When it snows in North Carolina, the place shuts down. And that is a good thing, considering how lousy everybody drives around here in the first place--plus there are too few plows and too little rock salt to really be anything but a Band-Aid. My office was closed on Monday for MLK Day, then again on Tuesday and Wednesday because of poor management of a lousy six inches of snow. I wish it had seemed like a five-day weekend, but I had a conference call on Tuesday and was planning to stay home to watch umpteen hours of inauguration coverage (woohoooo!!!) anchored by my TV boyfriend and my TV BFF anyway so I had the work laptop with me. The day job is beginning to consume waaay too much time and energy; even now, it looks like I'll miss the chance to apply for a competition in the spring because I have to be in Salt Lake City for work that weekend. Five days sitting behind a table in a convention center. Whoopee. Maybe I should live-blog. Anyway, it's making private teaching look increasingly more attractive. I was supposed to get specifics by email earlier this week (ought to follow up)...but we'll see if I really like teaching for hours at a time, versus sitting at a computer. I guess ideally I'd only sing and/or sit on my ass all day, but until I have regular major gigs that would get pretty boring after a while. How much HGTV can one person watch?! Also, it might seem a bit selfish, while Mark works all day. You think?

Oh, I finally got a picture of Mark's socks the other day:



Paraphernalia, available on Ravelry, etc., etc. It's such a striking pattern, and pretty simple (it's mainly 3x1 ribbing).

Since it's Friday, here's a (bad) picture of my pencil pouch project for HELPSudan:


(Will I ever develop photography skills? Stay tuned.) I have a few repeats left, and should be done very soon. Also, I'm almost done with my cabled cardigan. Finally! I had to unravel and change the yoke construction, since it was coming out way too large, but I'm now half done with the final collar band. After I block it and pick out closures, I'll be DONE! This is a five-month project--it'll be so good to be finished.

Speaking of long-term projects, check this out. I'm in love! And Mark really likes Frank Lloyd Wright, so it's perfect. But I'll make it for our bed. A queen-sized bed. It would be 7x7 squares, and come out approximately 94" square. I may have lost my mind. But can you imagine how irritating it would be to make a queen-sized afghan out of granny squares?! Not me, not ever. Forty-nine squares is more than enough, thank you. At least it'll keep me out of trouble...

One last knitted item: I got started on Versatility the other day. I may well run out of yarn before the end, but I've been holding onto two skeins of now-discontinued Noro Big Kureyon for more than three years. I'll figure something out. I mean, hell, it's NORO.



The colors are more muted in real life. It's glorious, and it really does create a pretty soft fabric. I've left off the bobbles, by the way--otherwise Niki would kick my butt... Truthfully, I'm not a huge fan of bobbles, plus I wanted to conserve more yarn (I'm already leaving off a pattern repeat). I've substituted single purl stitches instead, which can be interesting with the Noro color changes. I have to say, the pattern is marked "piquant", but it's really not that hard. Or maybe I'm just too used to the cabled jacket to have any sort of perspective.

Audition tomorrow--and we're going to stay with a friend of ours we haven't seen for over a year. Should be a blast!

(p.s. top picture = the mittens in action)