A year older, no bloody wiser.

M and I decided in 2009 that from this year we would not bother with birthday/Xmas gifts for each other. We both have way too much stuff and there isn't that much we need and as we tend to get what we want throughout the year, birthday gifts etc just seemed a bit of overkill.

My gift from M was him having the day off yesterday and for us to be together (with J) on my birthday. We had lovely food and a relaxing happy day, it was wonderful. However, I did get a lovely bunch of flowers from M and two tubes of my most favourite Floracology shower gel. J gave me a beautiful homemade card with some ££ in to buy a book he knows I've been after. Ma got the books I mentioned before and a little Eeyore birthday cake - hear J rejoice he loves that thick fondant icing you get on modern cakes.

But I also got a lot of gifts and kindness from friends IRL and online. My knitting buddies showered me with lovely cards, some gorgeous pastries and chocolate (diet start delayed by one day - cos I have to try one of those Carluccio pastries! Thank you Karen.) also some lovely yarn. The above CTH from Emma and Jamie, it's Supersock in Champlain Sunset (they also got me Green & Blacks - yum.) aren't the colours gorgeous? Rich and vibrant. I will explain the elephants in a minute.

And this, from Wibbo. This is just so beautiful, I swear she's been inside my head to get the colours and combination of colours that sing to me, so right. If I had walked into a yarn store and seen this it would have been the first thing in my basket. It is 4ply merino/wool blend - there is a 150g which gives 540m approx - this will be a shawl of awesome beauty. Wibbo named it 'Jaipur' - hence the elephants.

Thank you all so much. I normally get depressed and grumpy on my birthday, I didn't yesterday. My day was perfect.

**note about the elephants.

I kind of collect old elephant statues and carvings. The ebony/ivory ones and the jade one are all really, really old and made long before the ban on ivory hunting etc. In fact the larger ones were my Nana's bought home by my Poppa.