The Shameless Yarnarian

Many years ago, in another life, I used to go to the opera with a dear friend. His wife didn't want to go because the opera gets out generally fairly late, and by the time you drive home, it's really late. Anyhow, I was invited to go along on many occasions, and I really loved it. But we did get home late. And then I had to get up early to go to work. Yadda yadda.

So, one night driving in, somehow I mentioned that one of my goals in life was to become a shameless hussy. And we giggled about it, etc. Comes intermission and we ended up in the Met gift shop with tons and tons of superbly-dressed ladies and gentlemen. My friend wanted to tell me something but we were separated by the crowd. So, at the top of his lungs, he yelled: "Hey, Shameless!" The looks we got as we met up were priceless. The Metropolitan Opera does not do shameless. It was so funny.

Ever since then, I dredge up the shameless appellation whenever I need it. And when I heard Car Talk for the first time and discovered the Shameless Commerce Division, I was in heaven.

I have no idea on what this has to do with anything, but it's my blog, and I'll post if I want to. (and that's not from an opera)

People tend to think that opera is stuffy. It can be, but when you're up in the Family Circle, otherwise known as the "nosebleed or oxygen" section, it's anything but. People show up in jeans. The further down you go, the dressier people are.

And some of the Met goofs are priceless. Well, they are to a music lover. At one performance of La Gioconda, the chorus and the orchestra were not in sync. That was interesting. They corrected that pretty quickly. And in Don Giovanni, in the graveyard scene, as the graveyard gates came sliding through on stage, they wouldn't stop moving, and the poor singers had to sing, act, and balance the gates until they stopped.

But the best goof of all was in The Barber of Seville. During the first act, a little donkey comes out on stage leading a cart. The Met has this huge stage and in the middle of it is a large revolving circle, so you can change scenes immediately. Well the poor donkey, being a donkey felt an urge to poop, and did. But not on the revolving part. Nope, he did it on the part that stays put. And the first act is very long, with some revolutions of that circle. The poop of this story is that the poop was in no place to get removed, and so there it sat, for a very long time. And the singers played to it. The sheets of music got dropped on it, lots of bathroom humor was played to it. It was hilarious! The Barber is a very funny opera to begin with, but this brought it to an all-time low. The audience howled and the singers just went nutsy. Which goes to show that the opera is not stuffy. The reviews on the next day were nose-up-in-the-air. But the fact was that both the musicians and the audience knew a good thing when they saw it. Or smelled it, depending on where you were. We were up in nosebleed country, so we just watched.

Yarnie stuff: I'm dyeing tomorrow. I'm down to 11 skeins for sale on etsy, which is pretty sparse. So I'm going to play with more yarns of love.

The only part of the dyeing process that I don't like is the cooking of the yarn. No cooking, no color retention. Kind of defeats the purpose if your color leaves the yarn. I've been using the microwave for this, but it drives me wild. So today, Hubbo and I bought a super duper Chinese stainless steel double decker steamer. There's this amazing Oriental grocery/cooking supply market not far from us. They carry products from China to Thailand to India to Malaysia, etc. Fascinating, especially because I have no idea what 99% of them are. And there was this great selection of steamers. So I bought one and tomorrow I'm going to steam my yarn in it. I'll let you know if I have viable yarn or steamer felt.