Baah

I renewed my subscription for Nanowrimo this year. I gauge the likelihood of my writing much of anything this year as pretty small but you never know. I'm 'Stef' over there if you want to be a writing buddy.

Fabric dyeing update

I know I said I just wanted to dye sheets, but then I looked at the bag of clothing I've accumulated that is perfectly good except for minor stains that I can't get out, and the white T-shirts that I've managed to accumulate even though I hate wearing white, and I thought I might as well try to dye those things too, and in that case I might as well try the simpler "iDye" stuff and see if the results are colorfast enough that I could dye the sheets with it without the sheets then dyeing all the rest of our linens. So for now I've ordered some iDye and fixative, and if that doesn't work out, I'll go back and order the Procion dyes and take advantage of my friends' kind offers of small quantities of the chemicals that I didn't want to have large quantities of lying around.

Thanks to everyone who responded!

Musical discoveries

I've always loved David Bowie's "Wild Is the Wind." A few months ago I discovered that it's a cover of a song originally sung by Johnny Mathis. Then some time after that, I discovered that Bowie's version is a tribute to Nina Simone's version.

I could have learned this by reading the Wikipedia entry, but I learned it the long way:

I heard the Johnny Mathis version at my favorite English teahouse restaurant (The English Rose in San Carlos).

I found the Nina Simone version by listening to a Coverville podcast on Kurt Weill which includes Simone's rendition of "Pirate Jenny." I proceeded to dig around on iTunes for her other stuff and discovered several versions of "Wild Is the Wind." (I have two versions, one from Nina Simone Live at Town Hall and another live version from Four Women: The Complete Nina Simone on Philips Recordings.)