A new year for me and lots of new things

My birthday was the other day and as with birthdays around here, we like to stretch them out into birthday festivals. The Farmer, Julia and I spent the actual day in Boston going to the Museum of Fine Arts, walking our big and little feet off around town, drinking tea and eating chocolate cake at Tealuxe on Newbury Street and visting the Copley Plaza Hotel and the Ritz on the Park (which is now the Taj). Julia’s comment on going to Boston was “Oh, this is great – I’m going to Boston and I won’t be going to the hospital or the doctor.” Guess we had better do some more fun trips to town…..


I want to thank the anonymous person who sent me this book this past summer. It came in a box from Nebraska with a note that said Happy Birthday! I haven’t known who to thank – so thank you Kind Person. Golden Fleece is a charming account of a young woman, Hughie Call, as she adapts to being the wife of a sheep rancher. She is a great story-teller and although sheep raising in The West is a bit different than raising sheep on a small farm in New England, I have found many similarities to our lives and the cycles of the farming year.

I met up with Amy Greeman from Storey last week very early one morning as she dropped her children off at a local school. Look what she gave me – my advance copy of Kristin Knits. I have been waiting with great anticipation to seeing the bound, finished book. There were many elements to the book which I didn’t know about and I was hoping I would be pleased. The back cover? Nice. Thanks to Amy at Knitty.com for the great quote. The endpaper? The hard cover binding? The index? The photographic reproductions and cropping? The chapter openers? Well, all my questions are now answered and I am relieved. I’m not going to reveal anything to you though – that would take all the surprise out of cracking open a new book, wouldn’t it? The book was a nice early birthday surprise.

One of the best birthday presents I got was from my friends, Lori and Chris. They built a “shopping cart” for my website. How cool is that? Now anyone can order directly from my site and check out with Paypal. I am so very excited about this gift – I feel like I have really entered big-time time internet commerce. Lori and Chris built my website a few years ago and keep tweaking and updating it for me. But this is the best! Thanks you guys! I am overwhelmed!

I'm thinking a chocolate cake may be due to add an extra weekend to the birthday celebration!