I start my morning watching shows and knitting. I want to pay attention to the show and knitting is a busy hands pay attention hobby, mostly.
And now it’s time to strum and recordize.
Tag Archive: Recorder
My husband got a new guitar yesterday. Is it wrong of me to be excited that we might jam one of these days?🎸🪈🎵🎶
My new diamond painting is started.
Because of watching
I’ve added Chinese to my Duolingo lineup. I highly recommend this show. Not a movie but a series. My husband and I couldn’t stop the binge.
I’m trying to find a way to put my biggest guilt trips here. The end of the month is looming. Two goals haven’t even been touched. I haven’t edited anything. Nor have I worked on my read-alouds or podcast. Finding privacy and time seems the biggest issue. Nor have I touched the real piano. Boo! Next month is Camp NaNo. I have no idea what I’m doing. And so I’m Muddling my mind.
Time for uke and recorders and roll up keyboard.
Much looks the same as last time. But you want to know what I’m learning as I go? All attempts get me closer to not. Not a baby beginner. Not a total loser. And if I take a moment and look back I find more proficiency. Faster, not so lost. Progress. And it’s not linear. There are times I pick up the recorder and find that somehow God put holes in my fingers. Air is escaping, somewhere.
Sometimes I get the chord progression of these simple songs. But if I don’t, I only have to remember a month ago. I could tune my uke. Now I can sing little songs and not look as I move from F to G7 to C to C7 and more, and I know without looking at my hand that I did it.
I can remember being 12 and learning to crochet and knit. How I got so frustrated when I had to rip it out.
Now I look forward to trying again. The thing that makes these hobbies frustrating is placing time constraints or perfection goals.
I may not be producing the way society deems worthy, but I’m 74 and enjoying my life. Learning is my fun. Seeing changes in abilities, even as I’m told growth can’t happen anymore, THAT is the fun.
I am keeping my goal on the stationary bike and other exercises. And I see tiny improvements.
My only disappointment in me is trying to find my way to the reading aloud/editing goal. But I’ll figure it out.
Here’s the pics of progress.
I feel good about developing discipline. Why is it only now growing?
Real flounders entice sea turtles down to floor. The flounders are having a feast!
I’m getting a little better with chording on the ukulele. I almost don’t have to look when changing from C to F to G7 and back to C all the while singing. Almost time for a new lesson. It’s supposed to be a 30 day course, but my soft, achy fingers needed more time. I’m still learning day 9 a couple weeks later.
The recorder comes and goes. Teaching myself and my fingers soprano, alto, and tenor. I can finally reach all notes on soprano and alto, though not consistently. I can barely get the top three holes of the tenor.
And. AND I CLEANED THE PIANO WELL SO IT WELCOMES ME! Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually play!!!!
A quick note. Door push-ups, floor to ceiling stretches, then more than 30 minutes or more than 5 miles on the stationary bike. All still happening. So some things are growing into habits. Others are still work. But a lot of flounder still happens. Ah, well, it’s February!
How is it already Sunday, almost Monday? The weekends seem to affect me now as much as they did when I was working. Back then, the time that was my own was filled with all the things to get ready for the work week and take care of the house. Now it’s just a rhythm change. Chris and I watch sci-fi, fantasy, or disaster movies. Just kind of like our date time. Today we watched Daybreak on, um, I think it was Hulu. It was pretty good to be so old.
Before we found a good show to settle on, we were watching vet shows and Sunday Morning and UU, where they celebrated Mardi Gras.
I got a bit more of the Sea Turtle done. (Just the back leg and tail).
Time to do the recorder. Then scales on the keyboard. I do think all this floundering is making progress. But it is slow, for sure. By the way, I took a few moments while the computer wi-fi loaded that sea turtle picture, to practice chord changes and You Are My Sunshine on the uke.
Practice makes progress.
Since this guy showed up in my purview, I keep hearing about it or seeing new ways to use it. But when I looked up this comparison, this is what I found on Google:
Flounder and founder are happy little nouns that don’t get mixed up. But it all falls apart when they’re verbs — if you’re floundering, you’re struggling. If you’re foundering, you’re failing completely. I don’t feel I am foundering in any way. Just finding ways to see successes.
So, I am sticking with the fish. And that is better than a horse who founders.
Her hooves hurt, and she can’t go on. Actually, I don’t know that about the above horse. I just was looking for a picture of a horse on the ground. And she is so pretty!
The groundhog is a floundering hog. Or is it that Winter is floundering? Because we are supposed to be getting an early Spring. But we got this:
Meanwhile, I finished the little boy’s slippers:
It’s fun to make smaller socks because they get finished quicker. But now I’m on the mother and the older daughter, and possibly Auntie and Grandma. All around sizes 7 and 8. Yes, the yarn is already on the needles.
My biggest floundering seems to be on the ukulele. My fingers just don’t want to be in those chord situations. But I keep trying. I did figure out I could plunk out Mary Had a Little Lamb on the strings as I figured out where each note was. But moving from F to C and back within a singing timing was crazy. The F chord is the hardest. Well, until I met G. Getting pretty sounds is crippling!
