AI Thoughts...

Before I forget to mention it, it was Raphael Moreira playing guitar last Tuesday night for rock week!

A poll on USA Today's Idol Chatter blog has 50% wanting an Adam/Kris finale and 34% wanting an Adam /Danny finale. I feel that an Adam /Danny finale would not be very enjoyable. Kris is so much more musically interesting than Danny. If you watch Kris' hometown performances with just him and his guitar and no bandzilla, he's awesome. Kris' phrasing, tone, and originality impress me much more than Danny's loud, constrained-throat, karaoke singing. Keeping my fingers crossed that Kris and Adam knock it out of the ballpark on Tuesday.

Oh! I also have to comment on the judges' song selections. Kris got One Republic's "Apologize." Danny got Terence Trent D’Arby's "Dance Little Sister." Adam got U2's "One." ALL excellent choices for each person. I do find Kris' handpicked song a tad boring. However, it's current, it's suited for his melodic voice, and hopefully he'll skillfully rearrange it to show his originality. As for Danny, a Terence Trent D'Arby song choice is well-suited to his gravelly, soulful voice. It'll be karaoke night for him. However, he might make it too gospel-y sounding and overdo it, which is admittedly and unashamedly what I hope will happen. Adam's assigned song "One" is from one of my favorite bands ever. Of several U2 songs, I really like this one a lot and can't wait to hear Adam sing it. Have you seen the duet version of "One" with Mary J. Blige? I got to hear the original at Ohio Stadium back in college (good times!). I love the lyrics and think this could be very interesting since Adam can sing anything and yet I haven't heard him sing a song quite like this. Like Led Zeppelin's cover he did for rock week, he'll need to keep it true enough to the original and also show restraint and no Broadway leanings whatsoever. I bet Simon picked this song on purpose to show that, just like with "Mad World" and "The Tracks of My Tears," Adam can tone it down and still sound powerful and keep everyone's attention. This song is not about precision, it's about heart. I hope that Adam nails the soulfulness and drive behind the song and shows up Danny in the process.

Jaywalker Update
Oh MY, we ladies had a great time as usual at knit night on Thursday! Actually, I think I'd have to categorize it as a "best of." We dished AI and Curly Girl topics. Such a good time we had that I somehow screwed up and omitted a kfb increase on one of my sock's insteps. Those are tricky to correct when there's not any extra yarn to create a new column of stitches and you don't want to tink your work. Then later, I had some trouble with holes at the convergence of the heel flap, gusset, and leg. What I ended up having to do is go back to where there were one gusset stitch on each side. Instead of eating up the last RS gusset stitch and turning to purl back and eat the other, I continued on ITR (to the instep sts) and took care of the last purlside gusset stitch from the front with a k2tog. This seemed to work much better because when you do it as written, the heel flap ends up 2 rows higher than the instep stitches, which didn't make sense to me. I'd heard that you could do this little trick and, by coincidence, had to do something similar on my PG-R short-row toe.