Another QueerJoe Milestone

A big one, in fact...this past Saturday I turned 50 years old.

Celebrations at Work and Home
Since I have been staying in my current hotel almost weekly for the last 3 years, the staff there treats me more like a co-worker than a guest (in all good ways). Last week, I arrived back at my hotel room on Wednesday evening to find the staff had done this:







And even this:



Then, I arrived to my client worksite to find that my project team members had done all this:









Not to mention, they also brought in fine pastries and soft pretzels.

If all that weren't enough, Marilyn sent this to my house on my birthday.



It's a beautiful basket filled with four different African Violet plants. It was very nice.

My mom also brought over my favorite cake that she always made on my birthday (Angel Food cake with whipped cream). And of course, Thaddeus and I stopped for coconut cake at our local Mennonite market and went out to dinner for Indian food at my favorite Indian restaurant.

All in all, it was a fitting celebration.

Current Knitting
Despite all the celebration, I was still able to continue making progress on my current Niebling project.



This shows me up to round 157. It's amazing how much slower progress goes as the stitch count increases, but I still seem to be making steady progress.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding my assumption that folks that like my list of movies would hate Marley & Me, Megan in Cincinnati writes, "I think it's a matter of if you have a tolerance for silly, romanticized life stories."

I actually like a lot of silly romanticized life stories...what I really hated about Marley & Me was how poorly they tried to manipulate the audience, just to get them to cry. I know the whole idea of movies is manipulation, but the tear-jerker section was just WAY too incongruous with the rest of the movie and was clearly inserted just to make the audience cry.

Regarding my current lace project (and Ichida designs in general), Expat on the Go writes, "Two things: 1) did you know that after a certain amount of rows the author changes to larger needles (!) - from, lets say, 2 to 3. Also, when you have an odd row with a yarn over, the next even number row you need to k1,p1,k1 the yarn over. Just thought you'd like to know .... or you already know?"

I've been fortunate to have been on a lot of the Niebling lace forums on Ravelry and Yahoo, and both ideas have been discussed. I don't increase my needle size as the Ichida ladies did. Some folks say Niebling designs can be too tight in certain sections, but I haven't run into that yet. As for the yarn-over, I think what your Japanese translator really meant was that if there is a double-yarn over in the odd row, the even row requires you to K into the first and P into the second. Almost never would you increase from 1 to 3 stitches on the odd row. I just didn't want you to mess up your first attempt.