Thanks everyone for the kind birthday wishes!  It was indeed fantastic!  Here’s a blurry picture of me taken by my dad at Buca di Beppo, a yummy Italian restaurant, with my free birthday dessert and candelabra, haha.

We had a great time, and my parents bought me some awesome yarny birthday gifts from the lovely yarn shop!  Unfortunately for this post, almost all of it is stuff for knitting — there’s just one neon ball of yarn that I got that could go either way (see post here for full birthday gift details).

While we were at the shop, I asked the lovely ladies there about spinning, thinking that I might like to start spinning my own yarn.  I asked if it is generally cheaper to spin your own yarn than to buy it, and basically they said it depends on what kind of yarn you’re making/buying and how much pre-spinning stuff you might need to do.  Of course the wheels are very expensive — upwards of $400 for the good brands.  The yarn shop does have spinning time where you can have a lesson and rent a wheel for $25/4 hours (which you spread out over the month), which sounds great.  I just need to get up there and try it out.

Again, I’m afraid I have no crochet to show you today.  I thought about starting a dog sweater for my baby girl but just couldn’t get motivated to start, even though I have enough of that frogged cotton yarn to do it.  Is it possible that I’m getting bored with crochet?  Goodness I hope not — I’ve been doing it for years and it’s meant so much to me!  I’ve just been knitting so much more lately… I don’t know if it’s the fact that knitting poses a new challenge for me (whereas I haven’t been too challenged by crochet in a while) or the fact that knitting takes up less yarn and therefore I have to spend less money on it.  Or perhaps I’ve run out of fun patterns that I’d like to try, or just don’t have the money to buy the yarn for it (which I know is the case for some projects, like blankets).

On another note, I’ve decided to go through my old crocheted hats and scarves and give some to Goodwill.  I’ve got TONS of items from over the 7 or 8 years I’ve been doing this, and since I live in South Carolina there’s no way I could possibly wear all my hats and scarves in one winter.  It just doesn’t get that cold!  But for someone less fortunate than me, these warm handmade items might be very welcome.

Sorry this has been such a wordy post.  I’ve just been feeling some post-birthday down-ness and this blog is sort of like a journal — I feel like I can say whatever I feel and nobody that I know personally will ever know (except my mom, who does pop in sometimes, and I tell her everything anyway so that’s fine).  Even if I don’t go into detail, the writing process itself is soothing to me.  Thanks for bearing with me today.  Hope to see you again soon!  Maybe then I’ll have some great crochet things. 🙂