Ahhhhh, oboe cane and a little rant

As an oboist, one of the tasks I must do is make reeds.

In order to do so, the materials must be prepared.

This is the cane aka arundo donax

in the form that we reed makers purchase it -

harvested, dried, chopped and sized

Then we split it, chop it even shorter and gouge it.

These are the curls from gouging

The gouged cane looks like this

And here are a few pieces soaking so that I can make some reeds

And that is how I spend some of my non-knitting time.

At least in part.

Edit: I have to add a minor rant to this. Tonight at 7:50 (we had dinner out) I received a call asking about my availability for a job in late Feb. I called back as soon as we returned home (8:40) and left a message for the contractor. He called back after a while and told me he had left numerous messages for people for that gig and someone already responded so he didn't need me after all. I was a bit miffed and told him that I thought that was really not a nice way to hire people. So now I guess I won't hear from him again.

But really - if you are going to put out a cattle call, at least have the courtesy to say that on the message. I find this a pretty tacky aspect of some contractors that we do not encounter too often. And if they do say that on the message, we frankly don't usually bother to call back.

I will just stay home that weekend and knit. So there!

Thanks! Whew! I feel better now :-)