Oh What a week!

My last week was INSANE!!! The second company of Jersey Boys is up and running in San Francisco. It all happened in one crazy week.

Our travel day was Sunday. Monday we arrived at the theatre at 8:00 am to load in the SM hampers to our temporary office space in the basement of a store next to the theatre. Since the first national tour was still performing until Thursday, we had a temporary Stage Manager office, Company Manager office and wardrobe set up. The first cast cleared all there personal stuff out of the dressing room to clear for the second cast to share the dressing rooms. The second cast arrived to start tech at 10:00 am. The first two days we worked without costumes. I tried to drill into the casts head (as I did all during NY rehearsals) where their costume changes would be. I knew when we got into costumes on Wednesday we would try to go without stopping. Wednesday we go through all of Act II in costume and then started from the top of Act I. Thursday we picked up where we left off in costume. Thursday night was the first company's last show and then they loaded out. . .

Then came Friday. A day that felt like a week. I arrived at the theatre at 7:45 am to start moving out of our temporary office into our real office. Wardrobe and hair arrived at 7:30 am to start moving into their real rooms. At 10:00 am (with boxes still EVERYWHERE) the cast arrived to get into costume for the top of Act II. We had a run through of Act II with our alternate Frankie. Then the cast had a lunch break, while the crew and I continued to unpack. After lunch the cast got into costume for a final dress rehearsal. After dinner break (with more unpacking) it was time for our first performance. All things considered, it went pretty great. After the show the producers through a party for both the tour cast and the new San Fran/Chicago cast. A goodbye/hello party. It was really fun.

To sum up . . . from 7:45 am to midnight we loaded in the show, ran Act II, had a dress rehearsal, first performance, and opening night party all in one night. When I think of my pal Francesca on the Spamalot tour and know that they do this kind of schedule every few weeks, I am in awe. Then came four more shows in two days. This included putting our Frankie alternate on for the first time on Saturday!

Allin all, in one week we arrived into a city, loaded in (twice!), teched, opened, had a party and put on the second Frankie. Today is our day off and it's 90 degrees here in San Fran. It's almost 1:00 pm and I'm still trying to get myself settled. I never really had time to unpack properly, so today I'm trying to get that done. Later I want to head to the Embarcadero to do a little knitting and hanging out in the sun. I think I'll go to Chicks with Sticks to hook up with my old San Fran knitting pals.

I'm back to working on the cotton mohair sweater. Here are the sleeves so far.


I decided to do a ruffle on the sleeve. It took a little trial and error before I figured out the stitch pattern, but I found this pattern worked:

CO 180 stitches using the cable cast on method
1 row (and every odd row) - K across
2nd row - K3, K2 tog
4th row - K2, K2 tog
6th row - K1, K2 tog
8th row - K2 tog all the way across.