An Echo Full of Instruments, Pt. I

Last weekend, the band and I went to Thunder Bay, Ontario to headline an event called Celtic Bash 12.  Put on by The Pipes and Drums of Thunder Bay, it's a fundraiser for the pipe band and a celebration of all things Celtic, with highland dancers, three different pipe bands, a more traditional Celtic group, lots of beer, and us.

Thunder Bay is an eight-hour drive east of home, but with the show on a Saturday and people willing to pay for two nights' hotel for us, we had the rare luxury of a whole day just to travel. We packed up the vehicles on Friday morning and hit the road an entirely civilized hour.

We are five people in the band, and we travel in two vehicles: Kevin (a.k.a. LoML) and I and our instruments in my car, Mike, Kyle and Nic and all of their instruments in a borrowed SUV.  Sounds like Kevin and I would have more room, right?  Anyone who has ever packed a drum kit knows the answer.  Getting a drum kit into a car is a challenge at the best of times. Getting Kevin's drum kit into my car is a Jenga-like feat of epic proportions.

For this is my car, a wee 2000 Toyota Echo:

And this is an Echo with one drum kit, one sampler, one accordion, two knitting projects, one suitcase, two pedal cases, and one wireless rig in it (two musicians to come):

Pretty impressive, non?

On Saturday morning, we had breakfast then headed to the venue, to find the stage looking like this:

i.e.: not quite ready for us.  However, the sound tech gave us the happy news that the local music store was having a 50% off EVERYTHING sale.

Now the rest of the band, regularly having to buy strings, rosin, drum heads and the like, gets very excited about this sort of news.  I don't mind music stores, but quite frankly they don't usually cater to musicians of my ilk (i.e. non-male, non-guitar-playing, non-string-buying).  I go along but usually - due mostly to my choice of instrument - don't have the bordering-on-religious experience I've witnessed in my bandmates when they discover a beautiful-sounding thing on sale.  That was about to change.

Two minutes into the outing, I spied this:

Excelsior Accordiana, 120-bass, "women's model" (i.e. smaller and lighter but every bit as beer-swillingly-powerful as her larger polka-king cousin) thing of utter gorgeousness.  I played one chord, and the rest of the band appeared out of the woodwork, like moths to a flame.  (I believe Mike's exact words were "What the $@%# was THAT?") The sound was huge.  HUGE.  Monster.  In that moment, I, for the first time, understood why people turn their amps up to 11, why the guys get that look on their faces when they plug a beautiful instrument into a beautiful system and make a big, beautiful, badass noise.  For the first time, I understood, in a visceral sort of way, why they're called "power chords".

The price tag said $300. That's $150 on sale.  Online, I have seen these babies for $995 and up.  It wasn't even a conversation.

We would make room in the Echo for one more case.

Things I CAN Share...

It's officially full on pre-Christmas knitting season, which rules in that I have a ton of stuff on the needles and a ton of ideas for more things to put on the needles (and a quickly dwindling supply of empty needles), but sucks in that I can't tell you about any of it in any sort of detail.

However, I am getting a bit of relief from all of this surprise keeping, due to the fact that my wonderful brother Michael had the consideration to be born in November, 34 years ago today.  (Happy birthday Mike, I love you tons and I'm glad you're my brother.)

And so, we'll kick off a list of things I can tell you about with:

1. I knit Michael some birthday socks, and he wore them today in a rainforest in Tofino, B.C.

Skyp Socks, in Blue Moon Fiber Arts River Rocked (Rockin' Sock Club September shipment)

STR Mediumweight may be my favourite sock yarn ever.  (Though, in fairness, the Wollmeise is still in its skein...)

2.  We bought a house.  I know I told you that already, but I'm just a tad excited about it.

3. I had a small falling down at the Blue Moon online store.  (I had a discount code that was going to expire.  It would have gone to waste.  That's my story, I'm sticking to it.)  It came today.

4. My friend Miss K and I picked out, queued, and cast on the exact same project on the exact same day.  I cannot stop knitting it.  Seriously.  I'd love to tell you more, but that will have to wait until after Christmas. Suffice to say that I briefly considered calling in sick so I could finish another chart repeat.

5.  My new house (which is not a new house, by any stretch, but is new to me... or I guess I'm new to it...) has 97 year old oak that has never been painted, and it's every-freaking-where.  I get a little jello-in-the-knees just thinking about it.

6.  I have discovered something about my knitting self: I hate working with laceweight.  I like lace, I like laceweight yarn, I do not like making lace out of laceweight yarn.  I am happy about this because it means that I can stop knitting a project I was not enjoying, and because I got my 4.5mm circular back, at least temporarily.  Temporarily being the operative word.

7.  Coloured washers and dryers are about $150 more each than white ones. 

8.  At my Safeway, there is, right now, at the SAME TIME, Halloween candy in the aisle and Egg Nog in the dairy case.  (Don't even get me started on the fact that they've got the freakin' mincemeat and candied cherries and fruitcake out on a special display.)  I have very, very strong feelings about this. They are not good feelings.  Some things do not belong in the same store at the same time.  I have spoken.

9.  We take possession November 16.  Got any boxes?

A Sense of Place

Ask, and ye shall receive.

Not 72 hours after I wondered here what I was going to blog about in the pre-Christmas knitted gift frenzy, we got an unbelievable surprise that makes a relatively non-knitting post not only possible, but very easy.

Having sold LoML's house, we had just started house shopping.  The housing market here has been much more on the "Seller's Market" side in the last year or so, and we had heard numerous stories of people taking six months to a year or more to find a house, so we had been a bit lackadaisical about minor details like getting a pre-approved mortgage were being patient.

We did not take into consideration that the universe has not only a sense of irony, but a sense of humour.

Last Saturday, we went to see just the sixth house that our agent had shown us.  Like the others before it, it wasn't right, but we were near the house where I took piano lessons as a teenager, so we decided to go for a drive through the neighborhood the scenic way so that I could show LoML this little part of my history.

We turned a corner, and there it was.  Huge, built in 1912, solid, straight and for sale. We called our agent on the spot and arranged to see the house Monday night at 7:00.

On Monday night at 7:02, we fell in love. Hard.  I froze to the spot the minute I walked in the door and laid eyes on the untouched, original oak bannister.

LoML told me later he looked around the corner and immediately had a vision of our Christmas tree beside the fireplace in the living room.

At 7:45, after thorough inspection (him), much gasping (me), bouncing (me) and giggling (also me), pacing (him) and the occasional squeak (me), we sat down at the dining room table to write the offer, then went home to spend the next excruciating hour waiting for the phone call.

We got it.  They accepted the offer.  The house was ours.

The next 48 hours was an agonizing flurry of activity, arranging financing and a home inspection between bouts of giggles, anxious phone calls, and sleepless nights.  The financing came through swimmingly, and the home inspector passed it with colours as flying as one can expect for a century-old structure.  (The nice thing about buying a house that has been standing for almost a hundred years is that, generally speaking, they've done all the moving they are going to do (if any), and are quite happy to just sit there the way they've been quite comfortable all this time, thank you very much.  Ours is no exception.)

November 16, we're going home.  Sweet, sweet home.