I’m not floundering so much on the recorders. Except I probably should play them before deadening the fingertips on the Uke. I am trying to remember where the F, F#, and B flat are. Other than that I’m getting better, slowly.
And so, I’m off to try again tonight. Wish me luck!
After National Novel Writing Month in November, then the birthdays, Christmas and cold, and the occasional editing and keeping up the journal, somehow, January needed help. Linda G. Hill gives us Just Jot It January. The prompts help make sure we write something every day. I have done those for a couple of years now. I am grateful for the push to Just Jot.
But always, in the past, I found myself floundering in February. Hence, the fish:
He is a quick sketch, and the eraser was smudgy. He’s a little cross-eyed. That’s how I feel in this short month that lasts a couple years. Let’s think about this guy. He is the bottom feeder. He lays on or under the sand, both eyes looking up to catch whatever morsel floats down to him. I’m sure he is grateful for the tension that occurs above. That is how I feel about the tidbits of passion the muses drop to me.
It’s too cold for walks. But I am being steady on the stationary bike. Knitting is to keep the hands busy during TV or chats. When I am nearing the end of the day, Duo calls me, and then I do my blog. Whatever comes to mind. I’m trying to go earlier on these, so there is enough time and energy to build callouses on the uke and stretch the fingers for the soprano and alto recorders. Learning how the music theory I learned and applied to the piano and voice can apply to these other ventures.
To help me get back into playing scales, which will help with getting back into piano playing, I picked up one of these roll-up pianos to play with in my bedroom. It has an earphone plug-in, so no one has to put up with the noise but me. So these are my musical flounderings. Right now, it is just mechanical. But I am hoping that my tidbits of time and energy will spark a real musical enjoyment.
My diamond painting area is now open as the dragon is being shipped to his friend. I don’t know which one will be next. But I intend to flounder and fuss about in there and seek the enjoyment.
So that is what my Flounder Feb is all about. Finding enjoyment, if not passions, and hoping that all the flotsam and jetsam of tidbits build a healthier me. We’re not looking for perfection. That’s what happens up topside.
What is your Flounder doing this February? If you choose to play, use my pic and link back here.
Your prompt for JusJoJan, January 26th, 2024, is “atrocious.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Jemima of Jemima’s blog provided us with the prompt of the day. Thank you, Linda and Jemima!
My achievements for this Friday are meager, but I feel good about them. My greatest accomplishment is over a year in getting it done. Now, I need to find a way to send it to its new home.
The socks I was knitting ended up being tinked back to the arch area. I had them all the way to being close to done, but I held them in my hand and wondered about the size. They are supposed to fit a size 1 child, but when I looked that up, that would have been at least 7 inches long. These were only 5. So most of the week I have been undoing the work. The good part is I am getting better acquainted with the shadow wrapping needed for the heel and above. So when I finally get there again I’ll know what I’m doing. By the way, in the picture, you will see that each sock has its own needles. When I reach the heel of these no-show socks I find I do better with them separated.
When I want to just relax I am working on this pair of slipper socks.
I’m still only on day 8 of the lessons as I haven’t mastered the few chords taught so far. My fingers are getting tougher, but they still aren’t coordinated enough to not mute other strings. But, hey, I can now get through Row, Row, Row, and Mary Had A Little Lamb. Yay! I’m thinking I need to make a strap for my uke to carry it around and take the pressure off my hands. There are several patterns on YouTube.
I wish I had learned recorder as a kid like these guys. But I’m glad I do understand music so that I can read and play the notes I know how to play. I finally got out my alto and found I remembered how to play it. My lapse of learning happened when I realized I had been using the wrong fingering for the type of recorder I had. Baroque versus German. All of my recorders and I inherited a lot of them from the school I worked in, plus my alto and my tenor that I bought are the Baroque.
Now that I know that I have retaught my fingers the F. I stopped playing before because it sounded wrong, and I couldn’t figure out why. Now I know, and I have to re-train my brain for it.
Speaking of the musical instruments, this is the time I usually play around with them. So, have a great Friday night and week-end!
Per Linda:
This post is part of Just Jot It January, and today’s prompt is courtesy of Nicole. Check out her blog here!
I’m so stoked to finally develop calluses on my fingers. I am beginning to learn a few chords on my ukulele. My first couple of songs use the F and the C7 (Mary Had a Little Lamb), and the C gives us Row, Row Row! And though the fretting fingers still hurt a little, I am hearing purer chords.
This little uke was $10 at a BiMart in La Pine. It seems to hold its tune nicely for something so inexpensive. If I can get to changing chords quickly, I may invest in a more expensive ukulele. It is fun to learn new things. And hopefully, it will help my brain to stay healthy.
And I’m stoked that I finally know an F from an F# on this recorder. I am such a newbie on both of these instruments I feel I might never play nicely, but I am making myself happy with each little improvement.
Darswords 
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