I feel like I start all my posts this way but I'm sorry I've taken so long to respond! T_T I've kinda been ghosting on the CB lately, I'm not sure why. I'm planning to get back into it this week though.

I'm glad your orchestra and chamber music camp are/were going well! I haven't done a lot of chamber music. How many people are typically in one of those groups? Also, you said you have a really good ear for intonation--do you have perfect pitch?? One of my friends does and she can basically hear any song and then play it on the piano perfectly. It's very impressive. 

I'm also very impressed that you can hold a whole conversation in Japanese!  I'm definitely not at that level yet, but I've only been doing it for a few months. The leader of my taiko drumming group is from Japan, and recently someone else who goes to my school and is also Japanese joined and they've been speaking to each other in Japanese. I'm jealous :') someday I will get there!

I think my family's going to visit Japan when school gets out for the summer. I've never been and neither has my dad so we're really excited! Hopefully by then I'll know enough Japanese to get around. 

I'd love to hear about the book you're writing! Is it the same one from before with the Hawaiian-Japanese protagonist?

Next time I promise I'll write back faster! I hope your month has been going well. Oh yeah, and are you doing anything for Halloween?

LUPINE HI -! I’m always so excited when you post haha :D Don’t get mad at yourself for being late, I’ve been trying to do judging on the Writing Contest for way too long. Granted I’m writing a full critique for as many people as I can (I’m almost done with one) but still. I hope you post more :D (Don’t push yourself though obviously) and I'm putting the book talk in another post bc it's long :D

I saw that you saw my Halloween costume plans. I got most of it done! I actually decided not to sew fabric onto the pants, though, because I like the wings on my shoes too much and I don’t want to detract from them (and I don’t have the time) :D I literally just finished the cloak before this, and I’m making an Jellycat Amuseable Cream Star pin to secure the cloak or put on the cloak because I didn’t have the time (or left over fabric medium) to paint it onto the shirt. I might do that later though. I will try to post some pictures. The best part is absolutely the shoes with the wings. I’m going to have to make a lot more of those because it was also really easy and I got more felt (the stiff expensive kind XD) than I needed. 

I just made the pin and it’s the best part of the costume!!! I just painted a piece of paper and cut it out; put down a large circle of hot glue on parchment paper (not wax paper, parchment paper), put the paper onto that, and covered it with more parchment paper and flattened it a bit. It was really easy to do, though I don’t have archival hot glue sadly. I think the star turned out pretty well. It really feels like a Jellycat :D 

Also Kiki is such a cool costume! I think I was Kiki once... I actually have more trouble thrifting things than painting/ sewing/etc stuff (though I often do that onto thrifted clothes) because a.) I like crafty stuff and b.) going places is hard.  

I read on another post that you’re ⅛ Mexican and that’s so cool! Idk what else, that’s just neat :D 

I don’t have perfect pitch, I just have an annoyingly good ear for anything that isn’t right (except for when I really need it *sobs*) It’d just be nice if it didn’t so often ruin music that isn’t completely professional and perfect, and make it so sometimes notes are so close to correct that even my teacher says they’re fine but I have to correct myself

The amount of people in a chamber group depends on the song; some things are just for, say, violin and piano, while other things could have much larger orchestration and still be chamber music. 

I was going to bake today but my cold got worse again :((((( No meltdown at least, just crying XD (I had planned it ahead) Anyway I should be making stuff eventually. I want to make sugar cookies to decorate; maybe some pumpkin flavored cookies or pumpkin bread; and maybe something with lavender. Technically lavender isn’t very Halloween-y, but I think the flavor and the little specks of lavender in the dough/batter are very ghostlike. Ghosts are the best :D When I’m making the sugar cookies I hope I can find some that I can decorate like Jellycats! 

Jellycat has a really good Halloween line. Sadly a lot of it is sold out at this point, but I think they’ll bring a lot of it back next year. There’s a cat, bat, and ghost in a cauldron, and an Ooky Ghost, and a Bartholomew Bear with a pumpkin costume! Amazingly the bear is 50 dollars *sobs* and the others are all sold out. But they also usually are a little less expensive at the somewhat-local place that has them than they are on the Jellycat website. It’s like an hour away, but we go that way for Japanese school. There’s also a really good natural grocery store next to it. Natural/organic groceries are the best because it’s easier to get allergy-friendly stuff and stuff that is produced more ethically. This one even has a bakery that has a lot of gluten and dairy free stuff; I actually got a brownie last time and it was sooo good. (I do think the chocolate they used was a little bitter, even for a dark chocolate, but other than that it was superb.) 

