Alice Day

I've been neglecting Alice Day.  In a sense I still am, because while I have several new songs I haven't recorded any of them yet so I'm putting up something relatively old. 

I do *intend* to get back to recording stuff for Alice Day--it's just that I'm frantically trying to get as many album loose ends tied up as possible before my family visits next week, and I'm running out of energy and hours in the day before finishing everything.

This song is on the CD (in a studio version; this was just a living-room carpet version.)

Cedarglass
lyrics and melody by Catherine Faber 2008
mp3 here

 C        G         C         G
Nyad and Dryad are drifting awake
 C      G             C            G
Lazily lifting their heads by the lake
 Am         G             Dm          G
Watching a step-daughter curtsey and pass
 C          Am         C         G
Wood's celebration of cedar and glass.

          C             G         Am            G
   We're shaped by old forces no eye can still see
        C          G          Am          G 
   As shading the sapling is shaping the tree
        F            C             F              G
   The mold is long gone, yet its lines still preserve
      F            C           Dm          G
   A sense of the true that informs every curve.

The strength of the heartwood, the sapling's lithe grace,
Bending and twisting to slip into place
Sawdust like pollen, perfume in each grain;
Curls fall like petals from spokeshave and plane.

Stained by my blood and the salt of my tears
Dance on the water and laugh at my fears.
I wish you safe journey, by white ashwood finned,
Light as a leaf on a fortunate wind.
          G4        C
----On a fortunate wind.

A good day

I haven't accomplished as much as I would have liked, but I got in some good practicing and am happy with how my skills are coming along.  It's remarkable how much more fun things get when you can do them more competently.  Practice.  It actually works!  Who knew?

I also worked on making a pdf songbook, which I am rather pleased with, and put in some more time on The Vest, which doesn't have two pockets now, exactly, but has the hard parts of two pockets done: I'm pretty sure I can finish them tomorrow. 

If The Vest comes out I have more fabric and may make another one like it at some point, so I can have one for Saturday and one for Sunday.  Clothes tend to get worn hard at a con.

But basically I just felt happy.  I learned new things about Open Office (which I'm informed by my husband also exist in Microsoft Word, but I haven't been able to afford Word for a long time, so...)  Like you can make a while bunch of separate song pages and then put them together into a song book by just picking "page break" and "insert file" alternately.  Like, you can have the front page and the table of contents and the index page left out of the numbering.  Mind you, this isn't straightforward: I spent a lot of time thrashing about and looking on the internet for answers.  But I'm pleased that I figured it out and happy with the resulting document.

Kip and I went shopping and got various 4th of July treats--sausages to grill and watermelon and corn on the cob.  I bought peaches with little specks from frost damage so they were "number 2 peaches" and were only a dollar-fifty for a couple of pounds.  The peaches I picked from our peach tree are almost gone so these will be a nice replacement.

Tomorrow will be the companion sheet music songbook.  I just hope that goes as well: I can't use Open Office for that one, but will probably have to stitch all the PDFs together in Adobe Acrobat.

Also--housecleaning.  Seriously.  Tomorrow I will do some for sure.