Hippo New Year!

Today Willie and I visited the Werribee Open Range Zoo, together with what seemed like half of Melbourne. It was pretty amazing, despite the crowds! The 'safari' tour was really cool - we were able to see a few animals really close up. I like the idea of the animals roaming about over a huge area and the humans being cooped up in the vehicles...

Here are a few of my photos - click to enlarge!

Pansy the baby hippo, with her mum

Wide open spaces

Hello giraffe!

I was a bit nervous of the rhinos...

Dromedaries (aka one-humped camels)

And a monkey in a tree :)

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I'm not usually into New Year's resolutions, but I do have a few "good intentions" for this year. I want to:
(1) swim more often,
(2) bake more often, and
(3) listen to more new-to-me music, in addition to my old faves.

We've also done a new-year clear-out of our old clothes, which has resulted in a large bag of old tshirts etc for the bin, plus six shopping bags of clothes and shoes for the local charity shop. It feels great to get rid of all the stuff that was just sitting there unworn, taking up space.

Next up is stash organisation! We got a bunch of airtight transparent plastic bins from Ikea, which will house my yarn, spinning fibre, and fabric stash. I won't have to worry quite so much about moths anymore. :)

Rainbows over Ravelry

Coinciding with the Summer and Winter Olympics, it's a Ravelry tradition to craft something challenging while the games are on. Crafters enter the Ravellenic Games alone or in teams, competing against themselves to finish their project before the end of the closing ceremonies. This year, because the Winter Olympics are being held in Russia, many of us are crafting rainbow-themed projects to raise awareness and as a gentle protest against Russia's new anti-human-rights laws.

My plan is to make a big crocheted blanket, in concentric rounds alternating between rainbow colours and natural white wool. I'll arrange the rainbow colours in a gradient, splicing in each new colour as the previous one runs out:

Colour amounts not to scale!

I'm probably mad to attempt making a whole blanket in two weeks, but this is supposed to be a challenge, right? :)

The rainbow-coloured yarn is Prism Organic DK from Skeinz, mostly leftovers from making Rowan's Tetris scarf. The natural white is Norway 8ply from Morris & Sons.

The pattern I'll be using is the Op-Art Afghan Square, expanded to one giant square. I used the same pattern last year to make a tree-cosy for Yarn Corner's 'Royal Granny Parade' project. Sadly, many of our tree-cosies were removed by dastardly vandals before I could see them myself, including my one. Ah well, that's yarn bombing... I did get to see photos though! They're all on Facebook here and here.

This one's mine - thanks Bali for the photos. I hope my blankie will have better luck...

 

Sight-singing

One of my weak spots in singing is sight-reading, i.e. singing what's on the page in front of you without having seen or heard it before. It's a very handy skill for learning new music in a group (saves time teaching each person/section their part), and it's a normal (and scary) part of auditions. So I've resolved to work at getting better at it, and I have a plan...

Robert suggested I practise sight-reading the tenor parts of Bach chorales, because they jump around in interesting ways, and so I acquired a book of Bach's chorale harmonisations. There are 371 in the book, so that's plenty to be going on with. My plan is to do one chorale per day, which should be easy enough to fit in. I'm up to Day 10 today. :)

I've been starting with the soprano part, as a gentle start - they're just simple hymn tunes, without many jumps. Then I do the alto part, the tenor part (which is usually the trickiest), and the bass part (up an octave). Bass parts tend to have big jumps, so they're good practice for me.

(a nice short one)

The only problem with the book I'm using (the old Riemenschneider edition) is that it doesn't have the text of the chorales written in. I'll have to find something else in addition to practise sight-singing with words. :p