Birthday Girl!

My little girl is 10 years old today - what a milestone! I can hardly believe it, it just seems like such a short period of time since I brought her home and we were terrified that every bump and cough spelled some unfathomable illness.

How poignant and jarring that there are so many parents around the world, (most visibly today in the Amish community of Nickle Mines - but also all over our planet and also quite visibly in Iraq) who won't have the small joy of rubbing their little girl's back as she falls asleep, or getting a very sweet kiss as she rushes to school. I don't need the tragedies of others to make me understand how fortunate I am - I am just so heartsick for the families and friends of those who lose young ones.

Reprieve
I'm reading Ann Barclay Priest's excellent memoire of her purchase of land, a house, an island and some sheep up in Nova Scotia - Trafficking In Sheep. When I finish it I'll pass it along to Hannah, knowing full well that she'll be campaigning for us to move to a farm. Oh, well, I did want to be a large animal vet once...

I'm loving the book, though, and got to meet Ann at the recent Fibre Frenzy (she signed my book!) and that makes it so much more fun to read about her adventures. It's a very calm book, so far there's not a lot of action - but a lot happens! I recommend it as a nice read for the sheep-lover in all of us. That came out sounding not quite as I intended...

Patterns?
The list I started is growing SO amazingly quickly that I'm - well - I'm astounded. So far I have over 2,000 list members, and that's after a little over 2 days of posting the link on my site.
One piece of interesting information I gleaned is where folks get their patterns. I asked new subscribers to tell me where they get most of their patterns, and here's the chart. I'm sure it's a skewed segment as it is by nature an internet friendly group, but it's still cool to see that the web, books and magazines are pretty evenly divided.