Birthday Celebration

Thank you to everyone for your birthday greetings. They were very well received and I appreciate them all. I had a great day on my birthday. I woke up to my boyfriend wishing me a happy birthday, which was just the beginning of my day. Had a nice, leisurely day waking up and got dressed and met up with some knitters! Hung out with everyone, made some progress on my sock and the scarf and then began attempting Eris, which really gave me a headache, but I worked about 6 rows of the first chart. I guess charts aren't so bad, this just isn't knitting for social activity or mindless knitting in front of the tv, at least not in the charts. Then went to lunch with my girls,Michelle, Cyn and Stacey. We had ourselves a great time and these lovely girls even treated me to lunch, much to my surprise. Thanks again ladies, you helped to make my day special!!

Then I was off to go home and make myself pretty and trust me, that takes a little time. I had to drag out the box of contacts and clean a pair so I could wear for the evening, a quick pedicure, shower, change of clothes, put the front of my hair up into bantu knots, change of purse, application of makeup, putting in contacts, perfume, jewelry, etc and then a quick mani before we were out on our way to dinner at The Keg Steakhouse, mmm, yummy. Even the vegetarian M was satisfied with his steak (swordfish, caught ya!) and great dessert. It was nice to go out for dinner as we haven't with so many things happening this summer, it was really good to have a lovely, romantic dinner with my sweetie! He also gave me a beautiful bouquet of roses and a card.

Just to show you something I made last summer but never wore is a shawl. But not in the traditional form of a shawl, but one made from Rowan Kidsilk Haze and a skein of Colinette, can't remember the name, but it is a thick and thin yarn.
View from the front:


Birthday girl in shawl I made last year, finally making its debut 




and one from the back where you can really see the detail:






On to the knitty progress, as this will be quick. I finished the first sock for my Sockapalooza pal and am on the heel flap of the second sock. I'm almost done with the heel flap and on to my least favorite part, picking up stitches and doing decreases for the sock. I don't mind picking up stitches at all, I just hate doing the decreases, but oh well, once those pesky decreases are done, I'll be on my way (close to halfway with the foot being done).
Here's a pic of the sock in progress:



and a closeup of the lace rib:



Lastly, a pic of the Thandi mohair scarf as it is progressing nicely:



The brown chai color I found for this scarf goes very well with the other colors and I enjoy knitting it so much, I'm finding it to be addictive. It's easy to knit a color change pattern repeat as it's only 22 rows long and about 34 stitches on the needles, it goes by quickly.

No pictures of Eris thus far as I've not even finished up one of the 5 charts that makes up the collar. I will have to make time to work on this one with no distractions, but the charts aren't nearly as difficult as I thought. Thanks Michelle for the hand-holding! :-)

That's all for now. I will try to post a little later in the week as I'm busy reorganizing and destashing stuff, books, yarn (yes, even some of my yarn will have to leave-some will be up on Ebay in a day or so, I will update the page when that happens) and I need to go through some things in my storage closet as well. Thanks to Margene's thoughtful post on decluttering, it really got me thinking. I've been unhappy with the state of stuff that I have and I really need some more organization to happen. Probably this has been exacerbated by the fact that M brought over the last of stuff into the house as well as his youngest son living with us, so all this clutter I've been hanging on that has no meaning or value to me anymore must go. I'm tired of lugging all this stuff with me.