Moth!

Just saw a *moth*. Panic!!!!!!! I dashed into the kitchen to get a plastic cup and something non-flimsy from the junk mail to cap it off so I could release it outside. And now I can’t find it. All this wool. Aughhhh!

Have been exchanging rather more emails than usual with my good friend Brother Karitas. He has been working on genealogy and has found several possible relatives, all of whom are as creative as he. One is an opera singer, one an interfaith minister, and two are fashion designers. I find it fascinating how talents are transmitted through the generations like a spiritual DNA.

The girls get musical talent on both sides of the family. Their paternal grandmother wanted to sing opera, but everybody told her that nobody from that Midwest state had ever sung opera, and to give up the idea. So she moved to New York and worked in the rag trade [fashion business] and took up smoking and ruined her voice. Their dad sang in the Bluejacket Choir in the US Navy. My mother played in a dance band when she was a young woman in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. She played the saxophone, the accordian, and a mean ragtime piano. And I have loved music all my life. Back when I was a child and gas stations were service stations, one of them gave Dad a booklet of Christmas songs as a premium. I sat in my room with my Barbies and sang them for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Poor Mom.

I sing. Small s. In the car, in the shower, in the congregation at church every Sunday, and in times past in our ward and stake choirs. I have a nice, clear, comfortable choral voice. I do not think that I have a solo voice, though I have had some vocal training. And I cannot sing over accompaniment. I've tried singing karaoke, and no matter how they crank the background down, I cannot sing over it. This is clearly psychological, because when I was learning a Streisand song for a class assignment in college a decade or more ago, and singing along with the cassette in my car with the windows down, I got non-sarcastic applause from the next car over at a stoplight. I can sing loudly if I am singing along with Streisand, Celine, or Martina McBride. Go figure.

The girls? The girls Sing, capital S, in Lapidaire Monstre typeface, though some of them choose not to. Firstborn sang with the Southwest Florida Symphony Chorus in recent years. Secondborn got the lead in the school musical. LittleBit was recently one of the two youth music leaders at church camp. And she's in the top choir this fall, which necessitated the whole extremely expensive undertaking with All State Choir Camp. She also has played the violin and the trumpet, and has taught herself piano. And drums on things constantly, and breaks into song in restaurants, quite unconsciously.

It is not at all unusual to have her and Fourthborn spontaneously singing “Loathing” from Wicked. They do it well, after spending so many years battling, though they get along famously now.

What has this to do with moths? I am distracting myself by thinking of pleasant things, that's what.

Here's how the scarf looks, after blocking. Note that I did not opt to knit two halves and weave them together in the middle. How uncharacteristically non-OCD of me!



So you get one end:



And the other:



LittleBit's been out of pocket, so her gallon of 2% is going sour. At $4.18 [what do they think this is? gasoline?] for the replacement gallon -- and a gallon of 1% for me -- I am not going to pour the souring milk down the drain. So it looks like baking is on the agenda today. I'm thinking a loaf of buttermilk oatmeal bread, and a pan of cornbread, and maybe some pumpkin pecan bread and other quick breads until it's all used up.

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Yanks.