Just when I thought that I'd outrun a few tags, Cathi tagged me, too!  Here it is ...

1) Total number of books in your house: I don't know exactly, but I know that my  house is overflowing with them and we're always trying to sort a few out.  Maybe 600?  800?  We're a bookish family, so I think a lot.  Between just my kids, we probably have 150.

2)  The last book you bought was- well, because of the massive overpopulating of the books in our house, I'm not sure I can answer that.  I'm a regular patron of my local library, and once I figured out that "Search Prospector" will bring any book from any library in my state to my library's front desk to me for free, this has been the source of most books.  But I can tell you that I bought Debbie Bliss's Special Knits recently.  As well as the Yarn Harlot's new book. 

3) What was the last book you read before reading this?  Boy, Cathi, you were embarrassed about chick lit?  Check out my most recently completed work of fiction:  La fiancée du pirate. (Just the title so cracks me up.)

Yes, at my most favorite local library there's always a book bin of "free books."  I recently picked these up -- for free!! -- and I just couldn't resist some good cheap harlequin romance novels (but I'm practicing my French, really!). 

(Don't think less of me because I love a good cheap romance novel here and there ... but this stuff does make chick lit look so literary, I have to say.)

4) List 5 (or 6) books that you read often or that mean a lot to you.

Don Quixote, volumes I and II.  Mainly because it's been on my mind lately and I've blogged about it a ton, but I do have to say that this is my most favorite "literary fiction" book that I've read as an adult.  Cervantes is amazing.  The book is hilarious, while at the time incredibly thought-provoking about issues that are still incredibly modern considering that the book is 400 years old.  (I recommend trying it in Spanish if you can!  There's a lot of bilingual editions out there.)

100 Years of Solitude.  Mostly for the same reasons as above, except that it's not nearly as old.  But Garcia Marquez is a genius, and the genre of "magical realism" is my favorite kind of fiction.  (Again, I recommend trying it in Spanish if you can!)

The Chronicles of Narnia.  Because these were the books that I read over and over again as a child, and please don't laugh, I actually thought that I might wander into an enchanted wardrobe one day when I was ten years old (it doesn't matter that I didn't really know what a wardrobe was).  I credit these books for my love of books.  (I see that Heidi just found this on audio book ... I. Must. Get. Those. Now.)

Anything by Bill Bryson, but namely English: The Mother Tongue or A Walk In The Woods.  Both of these books are about completely different subjects (the first, about the English language and how wacky it is; the second, about the author's adventures while attempting to walk the Appalachian Trail) but he is my favorite author that is alive today, and one that I would treasure being able to meet one day.  I read his books and re-read them all the time.  In a Sunburnt Country, about Australia, is also good, as is A Short History of Nearly Everything.  (I know I'm cheating by listing all these books as one.  Hey, it's my meme.)

Body-for-Life, by Bill Phillips, which I list because I happen to refer back to it all the time, and it's the book that I credit for putting me on the right track for eating well and exercising well.  It's an incredibly simple fitness concept, but if you can follow it, you'll be in the best shape ever.

I wish I could choose one favorite feminist book, but I can't, so let me just give a few favorites as maybe one will pique your interest: 
     1) Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly, which is a really crazy feminist must-read.  That's all I'll say there ... the author has a really amazing world perspective which, while being completely crazy, makes sense in a way.  Highly recommend you checking it out, but be forewarned that, again, it's rather crazy. 
     2)  This Sex Which Is Not One, by Luce Irigaray, which I find really fascinating if you can also get some good articles or other books to help explain her philosophy ... this is the theory that I used to analyze a coupla books in my MA Thesis, and it's the kind of theory that will completely warp the sense of reality that you grew up with and make you see things in a whole new light. (I just love that.)
     3) Anything by Judith Butler, and in particular Gender Trouble.  A very influential book in postmodern feminism.
     4) And let's not forget anything by Barbara G. Walker, especially the amazing book Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (yes, it's the same Barbara Walker), which I can't believe that I still don't own! ...
and I'll stop myself before I could go on and on here ...

6) Who are you going to pass this onto and why?  Let's go with a few more Colorado bloggers here ... let's ask Amanda (if she hasn't done this meme yet) because she's going to be starting her MA at CU in English next fall ... Kirsten, because a girl with a yarn-eating cat has to have some good reads as well ... and Michaele, because don't we all want to know what real professors read? And, because I'm hoping that Michaele will update me on my feminist thoery. (Will you share a few good books, Michaele?)  As always, at your own leisure and feel free to ignore the tag if you wish. :)

Such an interested blog entry title, right? 

