A little love for la fete de St. Valentin.
The pendant in the picture above was actually a Christmas present from my dad – my sister and I each have one, and since they were handmade at our local jewelry shop, each one is just slightly different. They’ve got a pretty sweet story behind them – they’re made from the melted-down gold from my dad’s old wedding ring, and it almost made me cry when he gave them to us.

I know you guys must think I’m the worst blogger ever by now, having twice now gone whole months between posts. This time I have a good reason for disappearing off the face of the blogging world, though. Pretty much right when we went back to school from winter break, we started full-out rehearsals for Arsenic & Old Lace, which meant I had to stay at school from 7:15 AM until at least 8:45 PM, which meant I had NO LIFE WHATSOEVER outside of school. The last two weekends of January were the performances, when I had to be there from 5:30 to 10:30 PM. Let me tell you, by the time the whole thing was over, I was proud of the excellent job they did and also extremely exhausted. Teching is not the most gratifying job, especially when all you get to do is sit where you can’t see anything that’s going on onstage with a headset listening to the directors and light/sound techies talk. My official job was ‘runner,’ but I really did no running at all. I was there to make sure the actors were in their spots 1 page before their next cue, and by the end, I had pretty much everyone’s lines memorized. 2 days after the last Arsenic performance, there were tryouts for this year’s Shakespeare play, Richard III. The lead roles had already been cast to people in the Junior and Advanced Shakespeare classes, but there were still a fair few roles left. I ended up as a Messenger, which was at the bottom of a cast list that was ordered by importance in the play, and I share that role with 3 other people. I still have a few lines, though, and it’s fun to be an actual part of the cast. The way it works in our drama department (at least most of the time) is that you have to work your way up, and that’s what I’m doing.
Other than theater stuff but still school related- our high school’s Winter Formal dance was last Saturday, and we had probably the corniest theme ever: FROSTY FROLIC !
Here’s a grainy and weirdly-lit photo of the group I went with:

From left to right: Conner, Liv, Sara (you can’t see her dress but it was really awesome and floor-length and kind of mermaid-ish), Anna, Austin, and me. It was a lot of fun, less crowded and with more light than Homecoming. I had a lot more fun dancing this time, and it was also nice to go to dinner before the dance so taking all the time we did to get ready felt worth it. I don’t know if you also noticed from the photo that I’m not wearing glasses – I got contacts almost a month ago! I love them, and I like that people can actually SEE my eyes. I’m going back to the eye doctor tomorrow for my follow-up appointment and to pick out new glasses for when I’m not wearing my contacts.

I have been knitting, but the knitting I’ve done doesn’t really make that good of blogging material. It’s a little seamless raglan pullover for Paul in the rest of the chocolate Malabrigo, using EZ’s percentages, and it has a little placket at the neck.

The stockinette shows off the subtle nuances of the yarn really well, and I used a tubular cast on at the cuffs and body hem so it’ll be stretchy.
I’ve also got a secret project for Liv’s birthday on the needles, but of course I’ll have to wait to show it to you until she gets it.

I also bought some yarn last week at Yarn Garden!
First off, some Koigu!

This is my first Koigu ever, and the picture definitely doesn’t do justice to the color. It’s a semi-solid mixture of bluesy greens and greensy blues, and makes me really want to cast on for a pair of socks right away, despite all of the other knitting commitments I have ahead of me for the next few months.
Also, as my only current link to Project Spectrum (it makes me sad that I joined and now I have almost nothing to show to fit in with all the cool kids), a pretty, squishy, yummy skein of Malabrigo in Pagoda.

I really love the mixture of colors in here, and when I saw it I just knew that I had to have it. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do with a single skein of this (maybe some late-season mittens?) but whatever is is bound to be beautiful.

My Spring Interweave came last week!

The patterns are nice, and I especially like the Legwarmers, the Printed Silk Cardigan, and the Chameleon Scarf:

Last but not least, I found out a few weeks ago that I’d been awarded the You Make My Day Award by Knitting Kninja!
It’s going to be hard to choose just 10 because I have about a bazillion blogs in my Google Reader, but here goes.
Here are 10 people who make MY day:

Ysolda

Grumperina

Kate

Lolly

Jared

Skrilla

Jenna

Elin

Elli

Tiennie