On which note, lately I can’t have dairy again. I may or may not have had a (relatively, for me) bad reaction to something that only had “may contain” dairy (I can’t for certain connect it to that); I was up all night with a really bad cough and my throat/mouth was really tingly and such. I was able to have it again as long as it was in small amounts :((( Although it’s still not as bad as when I was really little, when even a little would make me really really sick. It’s very annoying, though. And before Halloween *sobs* Almost all chocolate has dairy… 

Also you’re going to Japan?! That’s so cool! What do you want to do there? Like, more pop culture stuff or more traditional or both, that sort of stuff? Sadly there’s not extra Jellycats I could get there that I can’t get here; I think (though I’m not certain) that the few they have made are retired. But it would still be great. It could be cool to look into tea ceremony/chado stuff (there’s a lot of names though), if that’s something you’re interested in. I wish I could help you practice Japanese haha :P Also eat all the food you can, obviously. We went to Japan once and even though I didn’t know enough Japanese to even begin to understand them (i still would only be able to understand a bit to be clear), I found the commercials really funny XD (but then again I have a weird sense of humor)

I’ve been listening to Swan Lake pretty constantly recently and it’s superb. We have a classical music/plays streaming service and I figured out how to get to it from the TV. And I always listen to music while I’m writing or drawing :D  I adore Swan Lake so much though. It and The Nutcracker (mostly The Nutcracker, though) were the music of my childhood. But anyway apparently critics didn’t like the music at first (the original choreography was also bad though, they redid it) because it was “too complex/symphonic/Wagnerian for ballet”. Hey look, it’s the Baroque church all over again! XD I just find it hilarious because people are always like “no bad” and then years later they’re like “...uh so actually that was genius… *shame*” 

Finally, last thing. Would either of you be interested in a Halloween classical music playlist I’ve been working on?  

SO SORRY FOR APPEARING ON HERE RANDOMLY AND INVADING THOUGHTS AND PRIVACY!!!

I just wanted to say that I can't believe this thread is 3 years old O_O 

In Which Peregrine Returns to the Chatterbox from the All-Consuming Depths of Life:

I've missed you both!  I haven't left, life just took over.

Visiting Japan sounds so cool, Lupine.  I hope you have a great time!  What are you most looking foward to doing?  I day dream about hiking/backpacking in Japan.

I really want to see a picture of your winged shoes, Bobcat, and the star pin.  I think it is really special you put all the effort in to making your own costume. 

To both of you: what is your favorite Halloween costume you've ever dressed up in? 

Everytime you mention a Jellycat I look up a picture online.  So far my favorite has been the Crumble Fox, though the Amuseable Cream Star is really cute.  Ooh, I just looked up Jellycat keychains and I think my violin case could do with one.  The company makes some adorable products.

I've been crazy busy with so much music.  Orchestra, chamber music, and solo.  I love chamber music now, before I disliked it a lot because of poor experiences but things aligned this time and I am having an amazing time.  Though we did pretty poorly in a masterclass which was embarassing.  I'm trying to convince myself that it's okay and we'll do better in the performance.  I'm off to more practice now!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA

Took me a while to get this out sorry! Glad to see you Peregrine :DDD

I’m so glad you like the Jellycats!!!!!! (there cannot be enough exclamation marks) Crumble Fox is probably my favorite too. I would definitely get them next if they were still in stock. (If Jellycat ends up retiring them I am going to be so unbelievably sad) I think one of the other cutest Jellycats has to be the Smudge Elephant. All of the Smudges are adorable, though. I actually have Smudge Elephant! I haven’t decided on a name or pronouns for them, though. I spend a lot of thought on that before finalizing anything. I wish the keychains weren’t almost as expensive as the actual stuffed animal… but they have both the fabric and the construction, so it does make sense. It’s just sad, because I really want them :((( Sadly they don’t have a good swan (I’ve been too obsessed with ballets lately) :((( 

I think Jellycat should make a series with characters from ballets. Like, they could have the fairies from Sleeping Beauty and the Mouse King from The Nutcracker - that sort of thing. But they could be made into little animals instead. I’ve been very obsessed with ballet (especially Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev ballets) recently hehe

Oddly I keep seeing nutcrackers that are mice. It’s clear whoever designed them does not know what they’re talking about XD

Chamber music is the best! I’ve done it as a first violin and a viola, and violin is way more fun since you get to start everyone XD But, at least in chamber music I can make the viola part interesting. 

I’m doing a concerto competition save me XD It’s just the one that my orchestra has. The winner gets to perform with the orchestra. I’m writing my own cadenza, although I don’t know if I’m going to actually end up playing it XD I think it sounds pretty cool, though it might be too out-of-style. It’s not like I’m doing like Mozart or something, though, and the original cadenza is slightly out of style too. I’m going to go to a composer’s club that my conductor for one of the orchestras has (he’s a composer and sometimes writes the pieces we play). I hope it goes okay??? I highly doubt that I’m going to win, especially since it’s probably going to mostly be really advanced people, but at least it’s a performance, and I get to play with accompaniment. 

Also I have a new book that I’m working on apparently??? I just started writing and now I’m liking it so hehe yeah. I’ll post more about books soon probably! But this works for now.