Well, today is a Monday.  The Big Sweetie had shoulder surgery last week, and has spent the better part of the last 5 days recovering, in addition to having somewhat of a nauseous reaction to the drugs that he was on.  Not much fun.  Meanwhile, my little boy came down with a double-ear infection on Thursday, so we've been coping with that as well.  Again, not much fun.  Add in a willful 2-year-old, and it's just been a barrel of laughs around here.

I'll be ready for some knitting at the beach tomorrow.

Just a reminder, or a note if you haven't heard ...

Kathy outran me and tagged me ...

Pick five and fill in the blank:

If I could be a scientist…
If I could be a farmer…
If I could be a musician…
If I could be a doctor…
If I could be a painter…
If I could be a gardener…
If I could be a missionary…
If I could be a chef…
If I could be an architect…
If I could be a linguist…
If I could be a psychologist…
If I could be a librarian…
If I could be an athlete…
If I could be a lawyer…
If I could be an inn-keeper…
If I could be a professor…
If I could be a writer…
If I could be a llama-rider…
If I could be a bonnie pirate…
If I could be an astronaut…
If I could be a world famous blogger…
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world…
If I could be married to any current famous political figure…

Now choose three more people to tag.

Okay, here goes: 

If I could be a musician…  I'd be a flutist in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, or something like that.  Or maybe I'd be a female punk rocker.  (This indecision is probably why I never became a musician.)

If I could be a painter…  I'd be an American expatriate living in Paris in the early 20th century amidst all of the artistic upheavels occurring with the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. 

If I could be an architect… I'd be a designer of eco-friendly homes, with small footprints and large doses of style and storage (like the book the Not So Big House). 

If I could be an inn-keeper… I'd wear cute business clothes, drink coffee all day long and answer the phones with an attitude (or have I just been watching too much of the Gilmore Girls lately?).

If I could be a world famous blogger… While the obvious answer is to choose the Yarn Harlot (who, after all, doesn't want to be just like Stephanie Pearl-McPhee going on [and on] about knitting?), I think that I'll choose Eilene of EiKnit.  She's world famous (isn't she??), she's an amazing knitter (did you see that last cardigan that she made?? and how about the Rogue Cardigan I'm about to copy??), she's not only a kick-ass grandma, but one that has a belly button ring (and the abs to show them off I suspect).  In short, I want to be Eilene when I grow up. :) 

Now choose three more people to tag.
Hmmm... let's see here .... how about the newbie bloggers up here at the elevation of a mile high??  Kathy at Runs With Needles ... Angela at Knitting Momma ... and Wanda at Wanda Woman ... if you ladies want to, that is. :)

Thanks for the tag, Kathy! (By the way, I'm still trying to figure out how you've got such a cute iPod cozy pattern on your blog if you don't ever intend to own an iPod ...)

We have a winner! 

I assigned all of the 27 entrants to my oddball contest a number, from first entrant to last, and I included Cathi as #28 as she emailed me a ton of links off the contest entry.  Using the rather unscientific method of "cut up little numbers and mix them up" ...

I choose ...

That means that Nyxxie, a.k.a. Jennifer, of Knitting Nyxxie, is #6!  I have your addy already from the RAOK group, so you can watch for a little knitting music to come your way, Nyxxie! 

And I'll compile a big ole list of tons of oddball patterns ... keep sending them my way if you have more in mind, and I'll update the list. 

Meanwhile ...

The mismatched fronts of my A-line Ribbed Jacket have been resolved.

Look at what I got in the mail this weekend:

Check it out!  I had not one SP4 Angel, but two SP4 Angels!  Thanks so much, Michelle!! That was really too sweet of you ... The chocolate is no longer, the cute magnet is warming me up for summertime, and the yarn is awesome (can you tell how much I love Alpaca?) -- and I spent the better part of Mother's Day thumbing through my patterns wondering which would be the best.  I think I've settled on the Shaped Triangle from A Gathering of Lace.  (Note to self to check the errata listed here.)  I see that there's also a knitalong going on here, hosted by fellow Coloradan knitter Kristi, but I hereby forbid myself to join any more knitalongs before I finish up a few of those on the left.  Anyhow, a girl can dream, right?

I'm pretty lucky.

