A year older, a year wiser (or at least I hope!)

I love birthdays!  It doesn't even have to be my birthday; I just love birthdays.  My birthday was last week and I think it was easily one of my top ten birthdays of all time.  I'm not even sure how to explain what made it soo awesome because it was just a good feeling overall, ya know?   Okay, so maybe I can figure out one reason why it was great - Mr. SpiderKate and I weren't going through any big life events.  You see, we have this funny habit of having big life changing events happening in the Fall.  Life events like moving, changing jobs, buying a house, being laid off (okay, so we can't control that one, but it happened one year the weekend before my birthday) - these things just always seem to happen to us in the Fall.  This happens often enough that it seems like we are never in the same state when the other's birthday happens.  Weird, I know.  

Mr. SpiderKate really went all out for my birthday this year.  This year he surprised me with not only one of the Barbara Walker Treasury of Knitting Patterns books, but he got me all 4 PLUS a stitch dictionary for Fair Isle Motifs.  I had been telling him how I keep checking out the first book in the series from the library and how invaluable it would be to own it or any of her 4 books.  In fact I was telling him that if he wanted to get me ONE of the books that I would like either the first or second book in the series.  Never did I think that I would be lucky enough to get all 4!

Taken with my new camera!

Mr. SpiderKate also surprised me with a new camera.  Since he is often the one taking photos of my knitting designs, he was beginning to see that our current camera just wasn't really getting the job done.    It also didn't help that the camera had recently taken a nose dive onto our tile floor courtesy of me.  Oops.  So, needless to say we'd been talking about upgrading the camera.  Well, Mr. SpiderKate did the research and got me the Olympus OM-D E-M5.  Let me just say that this camera is awesome and (I'm not gonna lie) a little overwhelming.  I have a lot to learn about taking photos, but I'm confident that with time I will get better at it.  Oh and I should mention that he also got me a camera bag to go with the camera (otherwise if/when he reads this he's going to say "how come you didn't mention the camera bag??).  So yes, there is a camera bag as well :o)

My family & friends also made this birthday extra special with their love and thoughtfulness.  Truly I don't even know how to express how loved I've felt this birthday.  I think I'm the lucky one to have ya'll as a part of my life and I'm thankful for each of you!