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novakkah 2014, day 8

As birthdays go, this one has been by far the most... I don't even know.  I spent most of the day at the hospital waiting for K while he was waiting to be seen by someone in the ER.  Oh, and I was waiting with Little Mister, as he was "sick."  I am pretty sure he was playacting that whole scene.  In any case, I was promised a postponed celebration, which really isn't necessary; but, well, you know, I will take it.

Today's gift is a smorgasborg.  So yeah, a little of this and a little of that.  That sort of thing (I think it's the best gift, actually).

To be considered for the gift for today, please share any old thing you want!

I will take comments for this post, and only this post, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Tuesday, May 13th--since I am posting this late and all; all other posts need to be posted by 11:59 tonight. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person. Giftees will be selected on the 13th 14th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.

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novakkah 2014, day 7

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novakkah 2014, day 7

Well, if it applies, Happy Mother's Day!  If you didn't call a maternal figure in your life today, you should do that now.  The high point of my day was going for a bike ride with my kids, I got a new bike last month.  It was like an early birthday gift (well, that is how I am thinking of it).  Before getting my new bike (which, it must be said, is awesome), I hadn't ridden a bike in well over a decade.  Sad.  

Since we are working with the theme of my favorite things, I thought I would make photography today's theme.  So today's gift will be some sort of photo-related thing.  Don't worry, you (the recpient) will like it!  I am really good at this gift-giving thing, she says humbly.

To be considered for the gift for today, please share a gift that you have gotten that may not have necessarily been a birthday gift; but, was so awesome or extravagant that you kinda had to push it into the birthday gift category  (you know, like a bike or a longarm quilting machine, ahem).

I will take comments for this post, and all Novakkah posts, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Monday, May 12th. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person.  Giftees will be selected on the 13th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.

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novakkah 2014, day 5

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It just occured to me that yesterday's post went up after midnight, which means that you get two posts in one day,  eh, whatever.  It's my birthday, I can blog how ever I want to?  In any case,  I spent my day doing all sorts of things related to baseball.   I think it's fair to say that baseball isn't something that I love, personally; but, at least one of my kids loves it (Little Sir) and the other just goes along with the flow of things for the most part as long as we give him snacks (Little Mister) and he kind of wants to be like he big brother, though this is a thing he might be outgrowing as it starts to tax his energies more and more.  

Most people would, undoubtedly, get constuctive and knit or something while sitting and waiting watching their kids play baseball, but this seems to never work out for me--I have tried.  So the whole baseball thing, it's pretty much a huge time suck.  But you know what?  The Littles thought it was awesome that I was there today, so yeah, I will take a hit for the team for their happiness.

Please share with me your birthday tale of self-sacrifice.  When did you take a hit for the team, what did you do?  Was it appreciated?  Today's gift is food/beverage related.  Because who doesn't love eating or drinking good things?  

I will take comments for this post, and all Novakkah posts, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Monday, May 12th. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person.  Giftees will be selected on the 13th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.

 

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novakkah 2014, day 5

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With the change of seasons comes a change in focus for me, particulalry when it comes to handcrafts.  I like to knit when it's cold.  I think this is by virtue of the fact that I don't knit with cotton, really.  I prefer to knit wool based yarns, and knitting that stuff in the summer can get sweaty and gross.  Just me?  In any case, I find that there are a few things that I do all year long, quilting being the primary thing, the other: embroidery and cross stitch (mostly embroidery, if we are being honest--I find cross stitch a bit tedious more often than not).  I really like the idea of drawing with floss.  And also, it's not terribly difficult to do basic designs; and, if you are considering economy, it's not a bad craft to commit one's self too.  All things being equal, I am pretty sure my family wishes that I only did one craft, and that it was embroidery/cross stitch.  Or maybe not? These are things we will never know, mostly because this is a question I don't really want to know the answer to.

I am working on a couple of embroidery projects at the moment.  Why aren't you?  The theme of today's gift is embroidery.  Just starting out?  Want to build skills?  I'd like to help you in that endeavor.  I am nothing if not helpful and accomodating.

To be considered for today's gift, please share a birthday disaster.  I am currently living with a birthday disaster.  Weep for me, friends.  I threw my back out last week, and in an amazing show of sympathy, Special K decided to do the same; but, you know, worse this week.  He is completely out of commission (it's really hard to celebrate when you are carefully rushing your spouse to the hospital for injection of pain medication in his back...in case you were wondering about this, now you know), which means that Novakkah celebrations have been hampered.  I mean, I am still celebrating, but the celebration is ringing hollow when K isn't around to roll his eyes and chuckle at the extremes of mycelebraory practices.  Honestly, I feel guilty even contemplating celebrating...well, not that guilty.  I mean he is asleep, might as well do something fun, right?

I will take comments for this post, and all Novakkah posts, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Monday, May 12th. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person.  Giftees will be selected on the 13th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.

novakkah 2014, day 4

You know what I did today?  No, probably not.  In addition to doing a little physical therapy for a back injury, I also had acupuncture.   If you are thinking, "Nova, you don't seem like the sort of person to subscribe to the theory of acupuncture solving your problems," I would have been inclined to agree with you last week.  I tried it for the first time last week after no pain relief, and I was magically mobile.  You know what?  I am not going to question it.  If it works, it works.  So it's a sort of gift to myself, really.  

