Happy Birthday to me (part the second!)

No, its not my birthday again. But I did just get the present I bought myself. My in-laws give me money every year (except when they give me a sweater) to buy myself a little something. This year I got two lovely gifts for myself:

This book is fantastic! It is the sort of book that you wish you could buy every one of your friends and send it to them out of the blue. I shall do a full review of it sometime, but suffice it to say that I savoured this book, a few pages at a time, over about 3 weeks. Wonderful and inspiring stuff.

I bought a bunch of brown Mendoccino in the summer with a plan. Unfortunately I later realized that my plan was going to take about two years to complete. So I changed my plan, which required buying some lighter colours of the same fabric. This has been sitting on top of my dishwasher for two days now so I can touch it whenever I go by. It is so ridiculously soft.