Honor Band and Hats
Jet had a blast with the Middle School District Honor Band. They basically all played together twice, though the big one was that yesterday, which is normally a 'late start' day, he went in at 8:30 and played all day with the band, in sectionals, and then together again. The clinician said that the real payoff for him, was working so intently with a bunch of great, dedicated kids, and the performance was just the icing in the cake.
It was mighty impressive icing.
I dropped Jet off in the morning, picked him up around 2:45, and they'd fed him lunch. Then at 6, we all went to the high school, dropped him off, and found seats we really liked in the auditorium. It was fun. We changed seats until we found something we really liked, and then settled in for the evening.
John's got video of the performances, and I'll post 'em here eventually, but the performances were pretty extraordinary. As Jet later said, "The amazing thing was being taught that the whole section should sound like one instrument, and then... omg... we did!!" They did. He later commented that with the high school honor band could make multiple sections sound a chord as if they were one instrument. He was pretty impressed by that.
He also happily, after the performance, told us about how the whole trombone section messed up entering one portion of the music and then went in two different directions on another bit. He was giggling at how the director was looking at them all with a tilt of the head, a director's "what are you all doing?", but kept going. That was fun to listen to, Jet really has a sense of the bigger picture of how the music is going, and he has a sense for it that's fun to listen to.
All right, and now the long promised hats....
These are the double-knitted hats I made for Jet and John. They're reversible, and I knit both sides at the same time. I'm working on a pattern for them, but finding that there's actually very little in common between the two as the pattern evolved as I learned more about the technique. *laughs* Jet loves his hat, but I can see the flaws in it, and he doesn't, at all, which is fine.
I couldn't see the flaws in his band performance, either, so we had fun talking about it that way, too. That was fun. John's is on the left, Jet's on the right, and Jet wears it every snowy day.
I'm still figuring out which charting software I want to use for the charts. And it's kind of amazing to me what's now available out there for free. But I hope to have a pattern published to Ravelry for free sometime in the next month or so.
This is the most recent accomplishment, the Brains hat, with the pattern by Alana Noritake. I'll admit that it was probably one of the most boring knits I've ever done. *laughs and laughs* It's just a skull cap with I-cord sewn on (as I suspected), but the brain pictures in her pattern were well worth the cost.
Someone on Facebook asked me to make this for her, so I did! *laughs* It was fun to finish, I'll admit. The weird thing is that she somehow used nearly 150 gram of yarn for hers, but I ended up only using about 75g of Knit Picks Comfy fingering all together for mine. Not sure how she used double the yarn I did, and I packed the squiggles pretty tight.
The fun thing is that there's two frontal lobes and clear right and left hemispheres to the thing, so there's a little anatomical detailing to it that's just fun. *laughs*
It was mighty impressive icing.
I dropped Jet off in the morning, picked him up around 2:45, and they'd fed him lunch. Then at 6, we all went to the high school, dropped him off, and found seats we really liked in the auditorium. It was fun. We changed seats until we found something we really liked, and then settled in for the evening.
John's got video of the performances, and I'll post 'em here eventually, but the performances were pretty extraordinary. As Jet later said, "The amazing thing was being taught that the whole section should sound like one instrument, and then... omg... we did!!" They did. He later commented that with the high school honor band could make multiple sections sound a chord as if they were one instrument. He was pretty impressed by that.
He also happily, after the performance, told us about how the whole trombone section messed up entering one portion of the music and then went in two different directions on another bit. He was giggling at how the director was looking at them all with a tilt of the head, a director's "what are you all doing?", but kept going. That was fun to listen to, Jet really has a sense of the bigger picture of how the music is going, and he has a sense for it that's fun to listen to.
All right, and now the long promised hats....
These are the double-knitted hats I made for Jet and John. They're reversible, and I knit both sides at the same time. I'm working on a pattern for them, but finding that there's actually very little in common between the two as the pattern evolved as I learned more about the technique. *laughs* Jet loves his hat, but I can see the flaws in it, and he doesn't, at all, which is fine.
I couldn't see the flaws in his band performance, either, so we had fun talking about it that way, too. That was fun. John's is on the left, Jet's on the right, and Jet wears it every snowy day.
I'm still figuring out which charting software I want to use for the charts. And it's kind of amazing to me what's now available out there for free. But I hope to have a pattern published to Ravelry for free sometime in the next month or so.
This is the most recent accomplishment, the Brains hat, with the pattern by Alana Noritake. I'll admit that it was probably one of the most boring knits I've ever done. *laughs and laughs* It's just a skull cap with I-cord sewn on (as I suspected), but the brain pictures in her pattern were well worth the cost.
Someone on Facebook asked me to make this for her, so I did! *laughs* It was fun to finish, I'll admit. The weird thing is that she somehow used nearly 150 gram of yarn for hers, but I ended up only using about 75g of Knit Picks Comfy fingering all together for mine. Not sure how she used double the yarn I did, and I packed the squiggles pretty tight.
The fun thing is that there's two frontal lobes and clear right and left hemispheres to the thing, so there's a little anatomical detailing to it that's just fun. *laughs*