Ketchup (and a lot of parentheses)
So, this week I have been mostly knitting and teaching. I should have been sowing tomato and pepper seeds (I should have sown them three weeks ago, actually, but it's taken me this long to remember to get the seed trays from the allotment and the compost from B&Q. There's a depressing chain of chores that must necessarily follow on from sowing the seeds: sow seeds, make mess on floor, sweep up mess, scrub floor, dry floor with old towel, scrub tiles in bathroom, clean both bathrooms, dust and polish everywhere, wash all towels and dusters and one metre of white cotton (for quilt project), dry towels, dusters and cotton, iron cotton, wash coat (the one I was wearing when I slipped oh-so-comically in the mud), dry coat, wash woollen jumpers, dry woollen jumpers, pre-soak the rest of the quilt cotton fabrics, dry, iron, cut, make quilt. This is why I find it so hard to get anything done -- I can see the dreary list dwindling off into the distance and I think to myself, "I'll just have a cup of tea first.") but (can you even remember how this sentence started?) I didn't. I'll do that later today. Really.
I bought myself a cable needle last Saturday, and have been attempting the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern. It's a little bit addictive, watching the cable twists appear every eight rows. I'm still taking an average of five minutes to knit each row, though. I've developed a comfortable routine of getting up relatively early in the morning (early for me is before 9.00am), knitting one pattern repeat, doing yoga (to sort my shoulder out -- it tends to get a tight, twisted feeling after half an hour of knitting), having breakfast, and then... general footling about until it's time to make dinner or visit my grandmother or go out teaching or whatever.
The teaching has been great. I only have four exam candidates this term, and one of those is only doing Grade 5 Theory (and it looks as though she's going to get a Distinction so our lessons have been floating along quite merrily), so I haven't felt that pressure to get anyone to a particular standard in any kind of hurry. I really like the non-exam terms: we get to look at more fun repertoire, and scales and arpeggios are less fraught with panic (for me AND the pupil).
Also, from a teacher's point of view, I'm having a lovely time with the variety of standards and styles that I'm currently getting to teach. When I started, five years ago, most of my pupils were beginners (obviously). Now I have a handful of beginners, a gang of intermediates, and two or three fairly advanced (Grades 6-8). I no longer feel like my job is all about saying "F sharp!" or "1-2-3-4" over and over again. And a third of my students have opted to study jazz improvisation, since I started teaching it (and myself) last summer. Jazz lessons are FUN!
Last thing now. Do you remember how I said I couldn't play the piano anymore? I thought it was because of my teacher dying, and perhaps some of it was. But I think now that a lot of it was because my diploma exam was so awful, and it left me feeling invalidated as a pianist. Why am I thinking this? Because ever since I got my exam result I've been playing Liszt -- lots and lots of Liszt.
Okay, this is definitely the last thing. I had a look at the marking criteria in the diploma syllabus and it turns out that not only did I pass but I was only 6% off a Distinction! In defence of my "I was awful" statements, I should say that I only got a middling pass for the performance part of the exam -- the part that I spent fifteen months practising for. It was the high marks for the viva voce, programme notes and quick study that carried the day. I did my research for the viva voce two days before the exam, wrote the programme notes the night before the exam, and did no preparation for the quick study at all (you can't really -- that's the whole point of the quick study). Maybe I should've left learning my pieces until a fortnight before the exam...
I bought myself a cable needle last Saturday, and have been attempting the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern. It's a little bit addictive, watching the cable twists appear every eight rows. I'm still taking an average of five minutes to knit each row, though. I've developed a comfortable routine of getting up relatively early in the morning (early for me is before 9.00am), knitting one pattern repeat, doing yoga (to sort my shoulder out -- it tends to get a tight, twisted feeling after half an hour of knitting), having breakfast, and then... general footling about until it's time to make dinner or visit my grandmother or go out teaching or whatever.
The teaching has been great. I only have four exam candidates this term, and one of those is only doing Grade 5 Theory (and it looks as though she's going to get a Distinction so our lessons have been floating along quite merrily), so I haven't felt that pressure to get anyone to a particular standard in any kind of hurry. I really like the non-exam terms: we get to look at more fun repertoire, and scales and arpeggios are less fraught with panic (for me AND the pupil).
Also, from a teacher's point of view, I'm having a lovely time with the variety of standards and styles that I'm currently getting to teach. When I started, five years ago, most of my pupils were beginners (obviously). Now I have a handful of beginners, a gang of intermediates, and two or three fairly advanced (Grades 6-8). I no longer feel like my job is all about saying "F sharp!" or "1-2-3-4" over and over again. And a third of my students have opted to study jazz improvisation, since I started teaching it (and myself) last summer. Jazz lessons are FUN!
Last thing now. Do you remember how I said I couldn't play the piano anymore? I thought it was because of my teacher dying, and perhaps some of it was. But I think now that a lot of it was because my diploma exam was so awful, and it left me feeling invalidated as a pianist. Why am I thinking this? Because ever since I got my exam result I've been playing Liszt -- lots and lots of Liszt.
Okay, this is definitely the last thing. I had a look at the marking criteria in the diploma syllabus and it turns out that not only did I pass but I was only 6% off a Distinction! In defence of my "I was awful" statements, I should say that I only got a middling pass for the performance part of the exam -- the part that I spent fifteen months practising for. It was the high marks for the viva voce, programme notes and quick study that carried the day. I did my research for the viva voce two days before the exam, wrote the programme notes the night before the exam, and did no preparation for the quick study at all (you can't really -- that's the whole point of the quick study). Maybe I should've left learning my pieces until a fortnight before the exam...