Birthday redux

It was my birthday last Thursday. Thanks to everyone who remembered- those emails and Ravelry messages had me bouncing up and down in my chair and squeeing like a five-year-old.

It was a very good day, that began like this:

Yes, that is chocolate cheesecake. Yes, I ate it for breakfast. What? There's fruit in there, isn't there?

It also involved a large-ish shopping spree on a certain well-known yarn company's website, a chorus of 'Happy Birthday' sung to me by the children's choir I conduct, a knitting magazine gifted to me by one of my students, dinner with my family at a Lebanese restaurant that makes the best hummus in known creation (and a garlic paste so potent that it allows you to see through time), and drinks with friends. Dark, ominous drinks in giant novelty glasses that kept appearing in front of me of their own volition.

Yesterday's awakening was painful, to say the least.

I spent today traveling with the children's choir to a rehearsal on the Blue Mountains. All that travel time (one of the parents was kind enough to give me a lift in her car) gave me time to finally finish off those damn 9 to 5 socks.

I've had one hell of a love/hate relationship with this project. On one hand, they dragged on forever, used so much yarn I was forced to buy more (and it was only through sheer luck that I was even able to get more) and occasionally pushed me knitting sanity to the very brink. On the other hand, the pattern was simple and clever, the yarn was beautiful to work with, and the little details, such as the twisted ribs framing the heel flap...
... made this project totally worth it.

As I was finishing these in the back of the car, I was being watched avidly by two young girls from the choir (one of them was the one who gave me the knitting magazine for my birthday). They seemed somewhat disappointed when I finished the second sock, so I fished out some more yarn from my bag (of course I was carrying more yarn. This knitter comes prepared) and cast on a new sock.
I showed them how I cast on, joined in a round, and began knitting. As I knitted merrily away, one of the girls piped up about how she wished the car trip could go on for a few hours more, so she could keep watching me knit.

I've promised to teach them both during rehearsal break tomorrow.

Finally, I need to post a picture of my teapot for the Australian Knitters tea cozy swap (tea cozy swap partner, are you out there? I haven't heard from you. Leave me an anonymous comment, or something).

Here it is (precarious tower of animals and bemused moose included for scale)-

It's a standard four-cup pot- I'm pretty sure I posted the dimensions on Ravelry. My apologies for the blurry photo, but the light here is fading, and that carefully stacked tower of animals didn't want to stay vertical for long.