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All by hand, not by machine??

That'll be next. The Great British Knitting Bee....

Yes, by hand. I am actually a very good knitter but tend to go through phases of activity. My new project will be a hooded cardi for my daughter.

Just give it a go every now and then, Dave. Nobody's looking.
Amazing, Feg; I can only knit triangles as I get crosser and crosser and it gets tighter and tighter. It often has bloodstains on it too...

Gill the Piano wrote:Just give it a go every now and then, Dave. Nobody's looking.

Feg will have to send me down some knitting patterns first!

Don't make me come up there and slap your legs...

Well I HAVE had a go. The print is bloody miniscule and I can hardly make out the dots, but I would be correct in assuming the lowest line is for the feet?

I think it's a teensy weensy bit too difficult for me, looking at it seems like a game of manual Twister. I might ask Mabel's advice on Tuesday.

At least I've had a reasonably good extended practice this morning. Ready for lesson next Tuesday. After that would be Easter holiday time so I might get a gap once again.

Usually 4 parts - two rh, 2 lh. Occasionally a weeny weeny line at the bottom intended for pedals.

Well, how ANYBODY can play it unless they've done grade 6 or 7 and is a very good sight reader to boot. Or maybe they're Kryptonite. I'll have to ask Mabs. But it was a bloody good bargain for 99p. If that had been in my old shop it would have gone for £2.49 or £1.99 given the condition it was in and the fact it could have been re-used.

Just play the top & bottom lines together and you should get a good sound. Sometimes you'll find the two parts in the LH are too far apart to play so I either play the top note with the RH or shove the bottom note up an octave. Or leave notes out - I played 'Wolvercote' today (O Jesus I Have Promised) and had to leave a lot of notes out to relieve tense, nervous headaches...

There are two tunes that I am aware of for OJIHP, a traditional sounding one and a newer jollier sounding one that we used in school.

Playing two lines together in a funny key where you have to remember which notes to sharpen/flatten (in this case sharpen) and from a miniscule print is way, way too much for me Gill. I am NOT exaggerating. I'm happy to come down to Marlow and show you exactly what I mean!!!

Just avoid the funny keys. If you look back at your first books, you'll realise how far you've come - so you realise what you're capable of!

I still have difficulty with Book 1. Even though I know all the tunes, I still cannot open Book 1 and play an easy tune straight away. I have to spend half an hour or so pootling around and trying to remember how I felt out the tune. The dots mean nowt even though obviously I try to follow them as best I can. The first catchup tune from Book 2 I've been at for a week and I'm still only 3/4 of the way through. Hand independence is also an issue for me which I try to resolve in the pootling around. Now, either I'm doing something wrong that I do not know about or I'm a crap musician.

Don't forget you're an adult beginner - they have different problems to kids with learning. I think you're doing brilliantly given the problems you've encountered along the way.

Like Fanny Fosdyke, and having other teachers in this area not wanting to touch me with a bargepole, sort of thing? I just wish I knew what I was doing wrong.

Coming down the stairs at 0540 and seeing daylight.

You aren't doing anything wrong. You have BEEN wronged - different thing altogether!

But I was a crap sight reader long before I had the misfortune to run into Biddy Bagshawe.

STOP BEING NEGATIVE!

It's just that I'm no good at telling lies (why I resigned from the Labour Party).

Ordering a car part, picking it up and fitting it myself (without losing my patience) within 24 hours.

Was it a wiper blade?

It was a weatherproof plastic cap for the headlight electrics. A bulb went on Monday evening and although the bulb itself was easy to replace, and the plastic cap was easy to get off, getting it back on again was difficult in the sense that you cannot SEE what you're doing so you have to feel and fumble your way around. Bad and unfunctional design is not what one would expect from Mitsubishi but when you think it's on you try to clip it and if it's not on then the thing snaps. I read an online comment from someone who said it took him one hour to replace a headlight bulb on this make and model. I knew exactly why. It is two people's jobs.

Like the bypass hose on a Morris Minor. I needed plasters, beer and a lie down after doing that one. At least it wasn't a mini I spose - they're apparently even worse owing to lack of room. (The proper mini, I mean, not the nasty german jobbie).

Good job you weren't playing the organ afterwards, the white keys would be the black and red keys (muck and blood) and you'd have been playing a load of bum notes due to the effects of alcohol intake!

