Staffelberg

This is Staffelberg. It is a rocky hill located just outside of Bad Staffelstein, where a really fun hotsprings has become a favorite destination of mine in the last 18 months. But on a nice sunny day when it's too warm to sit around in hot water, the views from Staffelberg can't be beat. Joe and I decided to take our rental car out for a spin on Friday and the view from the top was just great.



















The "mountain" is about 1500 feet tall, but you can drive fairly close to the top and it only takes about 15 minutes to get to the "summit." I am using quotes because this is but a wee hill compared to anything in the Seattle area, but the people in this area think this is one tall mountain.

One thing I find interesting about German parks and nature trails is that there aren't any safety warnings or railings or anything like that when you get close to a large drop-off like this one. Visitors can get as close to the edge as they want, and I guess if they fall off then it's their own problem. Unlike Americans, the Germans aren't overly-concerned with protecting the general public from themselves.



















Besides the rocks that jut out of the ground and the great views, there is also a cute little chapel and a snack bar at the top. And also some pretty butterflies. This one was nice enough to pose for me.

Surprise, elaborated

Almost a month ago Joe had to go to Atlanta for work. When he arrived back in Seattle and was on his way home we were talking on the phone. As he got up to his condo, he said that there was a package on his doorstep and that it must have arrived while he was in Atlanta. I asked him what it was and he said, "A surprise for you." And the story was born.

Over the next couple weeks Joe kept talking about "my surprise." He talked about ordering different things to put my surprise together, and would generally tease me to no end about how he had a really great surprise for me that I would LOVE, but wouldn't tell me what it was or give me any hints about it.

Eventually Joe did share with me how I would receive "my surprise." His friend Jon was going to Germany for work at the end of April and would stop by Coburg for a visit and drop off my surprise. He even said that Jon would take back a suitcase of my stuff so I wouldn't have to ship the rest of my winter clothes and shoes back to the U.S. Joe put Jon and me in e-mail contact and we decided to meet at the Bratwurst stand in the middle of town last Thursday.

Last Thursday finally rolled around and I went to the middle of town to wait for Jon and "my surprise" at the bratwurst stand. At around 3 (our scheduled meeting time), I saw my friend Garrie and said hello. He asked me what I was up to downtown and I told him I was waiting for Joe's friend Jon. I kept scanning the crowd because I didn't want to miss Jon. But when I turned around I saw JOE standing about 20 feet away from me, smiling and laughing. Needless to say the entire center of town knew I was excited to see him about .005 seconds after I saw Joe's face. I ran into his arms and we spent five really fun days together here in Coburg.

It turned out that there were several people involved in this elaborate scheme. Jon did end up coming to Coburg on Sunday morning for a visit, but he was the one who wrote me a couple e-mails from Germany to plan our meeting place and time. Garrie was in cahouts from day one and even met Joe at the train station and played point man for distracting me in the town square. And my friend Maggiee was involved because she made plans for us to bake cookies and do our American taxes when she came into town last weekend so I wouldn't make other plans to leave town during my two days off. And boy howdy was I ever glad that they all worked so hard to pull the wool over my eyes!!!!!

So Joe was really my big surprise and I couldn't have been happier to see him. But the question that remained was about all that teasing about the packages that kept arriving in the mail for me at Joe's place. Did he make all of that up? Apparently not, because when we arrived back at my apartment Joe gave me a beautiful brown bag lined with robin-egg blue velvet that had a brand new Dell laptop in it! It is spring green and has been customized with a fancy webcam, cordless mouse, and all sorts of little details added by my wonderful boyfriend. :)

Surprise!

This was by far the best surprise I have ever received. :)

Not another social networking site

Oh no, this one is much much different. I'm not talking about Myspace or Facebook or Friendster. I'm talking about Ravelry, an online knit and crochet community where weirdo knitters like me can find, post, and compare patterns, projects, notes, and all sorts of other stuff.

Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I started to google the projects I was working on to see if anyone else on the web was making them? Well, Ravelry takes that one step further. You can search their humongous database for the pattern you're working on and then the website links to all the other people on Ravelry who have made or are working on that same project. And they usually have pictures posted and recommendations on yarn and possible size or design modifications. And for non-knitters, that sounds extremely boring and silly, but when I saw it for the first time yesterday I almost passed out. It is just. That. Cool. Oh my is it cool. Here's an example of the coolness. I made that funky yellow cardigan last month and found a few gals online who had also made it, right? Well, when I looked up that pattern on Ravelry yesterday, I found ONE HUNDRED NINETY SEVEN different ladies who had knit it. Wow. Wowiewow.

My crazy organizational self also loves how each user can catalog their projects, yarn, knitting needles, and even knitting books with as much detail as you want. It is essentially your own personal scrapbook of knitting stuff, all laid out in beautiful, easy-to-follow formatting. Sigh.

Anyway, I had heard about Ravelry from other knit blogs and signed up for an invitation. Since the website is still pretty small, new users have to be invited so that the servers don't explode. I waited for over three weeks to get my invite and it finally came the day after my concert in the Reithalle. It is probably good that the invite took that long, or else I may not have been able to memorize all that music!

I still plan on bugging you all with pictures of my knitting projects, but I might not rant or rave as much about the specific patterns/yarns/etc. Unless you really want me to, that is. :)

Concert

Last night I had a concert in our theater's "Reithalle," a former riding hall that has been converted into a studio theater. The program was "Kuechenlieder," or kitchen songs. They are basically folk songs that would be sung at home for entertainment around the turn of the century and are all very charming.

Since the songs themselves are pretty basic, we added costumes, staging and lots of props to make the evening as entertaining as possible. The whole concert was masterminded by a colleague of mine at the theater who has put together this type of concert before with great success.

Here is my first costume. I actually wore this dress in our production of Frau Luna, but only for a few minutes at the end of the show. So, it got some real use for the first time last night.










The studio theater only has 99 seats and the concert had been sold out for over a week. A couple of my friends came to see me and had to sit on the stairs in the aisles along with a handfull of other theater employees who wanted to watch the show. It was really fun to sing for such a great crowd. The audience was very enthusiastic and responsive, which made the performance really fun.

This is my gala dress for one of the songs in the show. I play a snobby diva who tries to steal the attention away from my colleagues by interrupting the tempo of the song to throw in wild, show-off cadenzas. A cadenza is a virtuosic passage of music to show off the musicians talents and can be found in pretty much any solo genre of music. I had four candenzas to put together and the organizer thought it would be the funniest if I used popular melodies that the audience would recognize. I started with a popular aria melody, but then sang the Muppet Show theme song for one, then the Lullaby song for another, and finally the U.S. national anthem for the last one. It was a hit!






This is my last costume of the evening, a traditional Bavarian dirndl. It was so fun getting to wear these costumes for the show last night. I went into the costume shop last week and had two fittings to find the right outfits. The blue dress and this dirndl fit like a dream right off the rack. It really shows that our costume mistress really knows her stuff.




















It was great to have friends in the audience and they brought me a beautiful red rose. But this bouquet was really something. Do you see the four kitchen utensils in the flower arrangement? I absolutely LOVE how the Germans make bouquets, and this one is no exception. It was really the perfect gift to receive after our "Kitchen Song" concert.

What I learned in Grad School

I wrote a blog entry about a week ago and never got around to posting it. But I was reminded of it last night when I came home late after a long day of rehearsals, with this piece of paper in my hand:
It is a text sheet to a song that is on my concert program for this Sunday with a hand-transcribed melody underneath. I'll explain the sheet in a bit, but first, here is the blog entry I wrote last week.

