Whew that was close...

Yesterday ended up being a good day for me. It was my birthday. Lately I have not been a fan of getting older and yesterday was no exception, however it was an event filled day to say the least. It started with Sensei and I waking up to go to work, not a mention of Happy Birthday from him. I couldn't believe it!! My mother calls to wish me a Happy Birthday and I missed her call. Sensei called to sing Happy Birthday to me and I missed that call too. So I am in the car in front of the house letting it warm up and I listen to my messages. I proceed to call Sensei and we chat as I now drive away from the house. I then try to return my mothers call and she doesn't answer the phone. I am now on the freeway going to work and listening to the radio, Adam Corolla has Hootie and the Blowfish in studio doing an interview, I love Hootie and the Blowfish. I am zipping along enjoying the radio show and look down to notice that I was going about 80 mph. I am in a 65 mph zone, I said to myself, I need to slow down, I would hate to get a ticket on my birthday! Then 2 things happen at the same time, I look in my back mirror and notice a shiny black and white CHP car 2 cars behind me, but still in FULL view of my speeding Honda Accord and my mother is now ringing my cell phone. I drop speed immediately and pick up the phone. I inform her that I believe that I have narrowly escaped getting a speeding ticket just now and that if I had gotten pulled over that there was no way that I would get a ticket IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. Besides I could talk my way out of it right? So we go on chatting for just another minute and the CHP has now made a move on me, he is right behind me. I signal over, I am thinking that he has some where to go, some bad people to bust. But sadly, he then pulls even with me and looks right at me grabs his seat belt pulls it forward and mouths something along the lines of "did you forget your seat belt?" but it was with a bit of irritation. I then gave him the academy award winning dumb struck look, smiled sweetly and put my seat belt on. I will not be getting the Oscar, he pulled behind me and lit up the lights and pulled me over, on MY BIRTHDAY!!! He gets out of the car and I roll down the window and the conversation went like this:

Officer: You know I pulled you over because you were not wearing your seat belt.

Me: Yes, I know, I am sorry but it is MY BIRTHDAY and I was on the phone with my mom and she was wishing me a Happy Birthday.

Officer: Well that is no excuse and besides you were not on the phone with your mother the entire time. (this is when I figured out that he caught me speeding and was pacing me to give me the ticket, he had been watching me but I slowed down.)

Me: Your right but I had been getting calls since I got in the car and it just slipped my mind.

Officer: I need to see your license and registration.

So I pulled out my registration and got my wallet out. Now my wallet has the trump card if my birthday will not get me off. So I slid my license out and exposed what was hiding behind my license. I would love to say, but since this is a public forum, I should really not expose the exact contents of what is behind my license so that I may protect the innocent. I then prop the wallet open on top of my knitting bag in full view of the officer so that he may glance at it. He did. This is how the event ended...

Officer: Is that your husband or your father?

Me: No that is my brother, he is a Sergent Detective in _______________________.

Officer: Where is that?

Me: It is south east of Fresno.

Officer: Ok, well you really need to be wearing your seat belt at all times.

Me: I understand and I usually do:

Officer: Tell your brother that the CHP rocks! (no lie, he really said that.)

Me: I will, thank you very much.

Officer: Drive safe.

Yes, I didn't get the ticket. Whew!! I called my brother and thanked him for my birthday gift, he said he didn't get me anything and I said thank you for being a police officer, that was gift enough for me!

When I arrived at work this is what I saw...

I got the book of cables that I really really wanted. Thanks Holly!! And a tray of sugar cookies and teas from Jackie, they were yummy too.

After work I went to my favorite yarn store, Purlescense to get some more knitting done before I was off to dinner with Sensei. When I came in Chloe came over and handed me a large envelope that had a gift certificate from Sensei. What a surprise. It was fantastic that he thought to do that, support my yarn addiction, hehehehehe. So Chloe and Nathania are going to be on the look our for the perfect red yarn to make me my first sweater.

Also, I have posted the photos of the Red Felted Tote on my Finished Objects page. I must update that too, because I have many more finished objects that that.

Also, here is the photo of the great things that I have received from my Secret pal in Illinois.

She really has gotten to know me and has really read my blog and it is evident by they things that she has given me, my love of cables and purses, she got me a cabled purse pattern with all the tools need to make it, it was great!

A flower a day...

Will keep the frown away :)

Here is the orchid of the day, that is right, no knitting pictures just yet. I thought that I would go with a classic looking orchid this time.

More of Gma's 80th B-day...

As promised, the lady in the middle is my 80 year young grandmother Jalaine with her two older sisters, Wilma on the left and Beth on the right. My grandmother is the baby of six kids. She had a great time as you can see.