Hey there, all you hot mamas, and hot expec - tant  mamas out there, Happy Mother's Day!

(I shamelessly stole this from these people, but don't copyright laws expire after 100 years? So it's not really stealing.)

Look at what my sweetie got me this year:

Yes, this is the most awesome of news.  I've been hanging around for at least three months saying, "Everybody has an iPod but me." (I did the same thing for the whole three months while trying to get pregnant, which is nothing compared to the true anguish that some people go through while trying to get pregnant, I know.)  So, only my sweetie would take our tax return money and get That Which I Was Truly Coveting.  (Who says that tax returns are the savings account of the poor?)

Thank you, Big Sweetie! That's his official nickname in our house.  It might become his new moniker here, too, as I've always felt "DH" to be a little dorky but I couldn't come up with a better alternative.

Check out the back, inscribed with my own personal motto:

Feel free to vomit if this is too cheesy for you ... I still love it, and highly recommend that everyone have their own personal motto.

I was thinking of having the perfect contest to name her, but I've already come up with a perfect name and I'd be disappointed if nobody else thought of it, so I'm christening her right now:

Rosita.

What will I be listening to on Rosita?  Great music, including a new personal favorite song (listen to it in its entirety here as a video -- it's really worth it to hear the whole song), and many old favorites.  This is what led me to rediscover both my own KBCO Studio C CDs as well as to find that little one packaged away that someone will win in an announcement soon.  Besides great music, however, I can also listen to great audio books.   Look at what I just checked out from my local library:

Yes!  Now if I could only get my hands on the Spanish version, I'd be in a quixotic heaven.

What of the knitting, you ask? 

Sleeve #2 of the A Line Ribbed Jacket has been completed, and I hope to rip out my other front and finish that up soon, too.  So, I'll have a photo of a finished object later this week.  Yep, sewn up, buttons in and everything. 

I've been a little stressed lately.  I've had a deadline hanging over my shoulders (or is it head? in case you didn't realize this already, I have an unbelievable knack for butchering clichés, which really keeps my husband on his toes and laughing hard,  so I apologize in advance if that sounds weird to you), and I've had this deadline since, oh, about when I started the A-line ribbed jacket.  (I also have this knack for avoiding responsibility for casting on for new projects.)  Well, I just finished it** and this little package in the mail helped me ...

Check it out!  A secret pal's package sent by not a secret pal, but a secret pal angel.  Yes, I joined secret pal 4, sent out some stuff, and got an email in return.  An email.  Secret pal, where did you go?  Luckily Lisa truly was an angel and showed me the definition of thoughtfulness  ...

We have a handknit dishcloth in my most beloved "happy" colors (reference my Charlotte's Web if you need to verify this), wonderful lavender lotion and soap (and not the cheapy stuff, but nice stuff from a nice store), and amazing alpaca (yes, the same kind that started my whole little alpaca addiction, thank you very much.  What do you see in this?  Gloves?  I thought so.).  And check out the chocolate ... gourmet chocolate. 

Lavender.  Chocolate.  Wow!

I'm not embarrassed to say that after an evening, I had this to show for it ...

(I can't help it, but titles that start with "In which ...." remind me so much of my very favorite novel of all time -- Don Quixote de la Mancha -- and also Cate's blog as she often titles her blogs in this way.  If you haven't read this book, you should at least read part of it ... many really believe that it was the first "real novel" of the Western world, and all the references that you still see today to that book are really so amazing.  I see Don Quixote in everything.  But I digress...)

Okay, I told you that I'd tell you about my mother's Grace Beaded Purse, and here it is.

If you recall, this is this pattern:

In which the knitter slips beads between stitches, starting with one bead, increasing to two beads after a certain number of rows, and leading up to 6 beads at the bottom of the purse. 

This is also the pattern in which the knitter uses size 0000 needles (yes, that's four zeros).

Well, I'm so clever ... I started through the one-bead section, and I don't think it's violating copyright to say that the first section lasts for 30 rows (meaning fifteen beads on each side visible) and then proceeds to have twenty rows per section (meaning ten rows per side visible), and that starts with the two bead section and ends with the six bead section.

