But first...a look at my gradual progress on the Speculoos Sweater. I'm about halfway done with the chart. Every few rounds there are increases, so the rounds keep getting longer. It's looking good, though. I should have plenty of the lighter color to finish the chart. The rest is all in the darker color.
I ended up spending a lot of time practicing our bell piece for Sunday's service. Three of us from the choir were ringing bells (wearing the choir robes). Our music was the retiring processional, "For the Beauty of the Earth." We had three verses during which we played the bells. I got the middle one perfect. On the other two verses there were a couple of little mistakes, but everyone said it sounded great. The nice part was, someone else was playing my part as well.
I spent literally hours practicing at home with two wooden cooking spoons. I have a problem with right and left, so knowing which bell to play is an issue. The left-hand bell is marked in the music in blue and the right-hand bell is marked in red, so I tied blue and red ribbons on the spoons as an assist. During our performance, I just put the red ribbon down next to my music on the right and the blue one on the left. Sunday afternoon I used little safety pins to pin them onto the gloves I have to wear while practicing or performing. Our director let me bring the bells home, so I can practice with them. The wooden spoons don't ring, and the sound helps me remember what to do. We are learning a new piece to perform in November. I have to learn a new skill: turning pages!
Tuesday evening we attended another Madroña pop-up party meeting. We had a Madroña grenache 2023 with our dinner.
With the grenache, we had breaded cod, roasted vegetables, homemade bread and a tossed salad. It's always pleasant to get away from the TV and spend the evening chatting with the friends we've made from our connection with Madroña Vineyards.
If you read last week's post, you may remember that I've been getting a lot of offers to "help" me market my books. The variety of offers is vast, and so far, they have all been or seemed to be bogus. Reading praise for one's book is always inviting, and I suppose that's the point. When one "person" claimed that their book club had all read Mandy's Little Science Lessons alarm bells went off. Right now and until October 27th, the only way to get my new book is directly from BookBaby or from me. I know where all the copies are from my supply, and BookBaby hadn't sold any yet. Nice try!
Well this week, I received an email from an "editor" supposedly at Scholastic, a company I'm familiar with, gushing about my book Emil. I found a way to contact Scholastic independently and forwarded the email to them asking if this was really from them or was it a scam. This was the reply:
I hope this editor will be able to throw some sand in the gears of the scammer.
We managed to walk with the dogs a few times this week. On Saturday Charlie was busy with the gentleman who was building the fence around our front yard, so I took the dogs alone. The dogs and I went to have a look at the new houses being built near where we walk. At one place at the north end of the development there is no fence or wall. After climbing up the hill to have a look, I could see that they had some garages or storage units and that there were some passenger cars parked in the parking lot.
As the dogs and I worked our way down to where the fence starts, a couple of young women came out from two different houses. When I asked them if they had moved in, they said that they worked there. One of them wanted to pet my dogs. I asked if people were already moving in, and they said, yes, a few people had already moved in to the little houses that were finished as well as the big finished apartment house on 15th Street. It will be interesting to watch the rest of the houses as they are being finished and people move in.
Construction on the fence around our front yard began early on Saturday. The man who was doing the work started by putting in the posts. He had to use a powerful auger to dig through the dirt and rocks, something he says he's used to here in Bend. After digging the holes, he put cement in around the posts. Because of the slope of the yard, the fence levels vary, so he had to adjust the posts accordingly.
By Sunday afternoon when I arrived home, most of the work was done. The gate is supposed to go in today and he will repair a water line he accidentally drilled into (because we didn't know it was there). There are some spaces around the base of the fir tree, where the big rocks make it impossible to put in fencing. Charlie found some rocks to "seal off" the space, so the dogs can't get out. We will watch them until we know this will work. We don't want to risk having them run out into the street.
We had a nice Zoom meeting with Karen, Peter and Alexa Sunday afternoon. One of the topics of discussion was my planned trip to Wisconsin in February to look after David so Karen can take Zach to Disney World. Peter offered to go in March when Karen takes the kids to a dance competition, and one of David's sisters will cover for her during the April dance competition. We should have caregivers for a good part of the times we're there, but they only stay a few hours, and someone has to be there overnight.
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What's in The Doll's Storybook: Nico's Family is coming to xeriscape the front yard. The dolls want to watch, and Nico is here to watch with them in Nico's Family at Work, this week's story from The Doll's Storybook.
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