Random Bits: Vol 4

After enlightenment, the laundry. –Zen Proverb

A Return-to-Standard-Time Miracle
Daylight savings time is not one of my favorite things. To be honest, I think it is the stupidest thing ever. I mean, just pick one and stick with it, already. I loathe losing an hour every spring and look forward to getting my hour back every fall. I wonder if it is because I was born during Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time throws my internal clock out of balance?

Anyway, with my extra hour this year, I decided to fold laundry. It seemed like a responsible thing to do. And as far as chores go, laundry is one of the ones I mind the least. I keep a lone-man sock pile at the bottom of my laundry basket and every time I wash socks, I hope that the lone-man sock pile is gone when I've finished folding. It never is. Ever. I've had a lone-man sock pile since 1996. Sometimes, when a lone-man sock has been in the basket for about three years and I'm absolutely sure that I'm never going to find its mate, I'll throw it out. But there are always two or three other lone-man socks left hanging around. Except for this time. The stars aligned on Saturday night and every. single. sock had a mate. It's a miracle! It can only be because we got that hour back.

And I can not tell you how happy I am to have finally beaten the lone-man sock pile.

A Quilt So Nice I Had to Make it Twice
Remember Pinkalicious? The quilt I made for my sister's sweet new baby girl? Well it was so much fun to make and I thought it would be just as much fun to make one in blue. When I found out a good friend of mine was expecting her first baby I knew that's the quilt I wanted to make for her. We've been friends since the 8^th grade. She wasn't married until she was in her mid-thirties and has struggled with infertility for several years. Her little miracle arrived about three weeks ago, which was about six weeks ahead of schedule. I've got the top finished and if he'd have waited a few more weeks, I might have had it quilted in time for his arrival.

I Wove When I Should Have Dodged
In 30+ years of sewing, I've never sewn my finger. I hear about people doing it and wonder how the heck they manage it. I mean, there are sharp moving parts in there. It just seems like a common sense kind of thing to keep your finger out of the way. But I sewed my finger {about three weeks ago now} and I thought my stupidity deserved a little world-wide web airtime.

Grace is a pedal-free machine. She has a pedal, and I used it once for about 10 minutes, but it didn't respond to subtle movements, so I tossed it into the back of the closet and use the stop/start button. And here's how I sewed my finger. I had the auto-backstitch on and pressed go. It sews at a snail's pace for the backstitch and the loose end of the top thread was kind of getting pulled into the stitches, which makes a little bird's nest on the back. Instead of stopping the machine to pull the thread tight, I decided that I could reach in there really quick while the machine was going slow to pull the thread out of the way. And the needle nicked my thumb. It didn't hurt much and healed really quickly. But the worst part about it was how hobbled I felt with a band-aid on there to keep it from bleeding.

Lesson learned.

The Piano Guys: Titanium/Pavane
The Piano Guys have a new album out. This is the first track and it is, as always, amazing.


Available for purchase from The Piano Guys, at Amazon or on iTunes.

Vocal Version

Story behind the song:

Have you ever awakened with a melody in your head and you don't know how it got there? That was the beginning of our PianoGuys' version of David Guetta's "Titanium (feat. Sia)." Paul especially loved this tune — he lobbied us to arrange the song, but after we could not find a way to begin the arrangement. Every time we tried it just didn't flow. We also were concerned that the hook of the tune was nothing but the beat and lacked a lead melody, which would make it more difficult to convey with piano and cello. Steve woke one morning and couldn't get a melody out of his head. It was Gabriel Faure's "Pavane" — a hauntingly beautiful melody that weaves in and out of richly sequenced harmonies and fluid counter-melodies. It had been a favorite of his as a child, but he hadn't heard it for years. In the studio that same morning we tried the melody over the top of the chorus of David' Guetta's Titanium and it was like witnessing a reunion of two childhood friends. The main melody of the Pavane and its supporting chords, transposed and changed stylistically to mimic Guetta, also fit nicely as the intro we had been searching for. And we thought since Guetta and Faure are both French it must have been meant to be!

If you're not familiar with "Pavane" Listen to a version of Bobby McFerrin singing it with La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra. (As a boy Steve heard this very version live in concert and it evidently had an indelible impression on him!)

Classical music is such a big part of who we, ThePianoGuys, are. You can hear it in everything we write. We love pairing it with the music of today.

This was the most difficult music video to set the "stage" for thus far. We considered so many locations — a copper mine, a steel mill, an industry factory, a mountaintop ski resort, a wildflower meadow, a desert bluff, and many others. As you know we love putting pianos and cellos in crazy places (a common comment is 'how the heck did they get the piano up there??') — places that show off breathtakingly beautiful landscapes. When Mark Wade with Garfield County's Department of Tourism called and offered full creative access to its national parks we abandoned all of our tabled ideas and focused on showcasing Bryce Canyon National Park — an incredible place of raw beauty and geological history written in rock. It is a place like no other. We feel so blessed to have been able to film there.

This video features a NEW STEEL cello made by Dawson Swan: Thor II — with significant improvements over Thor I. It's lighter, easier to play and it looks awesome! Dawson is an incredible artist! Check out his website here. Thank you again, Dawson!