I found out something interesting today that makes me feel a lot better... Back in December, I sang a pretty great audition for a fantastic role with a smaller Midwestern company. A few months later I got a rejection-with-encouragement note from the company. I found out several weeks later that one of my Facebook contacts (just a singer I've worked with, not a friend--I don't respect this person very much) is singing the lead role in the same production. We weren't up for the same thing, but given the scarcity of jobs right now (and that she's a bimbo--sorry, it must be said) I was rather pissed and kind of jealous. Anyway, just now she posted a link to the production page, and I saw who's singing the role I auditioned for: she's a few years older than me (judging by the picture), and has sung several roles with the company already. For all I know, they had all but cast her before they even heard me. Anyway, now I don't feel so bad. I feel kind of badass, actually. But not as badass as if I were actually making some money singing right now...

Speaking of Facebook, I have a dilemma: my cousin has tried to friend me. I don't remember how old she is, but she cannot be any older than twelve. TWELVE YEARS OLD. Um, don't you have to be eighteen to use Facebook? Am I weird to see a problem with this? Clearly her older sister (who's 19) and her aunts know how old she is, and they've friended her. She is a baby. I don't post nude pictures to Facebook or anything, but I do occasionally link to adult-oriented things. And I think that's fine; it's a space for ADULTS. I should not have to censor myself because my tween cousin's mother (who I thought was raising them in a very strict Catholic way, which makes this even more surprising) made an error in judgment. I already censor myself to a point, since I have a number of singing contacts in my friends--this is the place I don't censor! yay blog!--but I should at least be able to be myself, which includes sometimes linking to crazy stuff that isn't appropriate for everyone. Anyway, I don't think I'm going to friend her. I feel a little bad, but I'm sorry. I think she was born in 1998, for heaven's sake!

My secret projects have now finally reached their recipients, so I can post pictures.



This is the Bird's Nest Smoke Ring, which I made for my cowl swap partner. It was a fun pattern, easy to memorize with just enough complexity to keep me interested. I used the ever-versatile and cushy Cascade Heritage sock yarn--it's actually purple, despite the off colors in the photo. (She sent me the most fantastic, generous package in return--a cashmere cowl and wristwarmers, two skeins of Noro, yummy chocolate and a bunch of lavender-scented L'Occitane, but I can't find the adapter for the camera so that will have to wait until next time.)

And speaking of purple and lousy photos, here are the socks I made for Cathy's birthday:



These are Drunken Bees, though you can't really tell from the picture. Cathy is a rather statuesque young lady, and we wear different-sized socks--hence this is a bit big on yours truly (the foot model), and you can't see the pattern much at all. This pattern took a bit more concentration, but it wasn't too bad. (Fiber artists in the know may recognize the yarn as Malabrigo Sock in Abril, which is apparently--and understandably--a pretty popular and hard-to-find colorway. Nothing but the best for Cathy. Plus it was wonderful to play with.)

Since the pattern is about to be released, I can show you one of my test knits. They were inspired by the Tour de France; the circles are meant to represent the way riders in the peloton navigate traffic circles. (And that is all I know about the Tour de France, yay me.) Here is the first sock, modeled by my lovely recipient:



The pattern called for solid sock yarn, which I didn't have on hand...I had a really tough time eschewing all the amazing handpainted stuff at Hillsborough Yarn in favor of some perfectly nice and relatively indestructible (but not particularly sexy) Fortissima Socka. Sometimes it's a good thing that store is 45 minutes and two counties away...

Okay, I know I promised sewing, but there really isn't much of it other than some mending and a tote bag I made from an old Billy Joel T-shirt. I did, however, replace a zipper on a pair of pants (clamdiggers? capris? I don't know). I used the zipper foot! Crazy! Maybe one day I'll actually graduate into making clothes.

Other than crafting and kvetching about Facebook-related items, our main concern here is buying a house. The goal for this week is pre-approval--and to our surprise, it is actually the kind of thing we can get done in an afternoon. Who knows, by next weekend we may actually be putting in an offer! (Though I seriously doubt it...) We have actually found a well-recommended real estate agent, and she seems to be pretty savvy, but we haven't discussed commission--which, while the seller pays commissions, apparently in this area people are negotiating lower commissions with lots of success. Our financial planner has recommended we not take a full-commission deal, but I don't feel so great about it...hopefully Mark can be "Bad Cop" when we have that conversation with the agent. We do have another recommendation, if this doesn't fly, but I'm dreading it a bit!

Damn, that is a lot of blanket.

