Happy Easter!

Holy Week is typically one of the busiest times for a church pianist—almost as busy as Christmas. The Lutheran church I play for had combined services with another church and didn’t need me, however, and our church had only a Good Friday evening service with an a capella singing group. I appreciated the break. I have plenty to play this morning.

Eight of us sang for the Good Friday service. I threw together a plan at the last minute and pulled out the music for “By the Mark,” a Gillian Welch song from her album Revival, released in 1996. Our church choir sang this almost 20 years ago and it has long been a favorite of mine. It has guitar accompaniment, so I am able to sing instead of play piano. Our pastor asked if our double quartet would also sing three other songs from the hymnal, so we met an hour before the service to go over the music. Besides the usual suspects—the regular song leaders and myself—we had two other singers join us. One of the men told me that he was singing only because he came up to ask someone else a question after church last Sunday and I handed him a piece of music. He’s joking. He’s a good singer and I was happy he joined us. The other member was a young woman new to our church. She has a lovely soprano voice but I think she was a bit shocked by our rehearsal. We are all accomplished musicians and have sung together enough that we tend to freelance. We spent the first few minutes jockeying over who would sing what part. (Often, on Sundays, I can hear Steve wandering around on the hymns—sometimes he sings the bass part, sometimes the tenor, and sometimes the alto an octave down.) We went over the three songs from the hymnal and then tried “By the Mark.” We were having trouble staying with the guitar, though, so we decided to ditch the guitar and sing it a capella. The timing is a bit weird, too, with a half-time measure thrown in every so often. Neither of the sopranos was familiar with the song, so I left Valeri singing alto alone and went over and sang with them. We also decided to eliminate a key change in the choir arrangement and alter the ending to something we liked better.

Singing with a group like that is a rare experience, with a lot of subtle, non-verbal communication happening. I thought the service was very meaningful and I hope we added to it. We’re going to sing “By the Mark” again in this morning’s service.

Snow is in the forecast again today.

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I finally felt like I got my feet under me again yesterday with my sewing. I pulled out this Baby Lock pattern for a flatlock pillow and made one up.

This is going to be a class, I think, although I am going to redesign the pillow a bit. I like the concept and it is a good way to teach the technique. Those contrast bands could be narrower, though. We’ll see. I’ll have to make it up in fresh fabric from the quilt store anyway because these were remnants I pulled out of my stash. The large-scale flower print is from Hobby Lobby and the smaller print is from Joanns. It was a happy accident that they coordinated. Both fabrics have gold metallic in them, which matches the gold metallic 12wt thread I used for the flatlocking.

[Why I Have an Enormous Stash, reason #1,489.]

I finished this pillow and decided that it reminded me of my Grandma Szabo’s living room. She was all about the heavy gold brocade upholstery and fancy gilt table lamps.

One of the destinations on my upcoming trip to Seattle is Issaquah Sewing and Vac. They are listed as a Wonderfil Boutique store and carry most of the Wonderfil threads. The quilt store south of Kalispell also carries Wonderfil, but only a few of the sewing thread lines that Wonderfil makes and some of the Sue Spargo embroidery threads. The only 12wt thread our store has is GlaMore, the metallic, that I used for the pillow. I am hoping to pick up some of the other threads in Seattle. Once I try them out on my serger, I can suggest which ones our store might order to have on hand.

I also made another flatlock project with the same thread and some Christmas fabrics. I’ll post that one tomorrow.

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The greenhouse is filled with plants. Our seedlings are in there, Elysian has seedlings in there, Susan brought down six flats of tomatoes the other day, and Mike planted his seeds over the weekend. At least half of what is in there is destined for the plant sale. (I don’t need 18 zucchini plants.) Elysian sent me the files for the promotional materials she used last year, so I’ll get those printed up this week to post around the community.