Hot on the heels of my quilted interpretation of Edvard Grieg’s classical composition Anitra’s Dance from the Peer Gynt suite, chronicled in Part 1, I wanted to get stuck into the next quilt in the series. My next quilt would be the first movement, Morning Mood, a piece of music known even to people with only a passing acquaintance of classical music. Morning Mood epitomizes Romantic era music, painting a picture in the mind. I intended for my interpretation to do the same.
There we were: me, my partner, and my mother, having breakfast in the Savoy Hotel in London before our river cruise, and the conversation drifted to Maurice Ravel‘s Boléro, as it so often does.
Anne Adams’s Unraveling Boléro (1994, detail), showing the last few bars and the rousing final crescendo.
I recalled a painting by Canadian artist Anne Adams, Unraveling Boléro, inspired by this evocative orchestral piece. This painting represents the music as a series of rectangles, one per bar. Each rectangle is coloured according to the dominant note in the bar. The height of the rectangle corresponds to the volume of the music. Other embellishments correspond to the rhythm and the instrumentation. It’s rightly regarded as Adams’s masterwork.
The three of us at breakfast that day all do quilting, and Unraveling Boléro looked a lot like something that could be quilted. But copying someone’s art didn’t excite me. Mum suggested another well-known piece of classical music, something out of copyright. How about Edvard Grieg‘s In the Hall of the Mountain King, from the Peer Gynt suite?
Here at Ice Moon Prison, we have a habit of becoming fond of foods available only in other parts of the world. When we visited eastern Canada, for instance, we were introduced to poutine and Montréal smoked meat. When we visited Iceland, we were introduced to skyr. Skyr, a kind of thick yoghurt, proved impossible to get in Australia, until late 2017 when three different brands materialized at once. We purchased all three and reviewed them side by side.
Updated June 2019: Procal Dairies Skyr and nudie Icelandic yoghurt are no longer available. A new skyr from siggi’s is now available.
Here at Ice Moon Prison, everyone deserves a second chance. This applies equally to our vegetable scraps and grass clippings, so we have commissioned the bespoke official Ice Moon Prison Three-bin Compost System.
Here at Ice Moon Prison, we celebrate the winter festival of Christmas with traditional wintery foods. A few years ago we did a cooking course at Gewürzhaus in Toorak, and learned how to make Lebkuchen, a German spiced gingerbread.
Here at Ice Moon Prison we are conscious of how much energy our facility uses, hence we are early adopters when it comes to LED technology. Sometimes too early. A couple of years ago Limitless LED released these inexpensive warm/cool white bulbs in the familiar B22 form factor. They ended up being relegated to the guest sleeping quarters because their light was too directional and they left parts of the room too poorly lit. We reluctantly went back to incandescent bulbs.
Then the bayonet pin on a bulb broke, rendering the bulb unsafe to use. There was only one thing for it. Teardown porn.
Here at Ice Moon Prison, going outside with insufficient clothing can be fatal. Hence we find ourselves checking the Bureau of Meteorology’s forecast often, even before we get up in the morning. Fumbling for a smartphone while still in bed is out of the question—LCD screens are off-limits in sleeping quarters—so we are experimenting with audio announcements. Continue reading →