This brings us to CASE #1 of my silliness:

So, being the oh-so-clever knitter that I am, I said to myself -- 15 rows!  I can remember that.  So, once I had seven beaded rows on one side and six beaded rows on the other side -- yes, fifteen rows -- I started the 2-bead section.  I referenced the pattern, as I'm known to occasionally do, and when I saw that the 2-bead section lasts for 20 rows (or ten on each side), I thought ... "How odd.  Why would they have more rows in the second section than for the first section, when the picture looks like there are more rows in the first section??"  So, I started the third section.  Let's not tell how many rows later it was that I read through the entire ill-written pattern again and realized my error.  Did you catch it?  (Yes, please don't gloat, I'm sure you immediately did.) 

So, I thought about not ripping it.  But, I knew it would just be totally weird, and without taking a photo I totally Frogged The Whole Thing back to the single-bead rows.  This is where I'm back to:

(Okay, I'm cheating and using a photo I took a while ago, but I think I'm even less than this with the ripping, so this is definitely a more interesting photo.)

No ... that's for the next entry.

Well, I thought I'd just say that I'm feeling really lucky right now that I have all kinds of neat, interesting knitters crossing my path.  I think that when I started this blog, I did it out of purely selfish purposes -- you might know what I mean, because you might be reading this blog and saying to yourself, "Wow, she has some nice projects, but I'm doing stuff that's as cool as what she's doing!", because that's what I said about your blog.  (And, if you don't have a blog, go get one!  Then other people can say that about yours, and the vicious knitblog-addiction will never end.  That's okay, we don't want it to.)  Well, meeting all kinds of neat people has been a thoroughly appreciated side effect of me doing this wierdo thing here in blogland. 

Last Friday, Cathi and I got together with our little kiddos, and snatched in some knitting between mommy moments.  It's rare to find people who you like, with kids that your kids like (and who they don't either beat up or get beaten up by).  So, to find someone like Cathi who is both of those things, plus who actually can understand this knitting language that I speak, and who gets equally excited by things like SEX, talking about our SABLE status, and other weirdo knitting acronyms, is really a blessing in my life.  Thanks for the playtime, Cathi!  (Sorry that I'm a lame blogger and didn't take photos.) 

I got to see Cathi again later that night because Wanda had a small impromptu little get-together with me, Cathi, Cynthia and Michelle.  A little knitbloggers get-together, if you will. A great time was had by all, attested to by the fact that we left no sooner than 1:00 AM (yes, we are wild and crazy gals). Wanda proved to be a Cape Cod-mixer-extraordinaire, while Cynthia kept us in stitches (pardon the pun), and Michelle wowed us with tales of being in the military and living in Saudi Arabia.  Cathi was just being hilarious and cool, like always.  Go see what she was working on that night, and just finished and you'll see what I mean.  I think the highlight of the evening was when I turned to the other girls and said, "Hey, speaking of Lorna's Laces, did any of you see that cool pattern that the Argyle colorway works up to in a sock?"  And ... they did.  I mean, this to me is the sign of a group of people who understand your language.  (And, if you speak my language, too, you'll go here to see for yourself.)   (Sorry again that I'm a lame blogger and didn't take photos.)

Okay, blessings aside, here's the mother's day update [and, if you're wondering, I haven't really let any of my family into my little "private life" here, besides friends who actually knit and just *might* be interested in this (but who probably aren't) so I can blog about such things without ruining any surprises].

I recently bought some Knitpicks Shimmer in Morning Mist and Maple Leaf to make little lacey scarves for the MIL and the DM.  I started last week on a faggoting stitch pattern (which I've always been so uncomfortable saying and now I can tell you that I'm also a little uncomfortable writing?).   Anyhow, did you know that faggoting patterns simply mean "do the same lace pattern on every row"?  I thought this would make my scarf easier, but I worked it on small needles, and then my yarn got tangled, and before I knew it I'd spent two hours on one inch of scarf.  This wasn't going to work.  I then remembered the "airy lacy scarves" from Last Minuted Knitted Gifts.  Joelle Hoverson to the rescue!  Size 10.5 US bamboos to the rescue as well!  Here's the scarf I cast on for at Cathi's house and finished at Wanda's house.  (Well, almost finished, I just had another inch and then I bound off the next day, but you hear me.)

Here's the blocking action:

And note the self-striping action of Shimmer. 

Finished and ready to go!  A little longer than planned, but a successful little scarf overall.  Just a little something to send along, along with a cute kitty pin and some cards that my kids wrote.

Meanwhile ... as for my Dear Mother, what about that little Grace Beaded Bag, you ask?  Well, that gets into my next entry, which I'm going to title "In which Jenifer makes mistakes and is sort of stupid."  You'll see soon enough.