And on it goes. It’s still struggling, but feeling a teeny-weeny bit more solid than it was. It’s reached 2’20″ in duration now and the last bit that I’ve been working on since I got back from Portugal seems to be sticking to the other bit, although I suspect it may need a fair bit of tweaking later on. At least it’s progressing though.

Went into town with my mother to do a little shopping/recon for Christmas stuff. Someone in John Lewis told her about a haberdashery shop in a nearby street (Dering Street for those who are curious) so we went along there and WOW! A whole floor of ribbons! Another floor of bias binding, random feathers, zips and assorted fastenings! They have fabric dye too, fabrics (of course) and a vast array of needles. My mother even found the bodkin she’d been looking for (and the person in John Lewis’s haberdashery department didn’t even know what a bodkin was, which is really rather disgraceful). So joy. I’m going to sneak back there soon to buy some secret ribbon for presents – so many to choose from!

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SO excited. Today I managed to buy new walking boots! Now, this may seem like a small thing to you, but after a full six months of being able to wear nothing but 1 pair of extremely ugly, ‘breathable’ running shoes (and let me tell you, ‘breathable’ not only lets the air in – it also lets rain, snow, slush and other things one doesn’t want on one’s feet in), I can’t wait to be able to put them on and go for a walk.

I did a little more work on the piece. It’s limping, but at least it’s moving forwards again. Hoping the meagre momentum continues. I also worked my way through a pile more of the Lisbon photos, some of which I’m rather pleased with.

Plus I made some more progress on my mother’s chunky chenille scarf – it’s looking pretty good!

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And what’s more, accidentally bought his’n'hers cookbooks. WH Smith were having a sale, you see, so Djelibeybi bought John Torode’s Chicken book and I picked up the National Trust’s Teatime Baking Book, which I’ve had my eye on for some time. LOVE cookbooks. Just a little more than is healthy for shelf space.

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And good golly, it’s been a long time since we just hung out together on our own. Parents went off to see the London Wetlands Centre (and gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up – must get there sometime) and I did some doodling about trying to make the notes I have turn into a proper opening for the quintet (fail) then Djeli and I sauntered into town to inspect microwaves. We didn’t actually buy anything, but we came away with knowledge and a ball of wool for me to knit myself a therapeutic hat with (Auntie Madge’s Wisp scarf is driving me insane – the point at which I thought I’d nearly finished turned out to only be halfway there so I need something different to knit – a quick win – before I start in on my mother’s scarf which is a chunky-weight chenille version of the Wisp pattern). Then Djeli made his fantastic shepherd’s pie for us for dinner and we all watched My Family and Other Animals and then Slumdog Millionaire. All in all, a tip-top day

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A pretty good day, aided by excellent coffee (Monmouth), superb cheese (Neal’s Yard Stinking Bishop – wow!) and some great shops where I didn’t buy an orange overcoat, £30 vintage leather jacket or the score of Martinu’s Sextet. Very restrained of me, I think.

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Which is to say, I made a start on research for the new piece. Started the day by listening (not terribly successfully) to Schubert’s string quintet on Spotify (thinking I’ll ditch my premium subscription again – I really don’t use it when I’m not working because I prefer to listen to old-school actual-disc CDs) on my iPod Touch while reading a little more of Hallelujah Junction. Then moved on to getting back to my harmony & counterpoint studies over my morning coffee – I had thought to just re-read the first counterpoint chapter then do the exercises, but I’ve had to take a step back to go over seventh chords again, just to get my mind in the space once more. I had to go out to Foyle’s in the afternoon to get birthday presents for my Da, so I nipped into HMV (well, as much as one can nip with a hobbly ankle) where I discovered that this piece seems to want to be faintly Germanic – I came out with Mendelssohn and Brahms string quintets plus a disc of Martinu and Schulhoff string sextets. I’ve written more about this over at caitlinrowley.com. Listening to the Mendelssohn now – absolute heaven. Still have trouble grasping the solid fact that I’m actually a Mendelssohn fan…