We have finally killed our television! We'd had bundled internet, cable and digital phone with the diabolical Time Warner Cable for several years. A few weeks ago we realized that porting our home number to a cell phone for Mark (added to my plan), in conjunction with losing the cable (which is an enormous time-suck, of course), would save us about $100 a month, so we did it! The phone thing took a week or two to be finalized, and TWC actually makes you go down to their office and return your box to cancel your account--apparently assuming that many people are too lazy to make the effort--but Mark took it back Saturday morning. We couldn't live without the interwebs, clearly, and we plan to exploit Hulu for all it's worth and keep our NetFlix account quite active, but not having the cable means we'll both get a lot more done. I cannot tell you how much time I've spent vegging in front of HGTV...okay, I was probably knitting at the time, but still. So it's a brave new world here. Already I can tell we're going to get a lot more sleep, since I won't be forcing myself to go to bed after the first segment of Colbert. That, and I think the laundry will be folded in a more timely manner. Mark even volunteered to help tonight. :)

Dude, I owe you all some knitting content. I have two secret projects currently en route to their recipients, and I just finished two test-knits last week. Hmmm... I know what I can show you! Really ugly socks.



It's not the pattern, of course (the quick and fun Sprucey Lucy, by the ever-awesome Wendy)--it's this nasty yarn (JL Vinca--avoid!), which is made up of two plies that in this particular skein generally managed to clash with each other 75% of the time. Plus I am no fan of yellow, and there's a hell of a lot of it here. So I overdyed them with a pellet of red Easter egg dye and a mess of vinegar. Voila:



They're still pretty funky, but the yellow is now a pretty orange, and the red and purple bits are very vivid.

What else? Well, several cozies have been constructed. This one is for my DivaCup, which I should be receiving in the next few days:



Get it? Teehee. There are several more on Ravelry in this exact colorway of Peaches and Creme. And then there's this one (kind of NSFW, so I won't post it here), which I made for a knitting friend who had a birthday last week. Apparently she enjoys it. (Pattern here--probably also NSFW.) How could I resist making both of those in the same week?! There's also a pattern out there for a rather scandalous crocheted maxipad holder that uses fun fur to its best advantage...but I'm not even going to link to that. I think it's kind of gross, actually... But in G-rated cozy news, I decided to replace my leaking microwavable hot-cold pack with an old-school rubber hot water bottle--and since it needed a cover, I made one, also out of yarn I dyed myself:



I had 120 yards of vintage (and scratchy) off-white wool I picked up at a thrift store. I first dyed the whole thing with leftover store-brand rooibos tea, then drizzled cherry Kool-Aid randomly over the tan hanks. It looked pretty awful before it was knitted, but I'm pretty happy with how it looks now. I ran out of yarn a few yards from the top, so I finished with a few yards of Patons Classic Wool. It's much softer now that I've washed it with some conditioner (Flex, for more of that old-school flavor).

But wait! Before I go, here's something totally normal, so you don't think I've completely lost my mind:



My Berlin socks, out of some awesome Cherry Tree Hill yarn, hooray. At first I was planning to reknit the feet, since they got a little baggy the first time I wore them, but they fit better now that they've been washed. They should be fine with my clogs in the fall.

Next blog post: actual sewing! On the sewing machine!

Things have been busy and weird. I almost feel like I'm just kind of along for the ride sometimes... I'm also feeling kind of random.

One of my coworkers is a great baker, but her signature dish is this chocolate pie with a meringue that is WAY too sweet and doesn't even taste like chocolate, plus I hate meringue. Everybody else seems to like it, though. She brought some in today. I am supposed to be on a diet, and am generally sticking with that, but have had a few pieces of chocolate this morning. I blame it on the Benadryl I took last night--I've been really itchy from allergies, which has been keeping me up at night, but I slept through the alarm this morning so I need to halve my dose...

I am running a swap on the Cowls board on Ravelry. The other organizer is also a singer, an American who has a fest contract in Switzerland. The apprentice program at Sarasota is really one of the only programs in this country that works in a similar way (and even that is sort of a junior version). It would be really cool to have a fest contract. It involves moving to Europe, though, and that's not something we're prepared to do right now. We think we should be able to buy a house in the fall. There's this $8000 tax credit that we would love to take advantage of, but we were really hoping somebody would be able to loan us $8000 for the next few months so we could use it as part of our down payment. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like anyone in our family can do that right now. My parents are selling their house, and there has been a decent amount of interest; if they were able to close in the next month they'd be able to swing the loan, but that's a pretty unrealistic time frame. I have another family member to ask, but we talk rather infrequently so I feel pretty lousy about hitting her up. Mark has a few people to ask as well, but it's not looking so good. Bummer.