Knitting with Cats (while listening to French pop)

(Or perhaps "Knitting in spite of cats.)

When Sparky was a kitten, it was impossible to work with yarn when she was awake. Now that she is older, she often seems content to leave my knitting alone, provided she can sprawl across my lap. Aside from forcing me into some rather cramped knitting positions at times, this is progress. Sometimes she even ignores yarn running under some part of her - until she suddenly wakes up and decides it's time to attack.

Tonight I think she just wanted to keep warm. Outside the temperature is in the low 30's, and earlier in the evening we had snow, sleet and hail, as a major cold front blew in. More snow may fall tomorrow. This weather is wearing everyone down.

I've been playing music by my favorite French pop singer, Francis Cabrel, whose songs I first heard in 1993, during a month spent studying French in Villefranche-sur-Mer. Music of all sorts played a big part in classes throughout the day - teachers often started class by playing a favorite song, as a way to focus student attention. A couple of staff members were professional musicians, who could sing along with their favorites.

Listening to French songs is the best way I know to learn the subjunctive - if you can sing the line the conjugation sticks in your mind forever! Cabrel's songs take on the world - from love and family life, to depopulated French villages, to the life of immigrants, to the melancholy of a seaside resort "hors saison" - out of season. One of his biggest hits is "Corrida," a description of a bullfight - from the point of view of the bull.