Third Time's the Charm?

I have been knitting sleeves; three of them, in fact. The first was the 'gauge swatch' for the sweater. It was going along swimmingly until I realized it was going to be about 3" too long. The second sleeve was coming along nicely until I realized I wanted the cuff to be 4 stitches bigger to accommodate the shorter sleeve. So I am now happily knitting the third sleeve and hoping it will be right. I'm going to take 2" out of the stocking stitch grey part and 1" out of the black stocking stitch near the top of the sleeve.

I'm quite intent on finishing the St. Moritz sweater because I've decided to enter it in the local spring fair. That, and a few other of my knitted items. Maureen, a fibre friend, is going to enter some of her knitted items, too, so we're getting all excited with the planning. We've both registered and are now awaiting our entry tags which will be affixed to each item with 4" lengths of the yarn that were used in each project. The prize winnings are as follows: 1st Place - $5; 2nd Place - $4 and 3rd Place - $3. We'll even be competing head to head in a couple of categories. What I really, really, really want to win is one of those honkin' rosette ribbons. We're also looking at other nearby fairs in which to enter our stuff and have found that the Roseneath Fall Fair has some pretty cool categories, including one where I could have some of my handspun judged.

Today is my birthday and I've been having a wonderful time. Skip outdid himself this year with my presents. I'm hard to shop for because I already own everything and am quite particular about many items that I still want. His gift choices certainly demonstrated that he really does listen to my prattling on about stuff.

Dish soap, you say? Well we were doing grocery shopping the other day and I mentioned that I really like Dawn dish soap but don't buy it for myself because it's too expensive. He filed that little factoid away in his head and surprised me today with a whole bottle of it! It's also good for soaking yarn before dyeing it. Then at Easter, I mentioned that I like the white chocolate almond bark so Skip filed that away in the recesses of his brain, too. But the most surprising thing was receiving the bird book! If you look closely it's "Guía de campo a las aves de Norteamérica". It's in Spanish! How cool is that? The story behind this gift goes back to when we were in south Texas in February. The gift shop at the World Birding Center on South Padre Island has a very nice gift shop. Both Skip and I have the English versions of this book  (two different editions) - it's an excellent birding guide as it has actual photographs of the birds rather than drawings. I remarked that it would be neat to have it to learn the bird names in Spanish. Not only are they in Spanish and of course the Latin names are there too, the English is there as well. And voilà! It pays to let people know what you want. He's so thoughtful. I have already learned that woodpeckers are called carpinteros (makes sense, right?) and warblers are called chipes.

Aside from all the wonderful birthday wishes I've received both as cards and on Facebook, I got a long, newsy e-mail  from one of my favourite former students whom I haven't seen nor heard of since about 1985! A couple of weeks ago I was looking through some old photos so I could scan them and upload them to the reunion webpage of the school I taught at in the 80s before moving here. I googled this particular student's name and was very pleased to find someone with his name with a photography website. On closer inspection, I recognized a portrait of his father and instantly knew it was the same student I had taught 25 (!!!) years ago. Well today, he checked that e-mail account and was very surprised to hear from me and send an awesome response.

And here we were.

We were all dressed up to play in a pit orchestra for the local glee club's production of 'Camelot'.

Boy, it's amazing how much one ages in 25 years. Sheesh!