I got all kinds of shoes for my birthday. I also ordered these.

Today is my 25th birthday. Last night I was laying in bed thinking about birthdays, why we celebrate them and why mine is SUCH a big deal to me. I think celebrating a birthday is a celebration of life.

Today I will celebrate my life. I am very fortunate to have a healthy family, to be well myself, to have a place to live, to have people who love me, to get to do what I LOVE for my job – to be surrounded by yarn EVERY DAY!, to have the opportunity to grow and change and learn, to have found such a wonderful community of internet friends. I am lucky and today I rejoice in that.

I’m at the store today, the kids are with me and it’s dark and rainy outside. I LOVE weather like this. I’ve already had a nice sale to start the day. Later, my friend will come to visit me and we’ll start on a new knitting project (hopefully the cable eight top!). My birthday week celebration (I’m so spoiled!) will come to a close tomorrow with dinner with my friends.

It’s a good day and I think year 25 will be good to me.

I’d like this sweater from the new knitty. I’m not totally certain that I’d make it for Jim and if I did it would be sans cable, but it’s pretty great.

I’m also thinking about starting this pretty soon, maybe as a knit-a-long with my friend Brooke.

Cable eight top from the Spring ’05 Interweave. I think I’d like to wear it more as a vest for the fall/winter season with a crisp white button up.

What else?

I’d like to come with similar patterns for these three for the store. I think the felted bead bag is really interesting and I’m IN LOVE with the cabled purse, but that’s no surprise. And I think the felted scarf looks really elegant, it even looks comfortable which I think is surprising for something felted… we’ll see…

It’s been almost a year that I’ve been working at the yarn store in some sort of capacity. (I actually taught my first class ever on my birthday.) In that time, I’ve grown to love so many of the people that frequent the store. I think that is ultimately the reason that I decided to take over the store, I loved all of these people and I just couldn’t let go. They still needed this place and so did I.

I think the thing is that when your heart gets tangled up with all these people it becomes open to sharing their joy and their pain. It’s so exciting when someone brings in their new baby or comes to show me an engagement ring. But it’s also so devastating when someone comes in reeling from bad news.

I have a customer who has cancer. I hate cancer with every fiber in my being. I hate watching someone suffer and there be nothing that I can do about it. Some days she doesn’t even feel like knitting. It’s the scariest thing in the world and it is SO unfair.

Yesterday, another customer of mine lost her brand new grandson. He was born with tremendous birth defects and died in his mothers arms. I grieve today for a baby that I never knew, whose parents I never knew.

Things get messy when you allow others into your heart. But I think that’s really the joy of life, sharing it with others. I think I’m truly lucky to have the opportunity.

•Over the weekend Honor got his prize for not having a potty accident a whole week straight. We went to Chuck E Cheese’s and paid $20 for a blue spider ring and a pot of lip gloss. The kids had a great time and I think Jim and I had an even better time. I think that we both thought we would never go to Chuck E Cheese’s because he would never be potty trained. And, trust me, it was well worth the $20. Now we just have to get him to the point of not expecting candy every time he goes.

•I whipped up these mittens for Eden on Saturday. The would have been a really quick knit if I would have paid attention when I was shaping the thumb gusset. Instead, I had to rip them all the way back to the gusset and start over. Oh, well, they’re cute.

Pattern: My own
Needles: Addi turbos size 9 – magic looped them two at a time
Yarn: Dive Tesseo – about half a ball.

•Today was the first day of my birthday week. This is what I woke up to.

Sweet Jim.

•I’ve been sitting here for awhile trying to come up with words for my thoughts about today, September 11. I try to refrain from stating my political views on this website so I’ll just paraphrase what I read today on the front page of our local newspaper.

“We have suffered a extraordinary loss and we have given up many, many sacred rights. And we’re still not safe.”

Maybe some day we will be.

Now that Eden is a little older, we’ve been able to play some games with her. Her favorite game of all times is Dora Candy Land. Oh, how I love Candy Land, let me tell you. We’ve played it so many times and listened to Honor go back and forth over wether he wants to be Backpack or Boots that we thought it was time to find some other games to play. Eden can play Uno pretty well and last night we bought Sorry (Jim’s most favorite game of all time).

The problem with playing games with Jim is that he cheats! Always! And the problem with Eden knowing that Jim cheats is that once in awhile during a conversation, totally not related to playing games, with my mother or a complete stranger Eden will randomly blurt out, “Daddy Cheated.” And THAT is a hard one to recover from.

Monday
Tuna and Noodles

Tuesday
Spaghetti and Meatballs

Wednesday
Burger King

Thursday
Chinese Chicken Tacos

Friday
Grilled Sausage Kebabs

Saturday
Minestrone Soup

Sunday
leftovers

Last Saturday we headed up to the mountains for a picnic. It was so perfect up there, the mosquitos have already died off, but the weather is still beautiful. There were a few spots on the aspen trees where the leaves were starting to turn gold. I have to say, this is my absolute most favorite time of year.

We took the dog with us which is always… interesting. He has gotten to be a BIG beagle – at least 40 pounds at 9 months old and he’s not quite done growing. This big beagle likes to sit in my lap while we are in the car which doesn’t really work for me because, 1. I like to feel my legs and 2. I must knit while in the car. Sorry puppy. We got him a new leash attachment that goes over his nose and turns him into a good dog, it’s amazing! And it really makes for a much more relaxed family outing.

While were were up in the mountains, we took the opportunity to take some amazing photos of the kids. I love my camera! I’ll probably be pestering you with photos of the kids over the next several days, they were all so good! But here’s a few to start.

Jim took this one.

Jim took this one.

Eden took this one.

We had a busy long weekend, among all the activities was the puppet show. Jim and the kids spent quite awhile constructing the puppets and then took turns putting on shows for us.
(click any photo to see bigger.)