By the time it hit me on Monday I was done for. No breathing, no sleeping, all achey, fever and chills. If I didn’t know better I would say I have the flu. It might have been. Today I’m still having a smidge of trouble breathing but it seems to be leaving town thank goodness. And so far it doesn’t look like the boys have it. Or the man. Perish the thought!

I’ve been working on sooper seekrit knitting – which goes really slow when you can barely keep your eyes open. But I managed to snap a few pictures with my new lens on New Year’s Day. I’m still learning how to work with such a small area of focus when I’m shooting wide open. It’s kind of cool to have new things to learn though!

One of my resolutions this year is to learn how to master this camera. Another one is not leave deadline knitting to the last minute. You never know when you are going to catch the plague.

We would have slept in nice and late on Christmas morning. The boys being 12 and 13 they don’t get you up at the buttcrack of dawn like little ones do. But unfortunately 2011 will be remembered as Merry Poopmas or Poop-Pocalypse 2011. Rufus the wonder beagle is afraid of boxes. When we’ve moved in the past he has made this quite evident. I think the stress of our recent move and the big boxes for the man’s Christmas presents sent him over the edge. We woke up way too early to a dog who had filled his sleeping crate with poo. So the dog and the crate and the surrounding floor got washed very early. Thank goodness the floor was tile.  He looks so innocent here, but don’t let it fool you.

The boys were very happy with their presents – the big dude had a very video game Christmas. He even got video game inspired t-shirts. I am totally not happy with how fast he is growing up.

The little dude got a lot of wrestling related gifts and tees. He is still all about the wrestling. They even got to go and see the Smackdown taping here in town a few weeks ago. He desperately needs a haircut, but I’m loathe to chop off his curls.

The man got manly things, like firepits and toolboxes and things for the Jeep. Hence the big boxes that caused the poo. I had a totally camera Christmas. Sadly the 50mm lens that I got for Christmas was flawed, so I had to send it back. But a new one is already en route, so no worries. And even with the flaws, did you see that awesome pic I got of Rufus up there? Love it!

But now I’m thinking about 2012. Not in an end the world sort of way, but more in a what do I want to do with the year sort of way. I already have a motto for 2012. And a buzzword. My buzzword is mighty. And my motto?

She believed she could, so she did.

Need a last minute present for a knitter? Ravelry has an awesome gift option where you can send a pattern to another Ravelry member! Of course I highly recommend gifting my patterns… but today is Christmas Eve, so I have a gift for you.

Use the coupon code “thanks” to get any single PicnicKnits pattern for free! Or, alternately you can use the code and get $6 off of Sideways Shawlettes, Seven Songs, or Blue Brim Hats.

I’ll leave you with my very favorite Muppet Christmas song – with apologies that I think I share this one every year. But the sentiment is worthwhile. I wish you a Merry Christmas, and a blessed and joyous New Year, and I hope that you are well and happy wherever you are and whatever you do.

That’s the “formal living room” in the new house. It will be my office. We are even thinking about seeing if we can put french doors up. I feel like I will finally have a real office, and that it will help with treating my business like a real business. Speaking of being a real business, I”m going to start offering PicnicKnits patterns at wholesale prices for yarn stores. To that end, I have chosen to make the prices consistent. All PicnicKnits patterns will be priced at $6 beginning on October 10th. Some prices will go down, most prices will go up 50¢ to $1. But hey, it’s not all bad news. To soften the blow of the small price increases I’m having a sale until the 10th!

All individual PicnicKnits patterns, the Blue Brims Hats e-book,  and the Sideways Shawlette e-book are on sale – 40% off! The coupon code for this sale is house. Yep, house. Because I swear I spend money every single day on this house and we haven’t even closed yet! The only thing not on sale is the Seven Songs e-book. So stock up on some PicnicKnits patterns! And if anyone has figured out how to squeeze more hours out of a day, let me know. I’m dying over here!

I really don’t have that much soap. Really. Just to clarify it’s only handmade soap that I’m interested in. Goat’s milk soap is the best. I had a meeting last week and I needed some little prizes. So I went to my soap collection found a few cute things and wrapped them up. But not my blueberry biscotti soap with oatmeal. That one is the best. I need to buy more of it, so I can justify the unwrapping the bar I currently have. I don’t want to be completely without it. Ever.

Ok, I might have a problem.

Oh, what’s this? Um, yes. It’s more soap. I had mentioned to Erica over at Fiddleknits that I needed some coffee grind soap when she was talking about her sister making soap. And a few weeks later she was an evil enabler and casually mentioned that her sister had listed some brand new coffee grind soap in her etsy shop. Goat’s milk coffee grind soap even.

And I might have screamed “MINE” and then bought the soap and the adorable little soap dish before anyone else even had a chance to look at it. Maybe. But I really needed another soap dish. I think. And Watersong Soap Shop? How cute is that name? I was done for.

So anyhow. Don’t touch my soaps. Well unless you’re at my house and need to wash your hands. Well. Um. Even then make sure to check with me first. Better yet, buy your own soap.

