Seems like many knit-bloggers are having contests right now. Here are a few from Amanda:

Yummy yarn for April Fools' Day

Malabrigo... (drool...)

More Malabrigo...

All three of these blogs are new to me, and I look forward to exploring a bit. And I can't help but once again plug Amanda's etsy shop...if only I had an unlimited yarn budget! It's all just gorgeous.

A few weeks ago Mark and I went to a homebuying seminar offered by his illustrious employer's credit union. It was pretty interesting. I previously had been a bit worried that we'd never be able to buy a house, mainly because it would take at least three years of seriously monastic living to save up for a down payment on even a modest house in our city. But apparently there are ways to avoid PMI. We are really in the very beginning stages of the process. We know about the maximum we'd be able to borrow, but not exactly how much house we could buy with that. And we have a few neighborhoods in mind. We've started driving around to look at available houses, and I think it's doable.

The Easter menu was a success, and I'm proud to say it was all my idea. (Mark wanted to do all the cooking, and who am I to argue with that?) We served baked steelhead (salmon-y fish), broccoli, salad, cream biscuits, boiled red potatoes with dill, icebox pickles and crudites with homemade herb cream cheese. The fish was especially delicious, and there's a lot left over. My mother brought a store-bought cheesecake (eh) and a homemade fudgy chocolate torte (yummy). Why two cakes for four people? No idea. For my father, I guess, since he's cheesecake-obsessed and still cranky over the Christmas 2007 Key Lime Debacle. Anyway, they brought these crazy sparkler candles so we could celebrate my birthday early (it's in two weeks)--which I thought would set my Ice Queen on fire, so I removed it--and gave me a hefty A.C. Moore gift card. Prime number birthdays give me the creeps for some reason, but maybe it won't be all that bad. =)

Photos I forgot to post earlier this week...


The famous Drops jacket. The ladies at my SnB think it looks okay in the back. I think I need to live with it a bit.


Here are the socks I made for Rebecca. They fit me perfectly, which means they may be a bit small on her. I really ought to have made these on smaller needles, with a few more repeats per round. They do look like little cables (pattern here), which was the point. I hope she likes them.


Speaking of socks...these are secret socks! Shh! They're for Mark, for our anniversary, and I'm proud to say I didn't pay a single cent for any of the yarn (the tan is Lang Jawoll I picked up in the Karma Yarn Swap forum on Ravelry, and the blue striped was a donation from a girl in my SnB). I only hope they fit him--I keep surreptitiously comparing them to other socks he has, and they seem to be okay so far. I'm using Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Sock pattern, but I'll do some ribbing on the leg to accommodate Mark's shapely calves.

And the project Mark knows about: more lace, hooray!


The pattern is fittingly called Wabenschal (Honeycomb Shawl), and I'm using the Araucania Atacama I got from my SP11 partner. I'm so glad I was finally able to find a good pattern for this yarn--it's 100% alpaca, and quite nice to work with. I especially love the pink flecks. I think it'll be even prettier once I block it.

Mark and I invited my parents for Easter tomorrow. We're having salmon, which leaves us more time to clean the house. That situation is a bit dire, sad to say...

This is an incredibly stupid article. Um, I didn't know wearing jeans and T-shirts made you look like a lesbian. (I didn't know lesbians "looked" a certain way, in fact.) And I was unaware of the existence of literal Fashion Police, who before now would issue tickets to women who weren't in dresses and hose and full eye makeup. Seriously...is this article from ten years ago?? I like that they interviewed Moe from jezebel.com, but isn't that kind of meta and strange? Here's some words from her about it. The whole thing is just weird to me...

I finished the Drops cardigan last night...and it's huge. Why did I think that an A-line sweater would make me look anything but pregnant?? I have a 13-inch difference between my bust and waist. Seriously, how did I think it would be flattering? It does look quite nice from the bust up, but below that it's just ginormous. I'm still weighing my options about it. I may just wear it as is for the next month--after which I won't need it for six months, so I'll have plenty of time to decide whether I want to do something drastic (like cut the back below the armholes, reknit it with some serious shaping and graft it back to the main piece; or maybe an enormous steek down the whole back) or something awful (frog the whole damn thing except the sleeves--weeks of work--and start from scratch with a more body-conscious sweater shape)... I'm leaning toward drastic right now. We'll see how I feel in September.

