-Glee.  Success in music or art or theater is a point of pride, both individually and collectively, and community support is overwhelming. 

(As an aside - forgive me, but since we're low on grandparents this is my forum for bragging about my children - my freshman son has just been invited to join the uber-selective jazz band.  Woot!)

So it stands to reason that the annual fall musical has become something of a creative juggernaut, an all-consuming synthesis of music, art, dance, drama and engineering.  The productions since the new high school, with its state-of-the-art, 826-seat auditorium opened, have included Cats, Honk, Once Upon a Mattress, Beauty and the Beast, and Les Mis. 

This year they tackled Phantom of the Opera.

Full disclosure:  I am not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.  I believe his success is due more to savvy marketing and brand management (see:  Brightman, Sarah) than artistic merit.  His compositions, though maddeningly catchy, are simplistic; his characters are one-dimensional.

What's more, the quality of his music is inversely proportional to the demands it places on its singers.  Even a marginally competent singer can make good music, even if it's technically demanding, sound effortless, because a good composer knows what sits well with the voice.  But poorly written music, even in the hands of a gifted performer, sounds challenging because it is gratuitously demanding.  Lloyd Webber is a master of sweeping, dramatic melodies which are truly a bitch to sing.

All of that by way to say that Phantom might not be the best vehicle to showcase teenage singers, even those who are genuinely talented.  The vocal requirements are too muscular (particularly over a pit band) and the ranges too great (an octave and a half per number is fairly standard) for voices which won't be mature for at least another ten years.

However, these guys pulled it off, even enjoyed themselves, so it seemed, and there was clearly talent to spare - the director double-cast six of the the leads so as not to completely exhaust anyone over the run of eight shows, several of which sold out.  So what if Friday night's Phantom was a little pitchy and had to substitute falsetto for pianissimo in the upper register. 

I can't even begin to guess how many people were involved, between the students in the cast and crew, the parents and teachers who volunteered their time to assist with everything from sewing costumes to folding programs, the directors and musicians... the whole town was caught up in it, and the audience's response to Friday's performance was truly gratifying. 

Our school district really does the arts in a big way.

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Remember, remember the fifth of November

Why are other countries' holidays so much cooler than ours? 

I mean, seriously.  We have dead presidents' birthdays and Thanksgiving and Independence Day, which actually is kind of cool in theory, but it celebrates signing a piece of paper, doesn't it.  Woohoo.

The French, on the other hand, mark their own revolution on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille - how cool is that? 

And the British have Guy Fawkes day, which celebrates the foiling of a plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 and involves burning effigies, for heaven's sake.

Clearly, our national holidays are singularly lacking in coolness.

My friend E happens to a) be British and 2) have a lovely new camp on an itty bitty pond up near Liberty.

Last Saturday being November 5 and not a school night, she and her family threw a very cool bonfire night party.

(I mean the party was cool, not November 5 was cool.)

(I mean, November 5 WAS cool, but not too cool to have a cool bonfire night party.)

(Oh, never mind.)

The kids put together a couple of Guys.

And a bonfire.

And the grownups put together a potluck, complete with sausage rolls, beans and Yorkshire parkin.

And then there were the fireworks.

(Okay, so they were actually marine flares.  Marine flares are way cooler than fireworks.)

Very cool.