I don't remember the argument my thesis was supposed to make. I don't remember what I said during my oral examinations. Heck, I don't think I even remember most of the curriculum from my classes. But now, after being out in the "real world" for almost two years, I realize that I did learn (and retain) a few important things from my graduate school experience:

1) Set the Bar High.
When I went to the University of Washington for graduate school I was feeling very down. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and felt like I was just spinning my wheels studying Vocal Performance, not to mention it was costing me a pretty penny in student loans to do so. But after a couple quarters I not only felt like I could handle getting a master's degree, but I was also encouraged to study Music History so I would come away with an academic degree, which would be very useful for a potential teaching career. I set the bar as high as I could reach and then started working towards it.

2) Never Give Up.
It seemed like a good idea at the beginning of my graduate studies, but it was actually quite insane of me to work towards two master's degrees instead of one. And when I had about six months to go before graduation, I honestly didn't think there was any way I could get those two degrees. It seemed like too much work in too little time and I was so sick and tired of school. But after taking one day at a time and slogging through my coursework, exams and thesis, those last six months did result in two degrees. One of my proudest moments in life was standing up at my graduation ceremony, singing for the entire crowd, and then later walking across that stage to shake the hand of our school president.

3) Know Your Limitations.
It was really a poor decision for me to take on two master's programs simultaneously. Not only that, but I was also juggling three part-time jobs in between classes, rehearsals and practicing. This workaholic pattern began way before graduate school, but really reared its ugly head in my last year of studies. My problem was I was always looking too far ahead in the future instead of what I needed to learn along the way to get there. I had the image of "Cougardiva, B.A., B.M., M.A., M.M." in my head and thought those four degrees on my wall would be my way to prove that I was successful and intelligent. But in hindsight, concentrating my efforts in just one area at a time would have still brought me success, and less agony along the way.

4) Use Your Resources.
This is something my Dad told me during a telephone conversation we had while I was auditioning in the fall of 2006. I learned how to properly find and use resources in graduate school. I became a veritable expert at Chicago Style and tracking down the perfect quote for a paper, but never really figured out how to apply the concept in the real world until he told me on the phone. Living in a foreign country and trying to find work in a very subjective (and sometimes unfair) business often made me feel very lost and vulnerable. This advice from my Dad was a saving grace in one of my low moments, because it made me realize that although I was on this big adventure by myself, it didn't mean that I had to be alone. After all, resources don't have to be just a bibliography. They can also be your friends, family, work colleagues, and even friendly strangers.

So, now back to that piece of paper. Our accompanist for the concert does not play by ear and there was no music written out for this song. We had to make some cuts to our program yesterday and the second half of the concert was running a bit short. So, I volunteered to transcribe the song so we could keep it in the program and spent yesterday evening finding a good key, and writing out the melody for the accompanist. And after I dropped off the music before going home last night, I realized that I learned how to cleanly notate and transcribe music in an orchestration class in graduate school. That made me think back to this post, in which I said I hardly remembered any course content. Well, apparently some things did rub off. :)

How I fell in love with opera

Orange you glad you looked at my blog today? :)

FREE PATTERN: Benetton-inspired chain link scarf

Sometime in the fall of 2006 I was window shopping along the streets of Mannheim, Germany when I came across a display for some knit scarves at Benetton:



















These chain-link scarves were something I had never seen before! I leaned in closer to get a better look and noticed the hefty pricetag. I think one scarf cost around 30 Euros, which teeters awfully close to $50 USD with today's exchange rate. For a scarf??? That's crazy!!

I spent a few more minutes figuring out how the scarf was put together. Then I toodled down to a yarn shop and bought about 300 grams of verigated acrylic yarn and started knitting. And here's what I came up with:



















Yep, with only about 4 Euros invested in yarn, I managed to make my own chain link scarf that was super easy and really turns some heads. I'm serious, every time I wear this scarf I receive compliments. So, since I've been lucky enough to find so many neat patterns for free on the internet, I thought I'd add my own little creation to the mix. Enjoy!

