Secret pals unmasked

My participation in Favorite Color Swap 2 comes to a conclusion with the arrival of the second package from my secret pal, who I now know is this person. Four skeins of Peruvian Highland Wool came in the mail last week, and today brought a ballband washcloth and The Knitting Answer Book by Margaret Radcliffe. The book is particularly well chosen as I certainly have no shortage of questions. I'm sure it'll be put to good use. I imagine I was a challenge for my secret pal, so I appreciate the thought she put into what to get me.

Also, I can now end the charade of an anonymous e-mail address with the recipient of my package. I'm glad to know that I didn't make an enormous gaffe with what I picked. In fact, it sounds as though the yarn store employee would have been directing me to the wrong color with her interpretation of raspberry pink.

As you can see, I also put a custom mix CD in the package I sent. Although I had less information to go on, I was more assured in the musical selections than the yarn colors. (At one time my ambition was to be a radio program director.) I had designed a cover insert for the CD, but my printer isn't cooperating. I haven't diagnosed the problem, so I had to go with a handwritten tracklist. It occurs to me that I told her I would attach a tracklist with the source albums, but I sent that e-mail without it. So, to get liner note info to her and fill up some blog space, here's what on the CD picked to fit her adult alternative tastes:

1. Badly Drawn Boy "Once Around the Block", The Hour of Bewilderbeast
2. U2 "Always", 7
3. The Cardigans "Good Morning Joan", Super Extra Gravity
4. Fountains of Wayne "I Know You Well", Out-of-State Plates
5. Belle & Sebastian "Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie", 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light
6. Neko Case "Hold On, Hold On", Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
7. Ryan Adams "Firecracker", Gold
8. The Jayhawks "Bad Time", Tomorrow the Green Grass
9. Beulah "Silver Lining", The Coast is Never Clear
10. Jens Lekman "You are the Light (By Which I Travel Through This and That)", When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog
11. Beth Orton "Anywhere", Daybreaker
12. Sufjan Stevens "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti", Greetings from Michigan
13. The Decemberists "The Crane Wife 3", The Crane Wife
14. Matthew Sweet "Come to Love", 100% Fun
15. Sloan "Rest of My Life", Action Pact
16. The Pipettes "Tell Me What You Want", We Are The Pipettes
17. Wilco "Kamera", Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
18. Kathleen Edwards "Summerlong", Back to Me
19. Josh Rouse "Directions", Home
20. Joe Henry "Stop", Scar
21. Aimee Mann "Nightmare Girl", Humpty Dumpty
22. Sam Phillips "How to Dream", Fan Dance
23. Kelly Willis "Reason to Believe", Easy

There's nothing to report on the knitting front. The late afternoon and evening were spent at the Academy Awards party. It was a swell time for us local critics to be catty about red carpet fashion choices, to outguess one another regarding the winners, to groan and cheer those taking home statuettes, and, of course, to eat, drink, and be merry. I'm seriously tired from all the fun and the late night, but it was worth today's lethargy.

The telecast got pretty tedious toward the end, but if there's any gripe I have, it's with the announcer's remark after The Departed was named Best Picture. It's Scorsese's first film with a plot? Kind of a rude bit of editorializing, wasn't it?