Kindred Spirits

My long-time friend, Freny, and I are musical kindred spirits. We were in the same music class in Grade 9 where she took the clarinet and I selected the oboe. In Grade 11 we both transferred to the same school when our respective families moved to the same part of town. The summer we moved, Freny and I attend Ontario Youth Music Camp (OYMC) and had a blast. Freny has been living in Australia for about 25 years. This summer she came to visit her mother and other family and friends in Canada for about 5 weeks. On Thursday, she came here for a visit before beginning her trip back to Australia yesterday.

Thursday night, I hauled out my oboe and she sat down at the piano and we jammed for about an hour and a half. I hadn't played for about eight years since retiring from the local community concert band. Surprisingly, my lip held up and my reed was pretty stable and aside from a few 'clinkers' we did a pretty good job. It was a blast. I videotaped a couple of the tunes with my nifty new camera but unfortunately, I had it on the wrong setting so the video portion was WAY too dark. All one can see is the faint light of the piano light over the music. However the audio wasn't too bad. We played 'Night and Day'

and 'Unchained Melody'.

It certainly wasn't the best performance we'd ever done but it sure was fun. And it felt great to be playing again. I realize how much I miss it but I really don't want to commit to a group that rehearses from September to June, as my absence during my winter holiday would not be fair to the group.

I stared some socks for her using some Kaffe Fassett Design Line Regia yarn. I got almost the whole leg done on the first sock today on the way into The Big City to see "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" - a documentary made about her life. The jokes were great. She sure is driven to work, work, work to maintain her staff and opulent lifestyle. During a tour of her NYC apartment, she joked saying, "This is how Marie Antoinette would have lived had she had money". I'm reprising the Practice Makes Perfect pattern I knit for myself a while back using a generic sock pattern and incorporating a portion of the cable from Fiona Ellis' 'Practice Makes Perfect' scarf.

I really like the colours in this yarn. The gold reminds me of turmeric and the turquoise and fuchsia are very tropical. Then there's peach and teal and olive green. Wild! I love knitting for people who appreciate what goes into the creation of a knitted item.

It is so cool to be able to pick up with Freny wherever we left off during the last visit. Thursday night we were 15 again. I guess there's still a lot of those young girls still left in us.