Oy, I've been away for a while. I've been busy with visitors and celebratory things, which of course required a tasty New Orleans cake from Famous Northwest Catering. Gawd, it's good. I've never been to New Orleans, but if it's anything like this cake (drenched in caramel, embraced by white chocolate, and resplendent with buttercream), I know I'd feel right at home. I finally got the package together for the early bird baby. Of course, if the baby had been born on time, the package would be late at this point. I still took the time to knit up one of the cute miniature bears from the Summer 05 IK. I nearly gave up several times while knitting this sucker - I could tell it was turning out awful. But I was wrong! It's adorable! Even without the cute little cupped ears like the bears in IK (how the hell they got that to work is beyond me). He's also a smart little rascal. He beat me at chess twice already (not hard to do), and he is very concerned about getting his RDA of vitamin C. One last thing, I was lucky enough to win a set of Laura's lovely little stitch markers, and they arrived just the other day! See how nice they look on my slow-growing FBS? Maybe they will help me knit faster. Thanks Laura!