1. My olympic sweater is late. I'm not too crushed. I'm making progress, so I'm feeling ok about it, regardless of the seemingly endless monotony of 1x1 rib all over this damn thing. Ok, maybe not "all over" - there is a teensey bit of 3x3 rib at the waist.
2. I quit violin. Well, officially, I've just stopped taking lessons, but now that there's nothing making me practice, I don't really see myself playing much on my own. It's kind of a bummer. I found this really cool fiddle about four years ago and decided I wanted to play. I started lessons and progressed well for about three years. In the past year, though, I felt like I was barely treading water. Sure, I know the material gets harder as you move on, but it seemed like I was actually forgetting things that I had already learned. Anyway, a few weeks ago, my teacher assigned me an etude. As I struggled - and I mean really struggled - to play it, I started thinking the piece sounded familiar. Then I remembered that my first teacher had assigned it to me a few months after I started playing, and the really sad part was that, back then, I had breezed through it. That was the last straw. I decided it was time to stop and re-evaluate the whole "Mia and the violin" thing. I'll just give it some time.
Yuck! Enough of the gloomfest! How can I be glum when we have a celebrity houseguest:
Yup, it's none other than Flat Stanley visiting us courtesy of the munchkins in New Jersey. He's been siteseeing, so I've got oodles more photos, which I will post, as time and my flickr account allow.
