You Say It's Your Birthday

It was. And it was just delightful.  For one thing - it went on for days. The Lord Protector came home for the weekend so we celebrated Saturday and Sunday. Homemade cake courtesy of the Princess (vanilla cake with strawberry frosting, although we told the Pirate it was only pink,: it seems Pirates don't believe in strawberry anything) and presents on Sunday evening.  Very cool stuff, but for the purposes of a knitting blog, just this.

Hand Painted Knitting Yarns Rome Bias Shawl  kit in the red/black colorway (birthdays are a tried and true excuse reason to not have to augment the stash).  I can never get red to come out right.  You'll have to take my word that there are actually two shades there - one a deeper red, shading toward burgundy and the other a brighter, more stop-sign red.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, 

exquisite tiny little cupcakes from Sugar Bliss on the Day itself.  There were more. They just didn't last long enough to get in the picture.