I have a small obsession. It has nothing to do with knitting or yarn. I know, right? Whenever I head down to the Riverside Arts Market, my husband will kiss me goodbye, tell me to have fun, and warn me – “Do NOT buy any more soap.”

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.

I’ve been reviewing in my head all of my things to do. So many things. I’m actually going to log into my neglected toodledo account and start using that to track things. That way I’m not dropping any balls. I never realized what a full-time job being a stay at home mom can be. Well a stay at home mom who can’t seem to say no to volunteering opportunities. Did I mention I now seem to be “coaching” the cross country team at my children’s school? In addition to being the VP of the Home & School Association (like a PTA) and all my other hats I wear around there. But I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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!

Not holding. Running. Not running on empty either.

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?)

This year I swore I was having a birthday week. Every year my husband claims an entire week for his birthday. Of course his birthday is right before Christmas, so he has always gotten ripped off in that regard. But this year I decided I was gonna have a birthday week. Those plans did not come to pass. We are house shopping, so now is not the time to spend money willy nilly on silly presents. And my boys are gone away at summer camp, so some of the fun things I envisioned doing are not that fun by myself. Oh well.

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.