Birthdaylicious!

I am now 27! Yesterday was very birthdaylicious.

It started with presents at midnight.

M got me these two books I asked for.



(I saved these images to my computer before loading them here)


The night before we went and met M's Mom and sister for dinner at the crepe place. A yummy crepe filled with goat cheese and artichoke hearts and other goodies went into my belly. Then M's mom and sister gave me this!



Very helpful in the future with all the yummy Malabrigo I plan on knitting with. I think my brother might be providing with a yarn swift sometime in the near future because I told him yesterday that if he had no idea what to get me, that would be great, and he could ask M what they are. I just sent that same brother a handknit hat and scarf and if he actually gets me a yarn swift there will be more handknit items going his way. I am not above bribery.

We went to walk around Newburyport after M brought me Dunkin Donuts coffee and a breakfast sandwich for breakfast. Dunkin Donuts anything is the way to a New England girls heart.

Newburyport is an adorable town. The downtown is filled with great shops, bakeries, cafes, and an awesome knitting store. The name is a Loom with a View and they are at 31R Pleasant Street, it's basically a little brick alley right off Pleasant Street. Their number is 978-463-YARN and they have a website, aloomwithaview.com but the woman told me it is bare bones at this point. They have comfy chairs, a clean bathroom for customers, a decent selection of yarn and spinning equipment and looms for sale. I highly recommend it. They also offered to wind my Malabrigo for me without prompting and then checked to see if it would be enough for my brother's hat, and then did not attempt to sell me another ball when I will not need it. I would go back to Newburyport and this store in a second. While we were there M got into a conversation with some other new knitters that went basically like this:

Woman One: If you are going to be sitting in our comfy chairs for knitters, you need to knit as well!

M: I do knit!

Woman One and Two: Whhhhhhhhaaaaattttttt?

Then they talked about why he knits, knittinghelp.com, and other good things in the knitting world.

I missed most of this, but would have loved to see it!

I got the aforementioned Malabrigo there (below) and two skeins of Lambs Pride Bulky to start an afghan in a pattern I found in a Treasury of Knitting Patterns Book One.



M also got a bottle of white vino we discovered at a gourmet food store to go with the chicken picatta he made me last night! No pictures of that, I gobbled it up because I love capers, lemon and breaded chicken together so much. The wine was consumed and silliness commenced.

We also purchased some cake for later which was delicious. Oh my god. You almost did not get a picture of that because I was halfway through it before I remembered to snap one. It was from some cafe type coffee bar place on Pleasant Street in Newburyport across the street (on the other side) from the yarn store. GO NOW!

We had a funny exchange there.

Me: Can you recommend one of these two cakes over the other?

Woman: I couldn't tell you because I can't eat chocolate.

Me: Oh, I'm sorry.

Why not just say you don't know? I feel for this woman, it must be a horrible life. I have my own food issues (dairy) that makes life a little harder, but chocolate? What kind of a world do we live in when people cannot have chocolate?

This was so good. It's peanut butter and chocolate cake with lots of yummy chocolate frosting and peanut butter cups on top. Delicious.
Then we went for a walk in Maudsley State Park in Newburyport to see the foliage. It was pretty, but not the spectacular colors I am seeing on my drive on Route 3 to Nashua during the week.

They were having some sort of haunted walk in part of the park but we just walked around. We ran into some people on horseback and one small stretch of the haunted walk.

We also saw all this prettiness:

We stopped at a farm on the way home and fed some goats. Their tongues felt pretty funny and they were eating thistle! M fed them the paper bag the feed came in. They semi-fought over the bag, ripping it out of the others mouths! A paper bag people. I bet they really do eat tin cans. There were cute little ones and we could feed those just by holding the feed lower. Some of the bigger ones got fed for their pure effort of standing up so high. There was this one old billygoat that kept wheezing. Poor guy, he probably has lumbago or something.

Then we came home and M made me yummy dinner and we watched the Sox win and ate the above cake.

There was a lot of petting of this creature:
There was some knitting of the afghan. 210 stitches a row!

This shows the color better.
I will be knitting on this tonight after dinner, hopefully watching my beloved Sox win Game 7!
Just to prove that there has been knitting! My first Jaywalker, almost to the heel. No dropped stitches this third time around, no pattern being off by one stitch. I am going to put in a lifeline before I begin the heel, as well as knitting the leg portion of the second sock before I attempt the heel. That way there will be less chance of the dreaded SSS. I did most of this at a CLE on Friday on DWI's. That is continuing legal education on driving while intoxicated for the non legal people. I still paid attention, but my mind didn't wander to make up stories about the people I don't know there because this was just enough to keep me focused.

Baby blanket progress! The baby this is for is now 9 days old! It's getting close to completion, this is either the last repeat or there might be one or two more, depending on my thoughts about the size. I think I will find an easier pattern that doesn't require so much attention for the next blanket because there are some mistakes in this one that bother me. It's only in two rows, but still! The perfectionist in me is offended.

That's all for now!

Happy Knitting!