1. Guess who turns six today?

Everybody’s favourite blog fodder Henry James (Hank to his friends) is a whopping six year old today. There was cake, and there were presents.

(Hank is seen here playing with the CD player and audio books that I got him for a present. He is not playing with the Gameboy. I consider this, right or wrong, a personal victory.) Congratulations to my sister Erin for keeping him alive for this long.

2. A big happy birthday to Kamilah, our niece and daughter of Kelly and Ben (MSF Ben). Kamilah, who is lovely, charming, cooperative and clear-thinking, becomes an official teenager today – turning 13. I don’t seem to have a picture of her, so you’ll have to trust me that she’s a beauty. (That’s a lie. I have several, but she is younger and not 13 in any of them, and if I had gone to all the trouble of growing up to be a teenager, then I wouldn’t want some dorky knitter Aunt posting lame pictures of me as a mere child all over the internet.) I’ll get a good one.

3. I turned this washed fleece

into this carded fleece.

I know that’s not quite spinning for Tuesdays, but you can’t spin uncarded wool, so I feel like it still counts.

4. Progress on the Tinks sweaters remains strong. I bought buttons.

I knit on the subway. (I thought that Subway Knitter might like that one.)

5. I knit while Amanda did this.

That’s a concert with the youth orchestra she’s in. I find going to the kids stuff really reassuring. Teenagers are out there in the world and I don’t like it. I like having them here where I know that they are safe. I wonder what they do when they aren’t here…but concerts….concerts make me feel like things are going to be ok. You look at your kid, doing something complex and clever like playing the violin and making real music and you think “Wow. My kid probably doesn’t have a smack habit I don’t know about.”

6. I checked my local Chapters for the new book. It wasn’t there. I know it’s profoundly pathetic to hunt your own book in the wild, but I can’t help it. I never feel like it’s real until I see it in a bookstore.

7. I drew a name for the copy of Mason-Dixon Knitting. Out of all the broke knitters who emailed me I chose a name at random, and the book will be going to live with Ivy W. Congratulations!

Tomorrow, finished Tinks! (I hope. Shouldn’t have said anything. It’ll all go wrong now.)