How much?

Now that I've finished knitting the shawl I'm starting to plan other projects. I've wound a skein of crushed-berry coloured, hand-dyed silk bought in Basle a couple of years ago. I've bought a pattern, but I'm not sure if it's the right one for the yarn. I may use a pattern I already have, or I might buy another. In the meantime I've bought the pattern for a jumper and am pondering which yarn to buy.

Which is all very fascinating in itself, but doesn't obviously have much to do with piping, beyond forming one of my regular distractions. The point is that a knitting pattern is normally a pdf, so not even a physical object. There will be a front page with a picture of the pattern knitted up, a page of stuff needed to knit the item (the yarn, the needles), and possibly a list of abbreviations, although that might have a page to itself. It will close with some remarks on copyright and permitted use of the pattern, maybe some thanks to test knitters. There will be more pictures: a close-up, the item in a different colour, or worn by a different model. Somewhere in the middle will be one or two pages of actual instructions for knitting something. Sometimes these are free, sometimes to help promote a company's yarn and sometimes because it's a new designer. Often you have to buy the patterns, and that might cost between £3 and £5 or more.

Oddly enough I seem happy to buy the patterns, even when I'm not totally sure I am going to use them. Music, on the other hand, I have a real aversion to paying for. In some ways music is just another pattern, more instructions for making something. I've yet to see any fancy additions, any musical equivalent of pictures and abbreviations,  but then when I've seen charges for sheet music it's a lot cheaper than for knitting patterns.

I'm just as bad with books of music. There are several I'd like and I've not done anything about buying them, partly because, I suppose, I feel they won't be good value, I won't get my money's worth from them. And yet I have knitting books, and cookery books, on my shelves where I've really only ever used one or two patterns or recipes. So why am I happy to pay for the one and not the other?

The books of patterns or recipes often have additional information in them - perhaps some essays on knitting history or pictures of a particular country of region. I can sit and flick through either and get enjoyment and inspiration from them in a way I can't with a book of music. I can also tell from flicking through how many of the sets of instructions I am genuinely likely to use, whereas, as I've mentioned before, looking at printed dots tells me nothing about how playable or enjoyable I will find the tune.

A printed tune has limted use. Once I have the tune by heart the dots are useless. It takes me longer to get a recipe by heart, so I need to go back to my cookery book more often. I rarely knit the same pattern more than once, but would need the pattern every time I knitted it again.

A tune is not a thing, somehow. I can cook, share and eat a dish over and over. Once I have followed a pattern I have an item I can wear or use over and over. And although I can play a tune over and over for years it's somehow not a solid object in the same way as a dish for dinner or a pair of mittens.

I suppose one of the reason to pay for patterns is quality. Anyone can put together a pattern and share it round. When you buy a pattern you normally expect it to have been tested by a number of knitters, to have been technically edited, to be failsafe, to include a variety of sizes. A tune is a tune, and although the presentation on the page might be more or less clear, and gracing might be included or excluded, I've not generally found free printed tunes containing errors.

The other reason is that through the various knitting blogs I follow I appreciate that these (usually) women depend on pattern sales to make their living. Many of them promote their work through blogs. There is a feeling that you have a personal connection with the blogger.

That's something I really don't have with the composers of pipe tunes. Most of them seem to be dead, and those who are still living I know nothing about. And maybe that perceived personal connection makes all the difference. Because when I buy a pattern from an independent designer I'm not just gaining instructions; I feel as though I am suporting  small business, paying back into a blog I enjoy reading, even supporting my own escapist fantasy in which I, too, would sell a few patterns in between knitting, piping and gardening. I'm buying myself membership of a community.

And maybe it's just that I need to pay if I want good quality, up to date knitting patterns. Pipe music doesn't date and the older tunes do just as well and there is a lifetime's worth of free pipe tunes out there before I'd need to pay. Good quality recipes can now be had online for nothing, from various sources, some of which are trying to sell you groceries or utensils, others are  providing a public service (or possibly enticing you to buy the book of the TV show...).

So should I be happy to reap the musical benefits of free dots, or should I be putting my money where my elbow is? I really don't know.

Miscellany

Yesterday I played. I remembered all the tunes I wanted except Flanders, which I couldn't bring to mind, or fingers. I couldn't lay my hands on dots, either.

I had dots for Braemar, but couldn't play it. At least, I couldn't play the first part, mostly because I was trying to play a GDE gracing on the opening pair of low As. Once I remembered it was a low G I wanted the whole tune fell back into place. Bee, which was posted missing a while back, turned up on my musical doorstep, a little dusty and footsore, but otherwise intact.

Today I printed dots for Flanders and as soon as I lifted the sheet of paper from the printer the whole tune fell back in to my head, rendering the paper useless. It's a mystery to me, this whole musical memory thing.

There was something else I wanted to write about this evening, but that has also gone. Like Bee, like Emmeline, who slipped through the trees, I am sure it will turn up later.

I've been listening to all sorts of things in the car. Queen, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac. Some of it now only seems to have value because of the memories it invokes. I love Simon's language, his ability to tell a story. I think to myself that his greatest hits is the best short story collection I know.

This evening I listen to Rostropovich play Bach's  cello suites. No nostalgia required here. It's some of the most moving and beautiful music I know.

Endings

Endings can be good news, as well as bad. I have finally finished the baby shawl. It's taken almost exactly three months, but it has been worth it. It looks fabulous, which may sound as though I am blowing my own trumpet, but really the credit belongs to the makers of the yarn and the pattern designer.

August is almost gone, and with it the fan's holiday and the extra time that gives me in the evenings and weekends. I've cut the lavender back - a whole week early, but it seems to have died off earlier than usual. The allotment season is rolling on, boosted by this late spell of unseasonable warmth. I am considering giving up my gardening notebook. I've kept it for 5 years, ever since I took posession of my plot. The gems of gardening lore noted there boil down to this:

1. No two years are alike in terms of weather and how the crops do.
2. Each year some stuff will do well, other stuff will not. Generally this is different stuff each year.
3. A good time to plant something is when you notice everyone else planting it.
4. You can never be too assiduous in picking out tomato sideshoots and should never forget that they shoot from the bottom as well as the top. 
5. It's worth sowing broad beans November and February, but not too late in November because the blackfly will ruin them
6. Don't forget to start pulling and using onions as soon as they are ready. Waiting for the tops to die and drying them is only needed for storing unused onions.

That's it: five years of gardening and notetaking boil down to six unoriginal points. So I am rather thinking of stopping my gardening notebook, although I am not at all thinking of giving up the plot, which I love.

And this notebook? I've been keeping it for a similar length of time and could probably precis it as follows: I'm not as bad as I was, I do seem to be improving, I do really need to play more often.

I have no intention of giving up piping. I've not done much of it of late (see above re shawls, gardening) but whenever I play I get an enormous amount of pleasure out of it. But I am not sure how much use or enjoyment I am getting out of blogging. I'd quite like to post some recent tunes, just to tie up the before and after, the blog as demonstration of actual progress. I suppose the blog jogs me into playing sometimes, just because I feel that I am not its only reader (posts get a fairly consistent 16 or 18 hits) and I feel some embarrassment that there are people expecting me to blog and that blogging in this case is somehow a proxy for piping. On the other hand I've used up a good number of hours blogging when I could have been piping, this evening being a prime example.

So is this the end? I'm not sure. If I decide that it is I will come back and make a formal farewell, just in case there are really people out there who have been following progress with me.