If someone had told me prior to this go around of back pain that I would be paying someone to stick needles in my body, I would have said that someone was insane.  But well,there you are.  In any case, the back thing is bringing me down.  I have a lot of quilting that I need to get done.  I have a graduation quilt to get done as well as a quilt to finish for a farewell gift for a co-worker.  In case you were wondering, back pain is not conducive to getting any quilting done.  But that being said, since I am thinking of quilting, how about we make that theme of today's gift: could be fabric or notions, or patterns, or all of that.  I dunno.  The gift recipient will have to see. 

If you interested in being considered for this gift, please share: the best gift you have ever given someone, and why you believe this to be so... I have given a lot of gifts that I thought were pretty fabulous.  I think I got the best warm and fuzzies this past January when I gave Special K a pair of handknit socks for his birthday.  My husband is a practical man.  He doesn't really care for fancy, he cares more about  functional.  I had some old school, buy-it-from-the-craft-store sock yarn, and I knit him some socks with it.  I didn't think they were that special; but, he loved them (the handknit wool socks keep his feet warm when shoveling snow, pro tip).  I love it when other people love the gifts I give them; and,  if they don't, I love it when they lie about it.

I will take comments for this post, and all Novakkah posts, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Monday, May 12th. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person.  Giftees will be selected on the 13th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.

novakkah 2014, day 3

What happened to day 2? Sorry.  I missed yesterday due to back pain and medication to treat such...so I guess a day of no blogging was my gift to myself yesterday?  Anyways...did anyone else go to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year?  I went with my family and we efficiently saw everything we wanted to see and buy everything we wanted to buy in a relatively short amount of time.  We were able to squeeze in a trip to Sesame Place in Pennsylvania before driving back home to Connecticut all in one day.  You may call it crazy, we just consider ourselves intrepid road warriors.

 

In any case, my purchases at the festival were all fiber related.  To be honest, I wasn't planning on buying anything; but, when your 5 year old (who understands the power of his cuteness and ruthlessly flaunts it to get his way whenver he feels it necessary) gives you puppy dog eyes and tells you that "if you knit a hat out of special yarn that you spin out of special fiber [he] will love you forever," you are pretty much going to let that kid pick out some fiber and buy it...with every intention to spin it into yarn and knit a hat with it.  Oh, just me?  Sure.

 

Today's gift is "spinning related,"  let's be honest here, it's probably going to be fiber to spin or felt...or not?    If you want to be a candidate for today's gift,  tell me the gift you are most hoping to receive for your next brithday. I am just hoping for more time.  I need more time to get things done, to spend with my family, etcetera.  So if anyone out there has a magical stopwatch, please feel free to wrap that up and ship it my way.

I will take comments for this post, and all Novakkah posts, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Monday, May 12th. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person.  Giftees will be selected on the 13th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.

it's that time of year again...novakkah 2014, day 1

In case you were wondering,  the mantra for the first day of Novakkah 2014 was pretty much, "screw the sombrero, where's my crown."  Or, you know, something like that.  My kids picked out a crown for me this year and I wore it at work today.  Probably for a good three hours (it got kinda heavy, being royalty is hard work, who knew?).  Also, college students have no idea what to do with a librarian walking around wearing a tiara.  Shocking, I know.

Aside from being magnificent, I have been doing things; but, my zeal for talking about the things I have been doing publicly has declined beause of some unfortunate shenanigans with other bloggers (no one likes it when their stuff gets stolen, people). But you know what, I am not going to talk about that right now, because it's my favorite time of year.  It's really hard not to get excited about an eight day celebration of one's self.  It's especially exciting when you can sucker persuade others to buy in to the whole thing, really.  Originally, I wasn't going to do anything in the blogosphere to observe the good cheer happening around here; but, really, it's become sort of a tradition to celebrate in this virtual way, so let's get on with that.

I am doing the giveaways differently this year.  In the true since of gifting, I am making the giveaway actual gifts--using the theme of "a few of my favorite things."  That means I am not going to tell you what the gift is, you will have to wait until you get it; but, it will be something magnificent (well, something that meets my definition of magnificent, we'll have to see if the gift recipients agree).  I will tell you what "genre" of interest the gift is part of and you can decide if you want to play that day.  How's that?  I mean, it's 8 days of gift-giving, people.  What's to complain about?

Today's gift is "knitting related."    If you want to be a candidate for today's gift,  share a happy birthday memory with me.  One of my happiest birthday memories involves Little Mister's 5th brithday celebrations last year.  While I get 8 days, each of my family members get 7, you know, a birthday week.  Because Mister's birthday is right after Thanksgiving, it happened to coincide with a trip to Disney-Everything in Orlando last year.  As he was going to sleep on his actual birthday he said, "I can't wait to go back to Florida when I turn 6!"  To which his brother yells, "we never to anything special for my birthday.  Life is so unfair."  Yeah, no.  I guess we should have done a better job tying the trip to Thanksgiving  rather than his birthday; but, whatever.  It was funny.

I will take comments for this post, and all Novakkah posts, until 11:59 EST (or 2359, should you prefer that), Monday, May 12th. Please leave your responses on the appropriate post.  One entry per post/person.  Giftees will be selected on the 13th and gifts sent out shortly thereafter.