UPs - Event Heads-Up and Catch Up

Greetings and Salutations!
My humble apologies for being absent for...jeez...over a month.
Here's a variety of updates and an Event Heads up:

Event!
I'm not sure if I have previously included in the blog a notice of this Stellar Free Concert:
The 11th Annual Music and Memories Concert will be tomorrow, Saturday, May 11th (6:15 PM - 9 PM).
I understand the Mayor has declared that day to be "Cancer Wellness Day"!
Yes, the concert is free however, any donations, silent auction, or raffle proceeds benefit the Academy for Cancer Wellness' Under-Insured Cancer Patient Endowment fund and Wellness Grant fund.

I have attended this concert for the last few years and have enjoyed each one.
Many of the professional musicians that donate their time and talents to this event are from our Tucson Symphony Orchestra and the Arizona Repertory Singers. I think they take this opportunity to perform pieces you may not hear at the Symphony performances. That is correct - this concert is not all classical music. Charming, fun and interesting!

The concert will be at the Grace-St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams.
Hundreds of door prizes are also distributed. During intermission cookies are served along with punch and a selection of chinese teas from the nifty Seven Cups Teahouse.
I think it is an amazing evening of music benefiting an excellent charity.

School
For the most part I have been hip-deep in projects for my Fiber Arts Degree. We are nearly done with the Spring semester and, although I haven't been doing "finals" (as in tests), I have been doing a variety of projects for all three of my classes.
I'll try to do individual posts on those projects but I will say I was able to include knitting in my final project for the Mixed Media class. A knitted bag with plaiting. It came out pretty well, although the handles are a bit long. Over-all, I'm pleased.

CooPurr discovered I was working with WOOL and
he plopped himself right down!

 An "aside" under the School topic - Podcasts. I have been listening to A LOT of podcasts as I worked on my projects and I have adopted a new method for Podcast-listening. It is my habit to go back to listen to the beginning of an adopted podcast and work my way forward. I have "caught up" on several of my favorites but I have been languishing in the past on many others. So...I have started to listen to the podcasts in two times - past and present. {wry grin} This way, I can feel included and be current - on Raverly, current topics, KALs, events, etc. And I can also enjoy the entire podcast - from beginning to end. Eventually. ;-)

My grateful thanks to the lovely souls who create and share their charm, time, expertise, and general cleverness in their Podcasts. Thank you all for keeping me in such very good company: Heather at CraftLit, Paula of Knitting Pipeline, Jasmine and Gigi of The Knitmore Girls, Dr. Gemma of CogKNITive, and Brenda of Cast On. You are appreciated more than you know!

Health
In case anyone is curious, the Little Brother continues to pursue good health. He excels at controlling his Diabetes and his doctors keep decreasing his insulin dosage. Woot!!

My health...pretty decent, actually. For the most part, unemployment/school seems to agree with me.
I did over-do it with late-nights/standing for many hours working on school projects last week and on top of that I got to experience my first-ever, real reaction to my weekly allergy shots. Jeez.
I'm alright but looking forward to some down-time before the Summer semester begins.

Knitting
Not a lot of recreational knitting here...

School-Knitting:
As mentioned in the School section, I did some knitting for my Mixed Media final project so there was some concentrated school-knitting there.
Also - a pair of for-Holiday-gifting Fingerless Mitts were completed via between-class knitting and a 2nd pair are nearly done. But I haven't knit a stitch on those for weeks. Mostly I've been dashing from school project to school project...
Oh.  Yeah - Please see the "School" update section. Sorry.

Recreational Knitting:
As per the last blog-post, I did finish the Scarlet Shade of Shades of Grey Swirl Coat around Spring Break.

There has been a smattering of knitting on the Origami Pullover, a pair of fingerless mitts, and some minor headway on the Lenore Socks (started years ago). 

I did pause briefly in the school endeavors to cast on the "Comfort of a Friend Woman Shawl" for the "What Else Would Madam DeFarge Knit?" Knit-a-long. (I'm a bit behind...)

Gryphon re-exploring my fulled knitting bag I originally created when he was a kitten
(he would play and sleep in the under-construction bag).

Cats

The Monster Cats are doing fine and they continue to be a major source entertainment and the focus of  any tweets I send out.

As you've probably already noticed, I've included (rough iTouch) pictures of two of the Monster-cats.
To round out the Cat-inventory and finish up this post, here's ginger-cat-brothers Nikoli and Mikale!

Kitty-TV has been showing "Bird!!" a lot lately. ;-)

And...Sweet-faced Mikale.