Something that has made me happy after all that whingeing about Fanny Fosdyke. After a year of roadworks there is now an extra lane at junction 4 of the M5 at Lydiate Ash north of Bromsgrove (around 4km from where I live) There are also new lane markings and get this, lane discipline. Coming off the M5 from the south west will never be a case of guessing which lane you should be in for this obscurely shaped junction and I'm so glad I emailed the Worcestershire cabinet member for Highways, the Ward Councillor and also Sajid Javid (Tory MP for Bromsgrove) all those years ago expressing my concerns over this junction as it seems they have been listened to!

A nice long walk across the fields to St.Michaels Church Cofton Hackett, a lovely Tudor-esque medieval church that's really tiny. Then through the Park and along past St.Jason's Church (situated in the middle of a council estate and dating from 1951). Two very different Houses of God in two very different places.

Trying to look for songs on Youtube that do not make me feel old or regretful. Just to try and cheer myself up. I must say how much I'd forgotten how good this song actually is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkIZXKJmZ38

Finding a couple of things on my hard drive I never knew I'd had. The first thing was an old conversation between myself and 'Helen Emo' which is full of encouragement and which I read at the right time. The second was an old Mike Oldfield album of his composition 'Incantations' from 1978 I'd forgotten I'd got.

Hanging a door, latch, handles, hinges, the lot. Doesn't stick and it closes. Never done anything like that before.

A lovely day out at the Avoncroft Museum in Bromsgrove. There's a prefab corrugated iron tabernacle there with wooden interior, pews, bell, spire and converted organ that was covered up (though I have seen news reports of it where it was being played). I put a suggestion in the box that the organ should be regularly played.

Spent my birthday on a jaunt to Brighton to buy my new guitar. Heaven.

Birthday eh?? You lucky thing, being born in the spring. Surely better than being born on the shortest day of the year. If I'd have gone to Brighton on my birthday, it would have been headlights for most of the journey, thermals, possibly snow and ice. I'd have preferred bed. Or maybe 'bedd'.

Penblwydd hapus hwyr, gyda llaw. The guitar lessons must be coming on with great strengths!

dave brum wrote: The guitar lessons must be coming on with great strengths!

They'd better do to justify what I spent...

Well Gill, if you're as good on the guitar as I am on the piano?!

Like you, I practise and do as well as I can. Which is frustrating but we plough on... but I grow extra thumbs when anyone else is listening. Grr.

You can do ABRSM exams for guitar, you know. Either that or Rock School (that always reminds me of that saft film about that bogus teacher in that quality US prep school who teaches the kids to 'rock'.

I enjoyed it so much on Tuesday I did it again yesterday. That's twice in one week! But I made another awful mess and it got everywhere. There's even sawdust on the piano!

I'm doing Trinity Grade 6. If I get myself organised, that is.

Bloody hell Gill, you must be good at it then!

Seeing a picture of Feg on a certain social media facility. I had built a completely different mental picture of you. You remind me of Mrs. Waters, one of my old teachers in the infants.

dave brum wrote:Bloody hell Gill, you must be good at it then!

I wish I were; it's such a silly instrument...piano makes far more sense!

Gill the Piano wrote:...piano makes far more sense!

I wish it bloody did to old muggins 'ere!

Yayy! Found it at long long last, never thought I would. The Radio Wyvern theme song by Boone and Murfin from 1982.

https://soundcloud.com/andy-holmes-4/ra ... aunch-song

You think piano is bad, guitar makes no sense whatsoever. Not to me, anyway.

Well, I live in hope. Had a go at an easy player of Monkland last night. It's a village near Leominster where my wife and I met.

Nine days to piano lesson. Thirteen weeks exactly or three months exactly to my concert. Gonna come up and see me then??

Quite industrious today, done some electrical work AND a very good sesh on the piano and it's only 0900! Learned the first 4 bars of Gymnopedie no1. The piece that ***** ******* made me cry over. I don't know whether to do that for the concert on 12/7. It would be a major step forward if I did and a crucifixion of one of my biggest black ghosts pianowise.

Go for it. As long as you don't stress yourself about it. It'd be fantastic for you to do and one on the eye for ****** if she knew about it - and a tremendous boost for Mabel to have got you past such an enormous milestone. Just to play it'd be enough without performing in a concert.

I'm quite keen on the idea Gill, and as you say it would be a kick somewhere significant for Biddy Bagshawe. However there is the danger that one, only one negative mindstate can ruin the whole thing, destroy my confidence and end up with me pulling out. I don't want that to happen and of course I have to see Mabel about it in eight days time.

Of course, I actually like Gymnopedie no1 and, like all Romantic piano pieces they do play upon the emotions to a slight degree anyway - of course.

I am happy today because my husband got out of hospital this evening. I won't bore you with all the gory details so the sanitised version is that he was admitted on Thursday with internal bleeding and the problem has been sorted