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Today I baked bread I pulled out my new pain de mie tin and The Bread Bible and baked up some bread. Unfortunately I suspect that not only does the oven have fail, but the oven thermometer my mama brought with her has been so long unused it’s forgotten how to properly thermomet. By the time it read the 425 F the recipe said it should be for baking the bread, the dial on the oven was up to about 225 C (should be about 217 C) and while the bread has turned out delicious and with a great texture, it IS somewhat charred on top. Think I may have to get another oven thermometer and compare and contrast.

Apart from that, I didn’t achieve terribly much. Made Nigel Slater turkey burgers for dinner. Did a little gentle grocery shopping and accidentally bought Calamity Jane on DVD for £3 which we watched over dinner. Which then led us on to That Touch of Mink. Might need to make tonight a Doris-Day-free zone for the sanity of my mama.

Did a little bit more work on the site, but no huge breakthroughs.

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… and that brings to a close the individual composition pages… or at least the ones currently in existence as it seems there’s a couple that haven’t even made it onto the current site. And one (which I’ve just fixed) which was in as one of its movement-titles instead of the work title as a whole. Whoops. And I even found a FONT tag. Ouch. That hurt but glad to see those done (barring the bits that need reviewing, but I’m sure I’ve elaborated those previously and you don’t need to read it again).

So what’s next? The WordPress template for the blog is something I really want to get sorted now, but it’s possibly a bit silly to look at this before I’ve sorted out the PHPing of the navigation and seen if I can reuse anything from the site proper. Which leaves a contact form (will need PHP but I can nick the code I’m using currently so shouldn’t need a book for that), works list page, CV (maybe – a little undecided on that one)… Um… I’m sure there should be something else in there but too sleepy to go and look it up.

Went to a fantastic concert of Hindemith and Dutilleux music for two pianos/one piano, four hands this evening at the Opera Bastille. Really gorgeous music and fantastic playing. But now I’m itching to get back to my harmony/counterpoint studies… except I can’t because I’m in Paris and it’s in London and I won’t be back till Tuesday night and unable to do anything before Wednesday. Really wanting to be writing some music again too now, but as I’m having to stay up to stupid o’clock just to get any alone-time at all and work on my Creative Pact, this is extremely unlikely to happen. Grr.

But the really exciting thing about today was that I completed a quest I’ve been on intermittently for about 10 years – to find and buy a bread tin with a lid – pain de mie in French, a pullman tin in English. Today I both found and bought that tin – gourmet homemade square bread, here I come! Can’t wait to try it out!!!!

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So I haven’t really done that much on my Creative Pact the past few days and today really hasn’t been that different, I’m afraid – we’ve been rushing around trying to get the house in order for my parents’ visit and there hasn’t been a lot of time to work on anything. However, I HAVE managed to do something useful today – I’ve bought Gusto, an IDE for the iPad, which is what I’m hoping to work on the site in Paris with, and I’ve set up FTP to my new site and it’s all ready to go, really. And of course tomorrow starts my first week as a full-time composer (euphemism for unemployment ) so there should be a chance to get some really meaty work done at last.

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Well it is when you’re buying a domain name for your Creative Pact project! This particular item has, I believe, sat on my to-do list for 4 years:

* Buy caitlinrowley.com

and just a minute ago I got to tick the ‘done’ checkbox. YAAAYYY! So now that domain is mine for the next 5 years and will shortly be ready for me to post fabulous HTML 5 content to.

Haven’t got that much else done really, though. I finished the chapter on HTML 5 forms (amazing!) at some crazy hour of the morning and haven’t read any more today because have been distracted by a multitude of other things today, but I’ll be back to it tomorrow, no doubt.

Oh, and late last night I managed to import the rest of the web stencils into OmniGraffle, and was therefore able to make my wireframes look much nicer and more professional

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