Do we see a theme developing?

In the continuing theme of wooly footwear, I've started on self-striping socks from Knitpicks. Kate has been begging me for them; she loves the green color. But considering the way she treats her clothes, I don't think hand knit socks are for her. This time I'm going out on a limb and just winging the pattern. It's a simple 2K 2P rib and I adopted a heel flap from another sock pattern.

I got the yarn in for my birthday sweater. Kathryn gave me a gift certificate to KnitPicks for my birthday and it's taken me a year to pick out the yarn and a pattern I like. The pattern is a Fair Isle cardigan from Philosopher's Wool and looks like this (in their wool and colors). Picking out the colors has been a SO DIFFICULT. I dropped their orange and purple colors and put in greens and blue-greens. The only color I'm really concerned about is the brassy gold color. Somehow it just sticks out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, looking at this picture, it looks like the sea green is the culprit. With the Fair Isle pattern, though, they aren't really supposed to blend together so much as provide attractive contrasting patterns. On the other hand, I'd hate to spend hours and weeks working on a sweater that turned out to be hideous. HELP!

Yesterday we celebrated my DH's birthday. He's so exhausted from the neverending conflicts of litigation that he didn't really enjoy it. We were going to a baseball game but then he didn't really feel well enough -- then we were going to go out to dinner -- and, finally, I ended up cooking steaks at home so he could relax in front of the T.V. with the girls. Kate made him a Red Velvet cake and Ally wrapped all the presents (nothing really exciting but several small thoughtful gifts). We usually don't bother to put the right number of candles on a grown up's cake, but we thought it would be funny since it's his 49th. It took us so long to light all the candles (with all three of us working at it) that we ended up having to pick a lot of blue wax out of our cake. I assured everyone that it wouldn't hurt them if they ate some. I hope I'm right!

By the way, Andy had his summer haircut a couple of weeks ago. So, an Andy before and after should be presented:









Before: Regal Rabbit; After: Bare Bunny