And this is the Clapotis that I knitted and presented to her for her birthday. It is obviously blocking in this photo. But the funny part about the blocking process is that I had to get a box and pins from my grandmother in order to block it at my other grandmothers house because she didn't have any thing I could use. So the Clapotis spent the week blocking in my Mimi's spare room until I could get back down there to gift wrap the wrap. Since I did not have the Clapotis to wrap, I had to find something clever to use to wrap it in that would take only a couple of minutes, see the wine box with the hot pink and purple wavy stripes on the right of her? Clever huh? And to the left of her is the largest wicker basket ever and it is full of yarn for her to crochet her heart out that my mom and uncle gave her. So I have gone full circle with the Clapotis from cast on to birthday gift.










My humble contribution to the party was the table decorations. I decided to make orchid arrangements (surprise surprise?!) with curly willow branches. The photo does not show the curly willow that well, but trust me its there. However it is also an interesting photo of my great aunt Wilma and my 2 year old nephew Josiah. I put rocks and fake water in the skinny vases, I had a really good time making them, 12 of them in all. From the photo here you can see that she thought they were real and had real water in them. Grandma passed them out to her guests when the party was over. She was so happy with them that she wants to make some other arrangements similar to these. So I promised that I would come down after the Holidays and we would go to Michaels and purchase everything and spend the day making silk arrangements.

Desktop Photo

Isn't this a fantastic looking orchid specimen? I loved it so much that it is my new computer desktop background photo.

Monthly Dishcloth KAL

I absolutly forgot to mention that I joined the Monthly Dishcloth KAL. I am so excited. We started a new dishcloth this past Friday, December 1st and I got my first 10 rows done that day. But since I had to travel over the weekend and help with my G'mas 80th b-day party I have not gotten a chance to get day 2, 3 or 4 knitted yet. So I am way behind. I have a feeling I will be caught up by this evening. I plan on getting a few rows done at lunch. Wow, it is lunch time now, got to go knit!

Spelling lesson

Since I can't post any photos of my completed knitting because they are Christmas gifts for some people that read this blog, I thought that I would share my love of Orchids. Here is your Orchid for the day, maybe I will make this a routine in my blog. And yes Mom, your gift is finally finished! I finished it last night while watching TV. And when I have not torchered myself enough, I started my best friend Irene's gift this morning. And later today I am going to be casting on for my boyfriends knitted cap that he requested. Seems that his head gets cold when he goes out to golf in the morning. So I have a brown colored yarn to match his brown golf shoes.

Family news, my maternal grandmother turned 80 this past Saturday. We had a very nice party for her with lots of friends and family in attendance. I think I have mentioned that she crochets, well my mother and her brother bought my g'ma (grandmother) the largest wicker laundry basket that Michaels sells and FILLED it with yarn. I mean lots of yarn. From what I heard, I didn't count them, there were about 58 skiens of yarn. So we all have put in orders for aphgans. Get to hooking g'ma! (OH, I don't think that sounded right, hehehehe) I will down load the photos of my very young 80 year old g'ma for you all to see. I would hope that I look just half as good as she does when I turn 80!

Some of you know this but for the others of you that don't, I was a cheerleader for about 10 years in my younger days, much younger days. And I have a little cheer for you all that I did on Saturday. Here goes...

U-C-L-A (insert pumping fist in the air) RAH RAH RAH !!!

I am sooooo happy that USC lost on Saturday. It was fantastic!!! And if you know me or have ever read part of my blog, you know that I am a HUGE Notre Dame Fighting Irish fan. So ANYONE that beats USC I am a fan of. But I do have a warm spot in my heart for UCLA anyway, my father was a UCLA fan. Which leads me to a story (totally unintentional) unrelated to college football, but it is sort of funny and shows what a real dork that I am.

I am not sure what year this took place but I was not very old, could speak well and had learned to spell some very simple words. So my dad gets tickets to the UCLA basketball game and we go to his mothers house in Panorama City for the weekend. I, being a daddy's girl and wanted to do EVERYTHING that he did, I begged him to take me. He obviously could not because he didn't have an extra ticket and UCLA basketball games were selling out during that period of time. But my dad always liked to play a joke on you and have a little laugh, so he tells me, "If you can spell UCLA, I will let you go to the game." He asked this because he knew I would fail. But I gave it my best... "Y-O-U, S-E-E," then I was stuck, and with my best puckered lip and wattery eyes, I said, "Daddy, how do you spell L?" He laughed and hugged me and said that he would see me after the game. When he got back, he gave me a UCLA key chain showing me how it is really spelled or I guess not spelled. I don't have the keychain anymore, but I still remember that night.