Saved by Friends…
Yesterday was my birthday and I want a do-over! If it weren’t for my friends (and a couple martini’s last evening) I think I would have gone to bed crying. It was SIL3’s final graduate concert yesterday afternoon (she’s a soprano vocal performance major), cutting the entire day in half so there was no opportunity to do anything special. Then all the in-laws were here for that, which meant dining with them all. They have no sense of culinary adventure. They are firmly mid-Western palettes. Guess where I had the pleasure of eating my birthday dinner? Old Chicago’s! We eat there on a pretty regular basis. Not special, not exciting. Sure, they asked me where I wanted to eat, but sadly Japanese and Indian were shot down almost before the words were fully uttered. Combine that with three gray hairs I found on Saturday and it was just a peachy weekend!
Will I ever get used to the fact that birthdays are a *huge* deal in my family and not really important to DH and his family? I hate always being disappointed in them. Last year was highly unusual, but I set it all up myself and my mom was visiting. It was also a milestone year. No matter what, after the big high tea of last year anything was going to be anti-climatic, but yesterday was pretty depressing. I did get to eat breakfast with DH at one of my favorite places. But we were originally supposed to eat with a friend who canceled out on us, then much too late e-mailed to say someone else talked her into coming up, but we had already gone to breakfast.
Oddly grandma seemed to have forgotten. No usual call or card… My sister has been in occasional frantic communication needing to verify zip codes and such and she said to expect something this week. She is thoroughly confusing me, however. She keeps saying “some of it is may be ‘out there for you’ so if you don’t want anything let me know because I might want it.” That leaves two options that I can think of - clothing or camera accessories (we both have the same DSLR now). Seeing as how the camera accessories I can think of would be out of her means I’m guessing clothing. But “too out there for me????” What, did I just wake up an old lady? First three gray hairs and now my sister thinks stuff is “out there for me?????”
Fortunately, my friends helped salvage it and it became a very fiber rich birthday. My fiber arts library has exploded! Over the last month or so, Amanda gave me Favorite Socks and The Art of Knitting (she got that one for 50 cents and I don’t think it was technically a birthday gift, but I’m counting it as one to make me feel better). Then last evening Ashley stopped by and gave me Fitted Knits!!!!!! I had drooled over Hannah’s copy while we were in line for the Yarn Harlot a couple of weeks ago. My mom, as usual gave me money. With her blindness and my distance that is the easiest. So, when the LYS was having a Buy One Get One 50% off sale this weekend I bought the First and Third Walker Treasuries (I already have four, so I’m just missing the second one), The Ashford Book of Hand Carding, and Spinning Designer Yarns - 2 spinning books, 2 knitting books. It seemed appropriate. Thank you Amanda and Ashely and Mom!
I also had the surprise of a package from Margene on Saturday. I took a photo of all the contents, but it was blurry due to the low light of the morning. But she sent me a wonderful 4 ounces of Project Sprectrum-y merino roving from Anne aka Wooly Wonka Fibers. It is the Tulips colorway and is definitely Project Spectrum material. I’ll have to spin it up soon! :-) There was also a lovely smelling Lavender Grey from Blessed Juno and I’m excited about that because I’ve been rationing my use of one of her lavender bars for quite some time now :-) Then there were chocolate dipped altoids - the perfect gift for knitters because even once the mints are gone the tin can hold stitch markers or other small notions. Thank you Margene!
I also got a cute pair of shoes with some of the birthday money - Bernie Mev. Oreo in Cream. Now I need to decide if buying some wool combs with the rest of the money would be a bit too much “work stuff” for my birthday…
Next weekend several of us from SnB will be getting together to freezer paper stencil t-shirts and bags and such for ourselves since we had so much fun with onesies this fall. Since Ashley’s birthday will soon follow that gathering I’m going to make some fun spring-time cupcakes next weekend for all of us. It should be fun.