Speaking of hats, I think I might be donning a photographer hat. Not in a “faux-tographer” try to make money just because I bought a fancy camera sort of way. Just in an artsy, I am really loving learning about the ins and outs of this. I really think this will be good for my designing business, and a good outlet for me. Sometimes the knit designing feels like it’s all I ever do. So learning photography is a good thing.

My husband came home and saw this and freaked out. “Am I supposed to buy you things with owls? Do you have an owl-thing and I didn’t get the memo? I didn’t know you liked owls.” I assured him that while I think owls are cute, the main reason I had ordered this adorable owl dish from Haldecraft was that I needed a soap dish for the kitchen and it matched my budding Fiestaware collection.

And the soaps! Could you die? They are so cute, and the pumpkin spice smell for these little guys is amazing. Like I washed my hands a good 30 minutes ago and they still smell sweet and pumpkiny. So I have clean hands, and too many hats, and I’m learning to take pictures. Speaking of hats, I have an adorable hat pattern to release this week. And the fourth song will be out for individual purchase tomorrow. I’m just gonna take some detail pics today!

Next up, the fifth song! This one will be in Ever After Yarns, in the Classic base. I finally got to take a picture of the skein with my brand new camera. Swatching has been done and I really think this one is gonna be a stunner in this gorgeous blue.

I love, love, love, love my new camera. Although it’s very big compared to what I’m used to. I got a Canon Rebel T1i with the 18-55 kit lens, and also a 55-250 zoom lens, plus a bunch of accessories. Last night I used the zoom to look at the moon and I could see nooks and crannies! It was amazing!

And hey, who is this cute young man? Can you believe that he is already 13? The flash fired on this one, and though I need to invest in a good flash, I’m pretty pleased at how this looks. Yes, he’s 13. Yes he’s rocking a mini mustache. And he’s nearly as tall as me, and I’m 5’10″. Where did the time go?

And one more picture, just for posterity. I really want to be able to take those artsy fartsy photos where the background is all blurry and the front is all focused and awesome. So I’m super insanely excited that having just gotten the camera yesterday I was already able to take this:

Lots of learning to do, but I’m really excited about it all. If anyone has suggestions for tutorials or photo assignments or the like, I’d love to hear them. I’m gonna set up a 365 set on my flickr, and I’m reading like crazy, but I need all the help I can get!

2011 has been a pretty great year for me so far, and I’ve decided that the age of 39 is going to be even better. Last night as I lay in bed thinking about my life (creeping up on 40 will do that to you), I realized that the decade of 30 has treated me pretty darn well. I have an amazing husband and kids, I’ve got this little business where I can say I truly love my job, and things are just moving in the right direction.

So let’s do a little celebrating. All of the individual patterns in my store are 39% off today with the coupon code of birthday. Just today. You can buy more than one pattern with the 39% discount even. The only things that are not on sale are the e-books, but they are discounted already.

Oh and don’t forget to comment on the Delius blog entry – I’ll be choosing a winner for the gorgeous skein of Absinthe Bluetopia from Liberty’s Yarn tomorrow!

And to make things even better, I’ve started work on the third song. There’s something about a silk/wool blend that makes knitting so much nicer. I can’t put this yarn down. It’s the opal base from ilLOOMinated Yarns, and it will be the third song. Stay tuned. (See what I did there?)

When I was little there was one special birthday present I always looked forward to. Sometimes it came early. Sometimes a bit late, but it always came right around my birthday. Well in the convoluted memory of a child it did, but that might not be right in retrospect. But the very best birthday present was blackberry day.

We would get up at the crack of dawn and put on our bathing suits. Yes. Then we would put on long sleeves and jeans and Mom would grab the buckets and pots for the berries. We would pick in the wee hours of the morning, before it got so hot that the long clothes were unbearable. We would fill the pots and buckets and eat a fair few along the way. Then we would head to the beach.

There wasn’t a real beach in Ohio, but we went to a lake shore. We stripped off our long clothes, went swimming and had a picnic lunch. For some reason I swear that my Aunt Diane always served us deviled ham sandwiches, but again, the unreliability of a child’s mind. I’m sure we ate other things sometimes.

And we would come home after a day at the beach and Mom would get to work. Some berries would go into pies, some into jams. To this day blackberries are my favorite fruit. But the very best part was the next morning.

The next morning instead of cereal or eggs or anything else we would have blackberries for breakfast. A big bowl of blackberries and a spoon. Mom would pour cold milk over them, and we would add just a teeny bit of sugar of they needed them. And when all the berries were gone, we would drink the purple milk!

I think this year when my birthday comes in a few days I’m having blackberries for breakfast.

I do have some amazing things coming up soon. I’m very excited about the publication of this secret design, and I’m working on a new e-book, and the first design should premiere in June. So that will be fun – I hope you’ll love the e-book idea as much as I do.

In life news we are quickly approaching the end of the school year. Which I’m excited about – because I love having the boys home with me, and also because (in theory) I will save gas by not driving them to school everyday. Though I’m pretty sure that we’ve got so much planned this summer that I won’t be saving any money on gas. The mom taxi will most likely be in heavy use this summer. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What are you working on?