Merry Christmas everyone!

In a few days, on Sunday to be exact, I will celebrate my first annual 39th birthday. This is a big milestone, no? Well, maybe it isn't since I plan to celebrate the same birthday every year from here on out.

So I'd like to entertain a little reversal here, and have a little contest. No answering questions, no donations to charities, just leave a comment telling me about a favorite birthday present you've received. I'll pick one at random on Sunday, November 4th and put together a little surprise package for the winner. See, as much as I love receiving surprises.. I adore putting together surprises for others. If the winner is a knitter or spinner, perhaps you'll get a nice fibery surprise in the mail. If you're not, maybe an Amazon or iTunes gift certificate... I have lots of ideas!

And here, I'll get you started. What is my favorite birthday present? Cassidy! She was born just a few months shy of my 30th birthday, and I had always wanted a baby before I turned 30 (weird.. I know!) But besides all of that, Richard and I were both surprised, since we had always thought our path to parenthood would be a difficult one. We were looking at facing lengthy and heartbreaking fertility cycles.. then there it was.. a positive pregnancy test, all on our own. And after a rocky first trimester, when we were expecting the worst to happen every day, despite bed rest and progesterone supplements, we were truly blessed... just in time to fulfill my 30th birthday wish.

Now, go, and tell me all about your favorite birthday present! As you can tell, it doesn't have to be a "thing", it can be "the perfect day", a great meal... anything.

P.S. Scorpios Rule!

The person with whom I've hosted my blog (and previous business website) all these years, has decided to close the doors. Directly because of the server issues going on. Apparently the server is not reliable suddenly and alas, all the up and downs and errors. So myself and the handful of others that have faithfully stuck with them need to find a new landlord.
In a speedy fashion, I need to find a new host, and start the process of re-installing blog software and moving everything (several years worth of images and blog posts). Ugh.

So.. again, be patient if you experience errors. I expect this to take a few days of work to get fully moved and get the kinks worked out.

Wish us luck.

If everything goes as I plan on it going, you shouldn't notice anything at all.

I was looking through the stash today for some yarns I had slated for upcoming projects. What.A.Mess. And goodness, so much stuff that I bought on a whim, or for a project I never completed, or project leftovers.. Oy!

So I got a box and started weeding. I've now put some stuff up for sale on DeStash

And I'll be putting more up over the next week, including some books.

I can't stop. At this point I'm even dreaming about lace. Seriously. This is a shawl pattern idea that has been bouncing around in my noggin for quite a while now.  It still requires some tweaking, but I think I should have the kinks worked out soon. As with all lace, the pattern is nearly invisible on the needles and unblocked. I keep pinning it out and gazing at it.. its so purty.. and so easy. This particular test run is with Dale Stork and e/6 beads. And I've placed an order for some alpaca silk lace weight yarn for yet another test run.  Still working on Spring Things. The nupps have really slowed me down. I swear last night it took me one whole hour to knit the row where the nupps are decreased back down to one stitch. I finally gave in and grabbed a size 0 needle to knit them (and it helped). However I made a really big oopsie, dropping the knit stitch between the two upper nupps (image on left). It unraveled down to the lower nupp. EEK! I picked it back up as best I could, but its missing some of its "nuppiness". The image on the right shows a nupp done correctly (in other words, no dropped stitches and subsequent unraveling.) Let me just say here and now.. Nupps suck.

Cass tagged me for a meme. And perhaps its a good thing.. I didn't have anything cool to blog today.

Wait I did have an interesting story to tell. Like how yesterday, Alex was tossing small rocks in the driveway, trying to hit a box or something - he overshot the box, hitting the rear passenger side window of our minivan, shattering it to a million pieces. But, I forgot to take a picture. So tell me.. how interesting is that story without the actual picture?  Anyway, van window was fixed today, and blast, insurance didn't cover it (high deductible). It happening on April Fools Day, made for some fun conversation with friends and family with whom we shared the story... if ONLY it were a joke...

The icing on that particular cake? It started raining literally minutes after the incident. The child in question, in fact is still alive and breathing (and I even continue to feed him despite his serious lack of judgment) But indeed, he has 400 dollars worth of hard labor to complete - and he indefinitely kissed the idea of an Xbox 360 goodbye.

Anyway, on to the meme.. I'm supposed to list five things I'm obsessed with.

1) Floors. I've blogged about this before.. I have this weird tick about floors. I'm just slightly obsessive about vacuuming and sweeping.

2) Wool. I love me some wool. Wool fiber to spin, wool yarn to knit.. one can never have enough. I love to touch it, pet it, and even sniff it. Theres nothing like the smell of lanolin! (aaannnnd heres where my non knitting/spinning readers roll their eyes!)
3) Politics (don't pretend you didn't notice)
4) Coffee. Good coffee that is - I cannot drink crap coffee. Give me dark roasted, strong joe with cream and sugar. And it must be from a large ceramic coffee mug, none of those prissy little teacups or plastic travel mugs for me!

5) The dangerous obsession... The one in which I wish all sorts of unfortunate things on the resident creepy voyeur, Little Man. You know, things he has coming to him, but mostly a good firing complete with being screamed at, public embarrassment, and so on. I'd also love for someone to slap him silly because he really has that coming, but I'm all about the non violence.  And you know I don't even have to really wish for these things because at least the firing and public embarrassment will come eventually - he is who he is. If I wait long enough.. it will happen. I can be patient.

I'm supposed to tag 5 people, but most blogs I read, have already been tagged... ooooh, except for Nan and Loren. Tag your it!

A day late, and a dollar short (aint that the truth!)

But anyway, yesterday was my three year blogiversary. I intended to post to celebrate, but the day got away from me (A girl scouts outing, a sick kid, a cooking marathon in the kitchen including baba ganouj, chocolate chip pumpkin bars, and Carole's chicken tomato stroganoff. I know - weird combos, but I had some cravings)

Anyway, its been three years.

Heres to many more!

 


As I mentioned last week when I announced finishing Rogue, there are a few things I would do differently if I ever made another one. I'm a little disappointed with the shaping at the top/back of the hood, it just looks messy to me. I kept thinking as I was knitting it that short rows might work - maybe they would? In my mind it would look cleaner, not to mention being able to eliminate that section on the hood where you need to graft live stitches to the sides of the hood cable panels, which was a real pain. And I would definitely make the torso longer, since its a bit short on me. But since I knit it to be close fitting, the shorter body length seems to be appropriate. Modeled shots at some point in the future, just not anytime soon.

Pattern: Rogue

Yarn: Briggs & Little Heritage in the color "grape"

Needles: Addi Turbo 32" US5 and US8 for the body and hood. Clover Takumi US5 and US8 straights for the sleeves.