The audition went fine (I should hear pretty soon), and I sang very well at the competition, I thought, but I didn't place--the judges were really looking for artsong-types, artsong not being a priority for me right now, plus judging by their resumes they probably don't know a big voice from the back of their butt. But on the bright side, Charlottesville, Va. is a really cute town, with a fun downtown mall and several LYS's (I bought some adorable Happy Feet for a souvenir). And while we ran out of time to tour the house, the grounds of Monticello are very pretty (as are the views). We also did some wine tasting, and Mark bought a bottle of some interesting Chardonnay.

Speaking of wine, despite my Portuguese ancestry, until recently I'd never had port. But when we were at Trader Joe's a few weeks ago, there was an inexpensive bottle so we decided to try it. I like it quite a bit. It does taste a lot like my grandfather's wine--which is also fortified, and they both use burgundy grapes, I guess. But do I like it because I'm genetically predisposed to like it, or just because I like fruity wine?

Bring on the Manischewitz Concord Grape, I say. =)

Edited to add: I always thought Arthur C. Clarke would outlive all of us... I hope he's out there hanging with the Star-Child.

Spending way too much time on Ravelry lately--must post to blog! Things are pretty good here. I'm gearing up for a competition in Virginia Saturday (we actually leave tomorrow at noon, since there's a rehearsal with the pianist tomorrow afternoon I was not informed of before I signed up, not that it would've changed my mind but it would've been nice to get a heads-up about it), and Sunday I'm auditioning for a dream role in my favorite opera. My speaking voice doesn't feel 100% yet, and I'm still breathing a bit high from all the coughing, but other than that the flu-associated problems are gone.

I've been working on some socks for Rebecca for her birthday:


I won't tell you how long it took to find the perfect pattern--and I'm not totally thrilled with it still, since this yarn (Nature Spun Fingering) is a bit thin for socks--but she will like it, I hope. I will finish the first sleeve on my Drops cardigan tonight, so I'll only have one sleeve, the collar and seaming to go. I've only recently learned how to mattress stitch properly, so I don't mind doing it. Yet. I do have a new picture, but it's black and boring. Once it's finished I'll have a lovely outdoor picture, I'm sure.

Another random music note: I have several different genre stations set up on Pandora, but I've been listening to one called "Nothing but Cheeze" for the past few days. I started the station with the terms Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters and Barry Manilow. I have added quite a bit since then, but no addition brings me more pleasure than Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. They are the greatest band ever! Listen to the overwrought vocals and cheesy string arrangements! It's so awesome, in the way that mustard-and-green paisley is awesome.

Frightening things I have heard about recently:

1. Prince is having hip replacement surgery. Doesn't that sound like something from The Onion?
2. This product. Jeez...

So last week I had the flu for the first time since childhood. It was awful. And a direct result of an elementary-school opera performance. I still have another month of those damn things. I really enjoy the fact that we're bringing music to kids, and the money is not bad, but (a) our audience is almost entirely under the age of eight--perhaps too young to really appreciate it; (b) being up at 5:30 so I can sing high B's at nine for aforementioned audience seems counterproductive; (c) my immune system apparently can't handle it; (d) it's seriously limited my time to work on other music, which needs to be a priority; and (e) we use a small chorus of students for each show, and I don't like working with kids--I mean, I love kids, but not strange ones that play with my props and try to come backstage while I'm changing and GIVE ME THE FLU. Verdict: never again. You can tell I'm kinda steamed about this...

Ooh, a plug: NHKnittingMama's etsy shop is great. Lovely, lovely hand-dyed yarn. Maybe for my birthday Mark will let me buy some sock yarn from her. So pretty...

Speaking of knitting news, I was somehow able to finish my cashmere Ice Queen while I was sick:



Though apparently I was not able to take a good picture of it. I have several knitting irons in the fire right now--including the Drops jacket, where I've started the first sleeve--but not anything worth mentioning yet...