birthday fun!

I've blogged a lot about gifts this week, and I have to say that gifts are fun, but this birthday was the best ever not because of gifts, but because of my wonderful friends and family. I'm continually amazed at how lucky I am to be surrounded by people who are so thoughtful. From Groupons for my favorite yogurt ever to handmade birthday cards to candy corn, my life is fun and my heart is full.

So after my birthday dinner at Bella Monia (where I had the MOST amazing meal I've had in months), I spent the evening laughing with good friends and relaxing. What more could I want? ...a breakfast the next morning with more friends! SO much fun! I learned two things about my knitting friends: 1) they are serious gift-givers 2) they are super creative and amazing. I mean, I knew the second part, I guess now I have more illustrations of that.

Like, the "yarn ball surprise". I'm not sure if that's the technical name, but that's what I'm calling it. What is it? It's a giant ball of yarn, with a small-medium gift in the middle and many smaller gifts wrapped into the yarn. You have to unravel it to get to your gifts. How fun is that? Here's a pic of Deb's yarn ball, gifted by Melanie:



Any gift that's as much fun for spectators to see unraveled, as it is to receive (and probably to prepare), is a super-fantastic gift!

i heart crochet

I am convinced that if you are a crafter, you should only give handmade gifts to other crafters. I mean, sometimes you'll get an appropriate amount of excitement from a non-crafter, but to really appreciate some projects, I think you have to have an idea how much work goes into them. I know that I've had some lackluster responses to things in the past, and it's disappointing.

When I get something that's handmade, I'm COMPLETELY jazzed. To be fair, I get pretty jazzed anytime someone thinks enough of me to give me a gift, so if they took the time to make it...then..yeah.

For my birthday, my friend Meg crocheted a STEELERS trivet for me! This is exciting on three different levels: Steelers, handmade, crochet flower. Love, love, and LOVE! In fact, it's now considered art, not a kitchen accessory.



By the way, this is really, REALLY driving my desire to learn crochet.

Crochet Sunday

We were cleaning out one of our closets today and I was rummaging through boxes of my grandmother's things. My brother had left these boxes with me after cleaning out his garage, but I didn't realize everything that they contained. I found this canary yellow crochet set that my great-grandmother made for me when I was a baby.

the whole batch...













bonnet and booties...















looks like a february sweater, no?













hoodie...

















this made me think three things:
1) I wish I knew how to crochet
2) I wish I had thought about having my niece's photo made in these when she was a baby
3) I wish I had knitted when she was a baby so that I could have made her something like this