NOTE: This pattern is particularly good for beginner knitters who are interested in practicing casting on, stockinette stitch, and binding off.

It is also a great project for people on the go who like to take their knitting with them. I knit most of this scarf while riding on a train, and I only had to carry a bit of yarn with me at a time since each link in the chain is its own separate piece of knitting.

MATERIALS NEEDED:
-approximately 300 grams of worsted-weight or aran-weight yarn
-size 8 (5mm) knitting needles
-tapestry needle

*PATTERN:
The idea is to knit approximately 20 separate "links," or strips of knitting. You want each link to be about 4 inches wide and about 7 or 8 inches long. With my yarn that meant casting on 18 stitches and since my yarn was verigated (changes color), I knit in stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row, etc.) until I got to a new color and then bound off. Although I was not concerned about measuring each piece to make sure all the links were exactly the same length, they ended up all being between 7 and 8 inches long. TIP: You are going to have to sew the links together, so when you bind off on each link, leave about a 10 inch tail of yarn for this step.

When your "links" are all knit, use your tapestry needle to sew the ends of your first link together. You can either use a matress stitch or a simple whip stitch to accomplish this. (Or for you really advanced knitters, you could even use a provisional cast-on for each link and then graft each link together with kitchener stitch.) Then, take your second link and loop it through the first one before you sew it closed. Repeat with each link until all your strips are sewn together to make a long chain.

Due to stockinette stitch's tendency to curl over on itself, the links in your chain scarf will curl in making each link more sturdy. And since I was feeling extra lazy when sewing my scarf together, I just tucked the yarn ends into the curls and forgot about them. Minimal finishing!!

For my scarf I knit 21 "links" and the scarf was almost six feet long after being sewn together and worn a few times.
If you're a really hip trendy Benetton model, you could wear your finished scarf like this. Then you willl definitely turn some heads.
























But if you just want to wear it normally, it should come out looking like this. :) Okay, now go get knitting! And if you make one don't forget to send me a picture by commenting on this post!





















Benetton photos credit: http://www.nitrolicious.com/blog/2006/11/08/limited-edition-benetton-chain-scarf-part-2/

*Hey kids. Feel free to use this pattern for your own personal use. But please don't sell any copies of the pattern or sell the resulting scarves. Unless you are Benetton. Then it's okay. ;)

Ester Cardigan

I am in squeaky acrylic yarn heaven! Why squeaky, you ask? Well, when you knit with acrylic yarn, it often makes a squeaking noise when it rubs against aluminum knitting needles. I think it's charming.


This is my new Ester Shrug. I just finished it this afternoon and am mighty happy with how it turned out!

Have you ever heard of a knitalong? No? I hadn't really, either. But in the last few months I have started doing a google search about any cool-looking free pattern I find on the internet, just to see if anyone else is making that project and how they liked the pattern.

Anyway, after searching "Ester cardigan" I found a "knitalong" blog someone had set up so lots of knitters could all knit that one project at the same time and report back to one another on how they were progressing. I found it very interesting to see what the other ladies had said about this particular pattern. I think this whole knitalong idea is really neat, and so I started "googling" other patterns I like and these knitalong things are all over the web!


Anyway, on the Ester knitalong blog, one of the biggest complaints of this pattern is that the finished shrug seemed too big, and yet too small at the same time. Many mentioned that it wasn't long enough in the back or that the arms were too tight.

With this information in hand, I set out to knit a modified version of Ester to make sure I wouldn't run into this same problem. If you are thinking about making Ester and you like my version, I ignored the pattern author's warning and made the ribbing 10 rows longer at the beginning and the end (35 rows total). In addition, at each end I made the cable section about 1/2 inch longer than the pattern called for in my size (medium). This adds a few extra inches to the circumfrence of the garment without making the arm holes too big.

For those of you who haven't quite figured out how this piece is put together, just picture a "T." Then imagine twisting the two top ends of the T and sewing them upside-down to the sides. It's a very interesting construction method.







