Life's a Stitch

So my birthday is coming up; I’m an Ides of March baby. Maybe that explains some of my quirkiness. My husband and I came to an agreement a long time ago regarding gifting.  The rules are:

1. Gifts can’t plug into the wall unless the recipient has expressed a desire for the object. A replacement toaster oven is not a gift.

2. Gifts must be something the giftee wants, not something the giver wants. A wood lathe would fail on both counts – it plugs into the wall and the gifter wants it more than the giftee.

3. We don’t do anniversary gifts to each other, it’s too close to Christmas and we use it as an opportunity to do something together or buy something we both want and that, indeed, could be a replacement toaster oven. There was an exception to this; we agreed to buy nothing for our 20th anniversary, but Chuck gifted me with a wedding ring for himself. It meant a lot since he had lost his ring when we were married six months and wasn’t in a rush to replace it. He wrapped it in nine consecutively smaller sized boxes.

4. Be careful what you say. Pointing out the pewter reindeer in the Cold Water Creek catalogue doesn’t mean you want a family of them for Christmas.

That said, I was gifted with ballroom dance classes this Christmas. It was something I really wanted that didn’t plug into the wall. It was truly a gift because Chuck wasn’t thrilled about it, his gift was his participation. So, now comes the b-day and he hasn’t asked me what I might want. Not being shy about asking I popped the question, "How about a single night fox trot class?" His reply, "Who’s taking you?" So much for that. Jewelry works just fine for me. Or yarn.

Slogging away on the Autumn Silk Cardigan; some projects just seem to take longer than others. I’ve finished the two front panels, this is the back. I don’t knit in the same order from project to project: