Python pandas: fill a dataframe row by row

The simple task of adding a row to a pandas.DataFrame object seems to be hard to accomplish. There are 3 stackoverflow questions relating to this, none of which give a working answer.

Here is what I'm trying to do. I have a DataFrame of which I already know the shape as well as the names of the rows and columns.

>>> df = pandas.DataFrame(columns=['a','b','c','d'], index=['x','y','z'])
>>> df
     a    b    c    d
x  NaN  NaN  NaN  NaN
y  NaN  NaN  NaN  NaN
z  NaN  NaN  NaN  NaN

Now, I have a function to compute the values of the rows iteratively. How can I fill in one of the rows with either a dictionary or a pandas.Series ? Here are various attempts that have failed:

>>> y = {'a':1, 'b':5, 'c':2, 'd':3} 
>>> df['y'] = y
AssertionError: Length of values does not match length of index

Apparently it tried to add a column instead of a row.

>>> y = {'a':1, 'b':5, 'c':2, 'd':3} 
>>> df.join(y)
AttributeError: 'builtin_function_or_method' object has no attribute 'is_unique'

Very uninformative error message.

>>> y = {'a':1, 'b':5, 'c':2, 'd':3} 
>>> df.set_value(index='y', value=y)
TypeError: set_value() takes exactly 4 arguments (3 given)

Apparently that is only for setting individual values in the dataframe.

>>> y = {'a':1, 'b':5, 'c':2, 'd':3} 
>>> df.append(y)
Exception: Can only append a Series if ignore_index=True

Well, I don't want to ignore the index, otherwise here is the result:

>>> df.append(y, ignore_index=True)
     a    b    c    d
0  NaN  NaN  NaN  NaN
1  NaN  NaN  NaN  NaN
2  NaN  NaN  NaN  NaN
3    1    5    2    3

It did align the column names with the values, but lost the row labels.

>>> y = {'a'