This has been my backyard for 2 weeks and it was good. Especially because they had decided to silence the churchbells after November 11th. We lived here almost the life of the farmers of Onoz, a little village in the French Jura. We did have a well equiped kitchen, and because we for once had time enough we made the most delicious dishes. And… we hiked. 

 We made wonderful trips à pied and with the car. We saw quite a lot of the Jura. On the whole the weather was good, sometimes even lovely with sun and some snow. We only had two days of rain. Not bad at the end of the year.

 I even found some great yarn: Phildar Soie that comes in shades of grey. Very difficult to photograph and very subtle. Even the colours on the online shop aren’t correct. It’s beautifully soft and I plan to make the Raha Scarf from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush.

I frogged a lot. Firm decisions. There is too little knitting time to go for imperfect projects or otherwise things that aren’t the way you like it. I knitted a lot on Mart’s Sweater, which is coming out fine. It’s from pure Alpaca and he was very amazed to see the animals when they made the front page of the papers.

I finished one of these Mad Weaver Socks (Ravelry link). They look very complicated but just do as the pattern says and it’s a piece of cake. Only thing is that they are so very small, but they will be just right for my little cousin. The yarn is great. It’s hand dyed Trekking, colour Trinidad, and it’s wonderful to knit with. It feels like it will be great socks to wear.

  I finished these (Ravelry link). This was knitting with handicaps. One of my harmony needles broke on them and though those needles come in six because you never know, I couldn’t find that sixth needle. I really should have used a bigger size needles than 2.5 (european) for this yarn from Gerda’s Wolwereld. They don’t feel at all like a nice wear, but surprise, surprise, they are great on the feet and, thanks to the pattern, are a great fit too.

Well, that’s it, folks. Tomorrow back to work.

It was in the late seventees that I heard David Murray’s Flowers For Albert for the first time. On the first note and on the spot I loved it. I bought the record and listened and listened.
Records became cd’s. Record players became cd players and somewhere in between I lost my Flowers for Albert. That didn’t matter for a while, most of the music was still in my head. But after some years it disappeared and what stayed was only a good remembrance of music I loved.
After twenty years I started to look for the cd to replace my record, but it was never released. People who were very into jazz but a bit younger than me didn’t know ‘Flowers for Albert’.
Tonight, well technically yesterday ’cause I write this a bit late, David Murray and his Black Saint Quartet played in the Bim House. Oh, yes, he lost some of his freaky hairs, but it was a very good concert. He has a wonderful and original pianist - Lafayette Gilchrist - and a very lyrical baseplayer, Jaribu Shahid. Didn’t like the drummer Malik Washington. And you know what I did after the concert? Mr. Murray was in the BimBar and I dared to ask him this question: Mr. Murray, is there a chance that Flowers for Albert will be reissued? And he said, yes, in fact I just have to watch his website to see when and where and very soon I will be able to listen to ‘Flowers for Albert’ again. One happy woman!

It might be a different world from now on….

Americans: get this chance!

Not an American? Still wanting to show whom you would vote for: vote for president here! Very interesting worldwide results!