A March Birthday

I had a birthday! My boyfriend took me to Boston:



Where he had reserved a table for us at Rowes Wharf for an elegant Afternoon Tea overlooking the water:



It was an incredible tea, with rose petals on the table and champagne, along with the best tea and scones with Devonshire cream...

Afterward we wandered a bit down Newbury Street and visited a yarn shop:



and I didn't leave empty-handed:


Koigu, Farm-spun 100% cashmere, and Artyarns Silk Purse 100% silk

(I think I'll make the Linen Stitch Scarf from Churchmouse Yarns and Teas with these yarns)

When I came home I had wonderful presents from my best friends:



Yes, that IS a bar with chocolate and potato chips!!



My friend send me a WHOLE BOX of bags she had made! I love this one especially but they're all wonderful.

I love March.

A Moon and Stars Birthday

New Zodiac

I have a birthday this week and my two dearest friends have sent me packages in the mail, full of kindness and marvelous gifts, and some of them themed in full moon and birth-date stars...


Full Moon bookplates from Thorazos etsy

(I've heard that the Pisces Full Moon on the 19th of March will bring the moon actually closer to earth than it has ever been in recorded history)


Regia Astro Color: Fische and Austerman Step (the one with Aloe & Jojoba!) in color 145: Fische (Pisces)


Hand-woven bookmarks... Doesn't the blue one look like the scales of beautiful blue fish?

...and, incredibly, this handmade silk scarf - made by Charlotte - with my favorite flowers: purple and white violets:



Even though it's still wintery here, these packages have brought a little Piscean spring into my house. I do have birthday plans that involve yarn-stash enhancement, and art museums and moon-gazing, and the ocean...

Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
Alone sings now.

The rayless sun,
Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
Unearthly white.

Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.

- Walter de la Mare

we definitely believe in a joyful future

I had a birthday on the 16th and I managed to extend the fun for a week and a half. My celebration included good food, good friends, and good yarn. Usually birthdays are cues for serious thinking and pondering of the future, but I was not so serious. The closest I came to that was when I pulled out some non- digital photos and contemplated life, the universe and all that...



Don't I look very 80's!?

The yarn was good - from Webs in Northampton, Mass, where my bf and I made a lunch of eclairs and fruit tarts, to Patternworks in Center Harbour, NH, where we went grocery shopping and found homemade jams and local chocolates and watched a small airplane land on the iced-over lake...



Right in front is a wonderful sock yarn Zauberball that my friend Nad sent me from Germany. And there's Mini Mouchi and Malabrigio and a Namaste sock needle case, and my friend Melanie gave me a really beautiful green and blue "Knit Kit" from SlipStitch Studios.

I have been knitting several things at once: diaper covers from bright colours of Knitpicks Riasta, Shur'tagal in STR Oma Desala (shhhh! don't tell anyone - it's a KAL that doesn't start until next Wednesday!), a drapey shawl-sweater in Malabrigo Baby Lace, the Stone Chat colourway; a hooded baby towel in Knitpicks Crayon 100% loopy cotton. So rumours of slacking are totally unfounded. Knitting has been happening! But no designing. Last year I was so full of creative designs that I made something new almost every month. This year, 3 months has already passed (almost) and I've spent my time making other people's patterns...

I suppose it's because I've been knitting for comfort since January. There have been some hard parts to recent life, and stomach-constricting thrift that sucked the joy out of each breath... for a while, just a little while. Things are on a more even keel just now. We definitely believe in a joyful future.

A final interesting note - One of my local yarn stores, The Elegant Ewe, just told me that they've ordered 12 copies of the book I did sample knitting for, A Stitch In Time. As far as I know, it's the first store in the US to carry it! More and more projects from this beautiful book are popping up on Ravelry and each one is so lovely. I want so much to keep my copy new that I've been reluctant to take it around to show it off. So if you're one of my friends who has been trying to get me to share by prying it out of my clutching fingers - neener neener! Get yer own book!