Here's me in the shrug. The result of adding those extra 10 rows of ribbing is that I have enough room to close it in the front without the arms getting all pulled out of shape. I think this was the root of the complaints I found by other ladies knitting this project.

Anyway, since I don't want to hold the shrug closed like this every time I wear it, I'm off to the store to find some cute hooks or buttons to secure it in the front.





But before I head out, here's one more picture of the cool cable pattern in the back. This cable pattern is way easier than it looks, which is my favorite kind of project to knit! Also, since this pattern was pretty easy and very repetitive, I didn't have to fully concentrate on watching my knitting and therefore I used the time while knitting this shrug to memorize my German text for my concert next Sunday!

Oh wait, you want to know the best part about this project? It used just over three skeins of Red Heart Sport acrylic yarn, which only cost me around $6.00.

Basketcase

It seems fitting that I finished my Basketcase socks this afternoon. I feel quite a lot like a basketcase, so hopefully wearing these warm, squishy wool socks for the rest of the day will help calm me down.

After Saturday's premiere of Faust we had one day off and then jumped right into stage rehearsals for our next show. The stage director seems nice, but our choreographer is a bit eccentric. And since there are only 2 1/2 weeks until the premiere of this show and everyone else has had three extra weeks of rehearsal (when the choir was still working on Faust), he is pushing us through our choreography at a record pace, which is quite stressful.

Ah, but who can be stressed while looking at these socks? Isn't it neat how the pattern really looks like a woven basket? So smart!














I can also practice a little yoga in my socks to help me focus for an upcoming concert in just 1 1/2 weeks. I have what seems like a mountain of German text to memorize and sometimes I feel like I just won't get it done and will fumble my text in front of the German audience. Sigh.

But to distract myself from that potential embarassment I can just take a break from memorization and admire the "Eye of Partridge" heel stitch, which is a kind of reinforced stitch so the socks are extra durable. Such a good idea!

Anyway, I'm not totally convinced that some cute socks are going to save me from feeling like a basketcase, but at least they'll keep me warm!

Faust Premiere

On Saturday night we had our premiere of Gounod's Faust. The audience was not sold out (only 380 tickets were sold) but the applause for the singers was very warm at the end. The music in this opera is very beautiful and the singers and orchestra really gave their best efforts and sounded great. However, when the stage director came out to take a bow at the end, half the audience applauded and the other half booed him.

I'm not kidding. There was really a very loud, resonating group of people who shouted "BOO!"

It was weird. I have never been onstage under those circumstances and even though it wasn't directed at the choir, it was a very surreal, and not very pleasant, experience.


The reason for this mixed reaction is due to the director's interpretation of a very traditional German story. Actually, it is fairly safe to say that Goethe's "Faust" is the most famous story in all of German history. And it was apparent that about half of the Coburg audience didn't like the way our director messed with it.

I have quite a bit to say about his adaptation of the opera, but it's kind of a long rant and I'd rather cover that in another post, so for now let's take a look at my costume!

All the women in the house and extra chorus wear the same costume and wig and the men all wear black slacks with a white shirt and black tie. With all 50 0f us together onstage we make quite a striking group.

My colleagues have told me that I was made to be a secretary since my costume fits my body type so well. Hmmmm...

See that wicker basket to the left there? There's lasagne in it. We really like to eat in the women's choir and we take turns cooking for one another. Someone else is cooking dinner this Friday night. Yummy!




Here's a close-up of my fluffy wig. Take a really close look because this may be the only time you see me with short hair.
























I took one more picture really close up so you can see how our wigs are constructed. The wig designers start with a mesh form that has been sewn to the exact measurements of our head. Then they take real human hairs and weave them through the mesh. If you look close you can see the tiny knots where each little bunch of hair has been woven through the wig form.

