Well howdy! Things are full-speed ahead, like always here at the looney bin. On Sunday A3 celebrated her 6th trip around the sun.

Here is a picture of my littlest when she was only a few days old... This is probably one of the only times in her 6 years that she's held still.

Her party was fun, and true to the nature of 5 & 6 year olds, it was all over the place. The trampoline and dress up clothes trumped pin the tail on the donkey and the other planned activities. No worries, we just let them run and do whatever kept them busy and happy. Chaos reigned supreme and this is the only picture taken of the festivities. All that can be seen of the birthday girl is some hair and the back of a pink dress peeking out from behind dad. The intended crafts, etc. were bagged up and sent home with party guests.

On Saturday... or was it Friday? Anyway, last week a box arrived. Our mail is delivered into a locked mailbox cluster with two attached, locked package compartments for large boxes. The larger boxes can only be opened with special keys. These keys remain in the locks of outside of the empty package compartments and the keys can only be taken out when the mail carrier inserts her magic key into a lower lock, thus releasing the key that opens the package box. When someone has a package one of the package keys is placed into their little private cubby so they can retrieve their package. Well, whenever I get mail the first thing I do is see if there are keys missing from the outside of the package cubbies. If so then I wish really hard for one of them to be in our box. After all, packages are fun! The other day I opened our little cubby and beheld one of the magic parcel keys. I did a happy dance and immediately ran to the other side of the cluster to open the compartment. And what I saw triggered peals of laughter. Not just the little tee hee giggles either, but rather the whooping out loud, snorting kind of laughter. Any neighbors witnessing the display made mental notes to avoid the crazy lady. I skipped back home with the box. The source of the giddiness was a box covered with this packaging tape.

The box was a prize package, courtesy of the Yarn Pirate! I won a contest she had sponsored and this was the loot. Argh, the booty still has me imitating Jack Sparrow (rather poorly though).

The treasure included: Yummy candy, a heavenly scented candle, wonderful hand balm, two kinds of wool wash, size 3 bamboo dps and the most amazing yarn from Sheep Shop Yarn Company.

The candy was immediately devoured, and the needles were fortuitous indeed. Just that very morning I had broken a size 3 dp needle while making a hat. Thank you Yarn Pirate, you saved my arse!

And yes Cindy, I know that I vowed "No more Christmas Knitting" several weeks back. What can I say except that, I'm weak, a fiber addict, a sucker for requests. My daughters asked me for Mom-knits for Christmas. Can you believe it? They want me to make them something! A1 and A3's requests are no problem. But A2 wants a knitted dolphin. Yikes! I found a book with a dolphin pattern, but since nobody has the coveted book in stock, it wouldn't arrive until after Christmas. So, today's engineering feat: transforming short rows into Flipper. It could get ugly. Cheers!