{"id":1129,"date":"2007-02-09T11:56:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T15:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/?p=1129"},"modified":"2007-02-09T11:56:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-09T15:56:00","slug":"happy-birthday-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/?p=1129","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday to me!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more My day, my planned evening, and a monkey head.--><br \/>\nYesterday, just at dusk, I was coming home from the post office.  As I got to the back door, I heard a crashing noise at the edge of the woods near the house.  Just where my neighbor&#8217;s back yard meets mine, there were no less than seven young deer jumping around.  I stuck my head inside and said, &#8220;Emily!  Come quick!  There are deer in the yard!&#8221;  My husband held our daughter up so she could see, and she said, &#8220;There really ARE deer!  I&#8217;ve never seen that before!&#8221;  I tried to snap a pic, but they were so far away and so well camoflauged that you can&#8217;t make them out.  It was neat to see them bounding around with their white tails flashing.  They retreated back into the woods and we went inside, where I made excited calls to my parents.  I&#8217;m not sure I believe my father&#8217;s claim that he arranged the whole spectacle for my birthday, but thanks anyway, Dad!<\/p>\n<p>I had a lovely morning.  I went out to the Original Pancake House where I got crepe shells with lemon and butter, along with bacon, orange juice, and coffee.  The tab was picked up by my in-laws, who graciously sent me the gift that keeps on giving &#8211; cash &#8211; with instructions to spend it on myself.  Done and done!  There&#8217;s more to spend, but it&#8217;s a start!  I sat and read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ghost-Map-Steven-Johnson\/dp\/1594489254\">The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson<\/a>.  Perhaps a book about a cholera epidemic in 19th century London isn&#8217;t exactly traditional breakfast reading, but I enjoyed it.  And it did have a pretty pink bookmarker in it which was a very sweet gift from an aunt, so that perks it up, right?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvini.org\/images\/knittingmisc\/sockmonkeyfinished.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tvini.org\/images\/knittingmisc\/sockmonkeyfinished.jpg\" height=\"200\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" align=\"right\" border=\"2\"><\/a>In knitting news, I&#8217;m about to ship off the hat at right to a friend&#8217;s grandchild.  This is <a href=\"http:\/\/knitty.com\/ISSUEsummer06\/PATTsockmonkey.html\">Sock Monkey from Knitty by Sheryl Lange<\/a>.  It&#8217;s stretched out on the mannequin head, it&#8217;s more kid-sized in reality.  It&#8217;s for a baby, but I like to knit at least toddler-sized, because they outgrow things so quickly.  By the time next winter rolls around it might fit.  I found the pattern to work up a little small, but then, I was also intentionally trying to make it smaller, so I probably exacerbated any tendencies the pattern might have.  This was worked on size 9&#8217;s instead of the recommended 10&#8217;s, because of yarn substitutions.  I also modified the ears to be garter stitch instead of stockinette, since the stockinette curled in more than I personally liked.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t have the recommended yarn, and didn&#8217;t want it as bulky since it was for a smaller head, so instead I paired up <a href=\"yarns \">Knitpicks Shamrock in Fitzpatrick<\/a> with a strand of the sock yarn pictured which I&#8217;ve already forgotten the name of.  Schurwolle, maybe?  It&#8217;s a Swiss (I think) yarn in an apparently discontinued colorway.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvini.org\/images\/knittingmisc\/heatheredsockyarn.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tvini.org\/images\/knittingmisc\/heatheredsockyarn.jpg\" height=\"100\" border=\"2\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\"><\/a>I found it in Huntersville, where they only had one skein left.  Not enough for a pair of socks, but perfect for my needs.  The white and red are Galway, and the black is Cascade 220.  I didn&#8217;t have any black multi-ply yarn for the eyes and nose, but <a href=\"http:\/\/turtlegirl76.com\">prostiturtle<\/a> had several yards left which she graciously donated.  Thanks, turtlegirl!<\/p>\n<p>My green socks are ready for me to bind off the toe of number two.  I&#8217;ll probably do that tonight, if I can squeeze it in.  We&#8217;re not doing anything fancy for my birthday tonight, as a dear friend of the hubby&#8217;s whom he hasn&#8217;t seen in years is in town, and they&#8217;re going out.  Fortunately, I am not a high-maintainence person, and I don&#8217;t have a problem with him going out.  More to the point, if I <i>did<\/i> have a problem with it, I would definitely tell him, he would listen and adjust his plans, and we would make other arrangements.  We&#8217;re not big into drama and head games here.  My only issue is trying not to stress because someone&#8217;s coming over and the house is a sty.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, while they go out, I will spend a fun-packed evening stamping Jayne hat boxes and writing notes from Ma Cobb.  I did check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0053318\/\">&#8220;Suddenly Last Summer&#8221; with Elizabeth Taylor<\/a> from the library, and I am planning on watching that while eating something really horrible for me.  I&#8217;m thinking maybe fast food Chinese.  Ahhhh&#8230; MSGlicious!<br \/>\n<br clear=all><\/p>\n<p>I hope you all have a wonderful day.  So far, I&#8217;m having a great time of it!<\/p>\n<p><i>Hats up for:  MI, NY, PA.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[5,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}