Once the hair has been attached to the form, the wig is then cut and styled to fit the piece. Each singer at the theater has their own set of wigs. Even though I've only been at the Landestheater for about 18 months, I already have six or seven wigs that are meant for only me. After a production is completed, the wigs are brushed out back to their "natural" state and stored away for later.

Knitting Jargon 101

In the knitting world there is quite a bit of jargon and acronym useage. I am not a huge fan of jargon, not only because it excludes non-knitters from what could be a universally-understood conversation about knitting, but also because I just feel silly saying a lot of the words. Especially the acronyms. They are really silly. But since I have the morning free (yaay!) and want to show you what I'm working on, I thought I'd give you all a little Knitting Jargon 101 (and then I promise to try and never use those terms in a post again!) :D Let's get started!

STASH: the collection of yarn by a knitter.
I don't really understand the term "stash," because based on my interpretation of the word, stash is a verb that means to put something away for use at a later time. A lot like chimpmunks storing nuts in a hollow tree. My problem with this word as it relates to knitting is that I apparently don't understand the concept of stashing yarn away. When I have it, I want to use it. Which leads to the current state of my dining room table:

Woah, Nelly! That's a lot of stuff! The problem is, I see all this lovely yarn staring at me and I immediately want to start knitting on the project that yarn was intended for. I can't even imagine what would happen to my social life if I started buying yarn for which I didn't even have a project in mind. Oh dear, let's not think about that.

An acronym related to "stash" is S.E.X.: stash-expanding excursion, which basically means shopping for new yarn.





This lovely pile of oatmeal-colored wool is referred to in the knitting world as a U.F.O.: an unfinished object. Now I can maybe see that it would be kind of funny to say something like, "Wow Teresa, you have four UFOs on your dining room table!" But really, it's not really that funny. Maybe laugh-on-the-inside funny on a good day. In any case, I'd just rather say it's the start of a really super cabled vest.








Here is my pile of squeaky, squashy red heart acrylic yarn. I swear, this stuff is so inexpensive and knits up so well, I sometimes wonder why people spend ten times more on other yarn.

Anyway, this is a future F.O.: finished object. When I'm done with it, It will look similar to this Ester shrug. I have already decided to make some adjustments to the pattern, though. With a bit of tinkering, I am hoping to have more fitted arm holes and more overlap in the front so I can knit in a buttonhole or two and put some big shiny red buttons on the front.



This is some leftover yarn from a scarf I made back in January and will hopefully be enough to make a pair of Fetching fingerless gloves. As you may recall, I have already made three pairs of these for my D.R.: Darling Relatives. This acronym gets thrown around a lot and has other variations like D.H. (darling husband), D.W. (darling wife), D.S. (darling sister), and so on.









I am very close to finishing up these Basketcase socks and will hopefully get to use them a bit before the weather gets too warm.

The yarn for this project was purchased at my L.Y.S.: Local Yarn Store. It seems like the crazy knitters have an acronym for just about everything.

So this knitting jargon and acronym stuff seems pretty goofy and harmless, until certain knitters get it in their heads to put a lot of them together to make silly sentences. Like this one: "I took my D.H. to the L.Y.S. on a S.E.X. for my U.F.O." Or, "My L.Y.S. didn't have what I needed for my U.F.O. so I had to take my D.H. on a S.E.X." Okay, that one was a little funny... :)

Like a Steel Trap

In 1m 43s

Click here to Play

Right now I should be memorizing music for an upcoming concert. Instead I'm playing quizzes online. Click on this link if you want to try your hand at naming all 50 states (but beware, spelling counts!).

I have to thank my sixth grade choir teacher Mr. Strid for my excellent time above. We sang the "50 Nifty" song in the fall of that school year and the text is essentially the 50 states in alphabetical order. And since Mr. Strid was an awesome educator, we not only loved singing the song, but we all memorized it for the concert. And now, about 16 years later I am proud to say that I can still sing that darn song from memory. Which is a great trick for impressing friends. You all are impressed, right? Right? Hrmm...