It was like Christmas for my birthday!

Geesh, what friends I have!  My birthday was this week and I got all kinds of unexpected stuff - I couldn't believe it!  First, I found a gift bag on my desk at work from a Helen, a fellow knitter and co-worker, stuffed with bamboo needles, stitch markers, a scarf pattern, and a ball of this lovely wool/silk blend from Universal Yarns - mmmm!

Then Catherine - knitter, sewer, all around craftster - left me

 a gift bag with a full yard of this amazing Echino fabric:

Aaaaand two bags of chocolates - Ester Price, no less!

Theeenn, my newest friend and also neighbor, Samantha came by today with the Tudora she knit for me (that's the picture at the top of the post)!  

Can you believe that?!  I couldn't!  It's fantastic in a lovely tweedy orange - AND, knowing that I've got quite a stash of buttons, she brought a little hank of yarn so that I could personalize it myself and sew on one of my own buttons!  I chose a yellow fabric covered one which doesn't show up well in the picture, but the colors and textures look great together!  What a week, I tells ya!  Arent' they all just the greatest?

I'm ok with being a lemming

Ok, so everybody's blogging and I feel kind of left out.  I mean I've got Ravelry which is kind of like having a knitting blog, but what if I want to rave about some keen macrame books I scored at the thrift store for 9 cents each?  (oh, and I did, and that's really how much they charged me - they were supposed to be 49 cents each, but apparently the 4 key was sticky that day or something!) "Macrame Fever" - that's the best title ever!

Oh, and I also got perhaps the most adorable spoon ever made:

And that's reason enough to start a blog, if ya ask me!  This will be a knitting blog mainly - I mean that's about all I do, and it's what I love to talk about (and the BF will only pretend to care about my knitting rambling for so long!)  Oh, about those macrame books - I'm not sure I'll ever make anything from them, but I just couldn't resist buying them.  It'd be sweet to somehow make macrame cool and modern, but I'm not sure it's possible.  I mean there's not really any way to get around the massive tassel and that's kind of what makes it all 70's.  However, I have memories of my mom sitting on the floor with her macrame board knottin' up something (probably one of those owls) and the idea seems kind of cool to me!  Probably, like most stuff I get, they'll sit on my sewing room floor for about a year before I get around to putting them on a shelf and then forgetting I have them for another 5 years!  Gaa, how did my first post turn into a macrame post!?!  I swear it will not continue this way!