Winter Wonderland Coffee Swap: Weekly Posting

Registration for the Winter Wonterland Swap has closed. Matches are going out (I already know who'll be my downstream partner!) and the whole thing is going to be lots of fun.
Part of this swap are weekly postings to a given topic. Since I think my answers might be at least interesting for my secret upstream pal, I'm going to give it a try...
(And to keep all the answers together I'm going to edit this post each week and add a link to the sidebar so it's easy to find.)

Well, here we go...
1. When did you first start drinking coffee? What age were you? Was it about the caffeine, or do you love the taste and smell? Tell us how your passion began!

Coffe and me: there is no passion! I like coffee... sometimes. For example when we are at a coffee-house where they can make something fancy and flavored AND only if they have soy milk. I would never drink black coffee.
At home I hardly ever drink coffee and if I do then it will probably just be because I figure caffeine could help me at that moment. And actually I'm not sure if it really does. Right now though, with my next oral exam getting closer and closer, I want to believe so and I drink a mug or two during the day... if I don't forget to.

2. As the cold of winter approaches, do you change the projects you work on? Do you work on gifts for others or do you continue working on projects for yourself?

Except for when I'm making tiny baby stuff, my knitting is very much related to the colder season anyway. So the kinds of projects I make stay pretty much the same all the time. I usually knit for myself and everybody else who I think might appreciate the things I make. I am a fairly slow knitter so I don't get that much done during one season and I get bored quite easily, therefore small projects are my first choice.

3. So let's all just share a post with what it is we're thankful for.

Of course I'm very thankful for the wonderful people that surround me (C, my family and friends). I don't know what I would do without them. I'm also thankful for being able to share my life with the two most wonderful cats in the world and the most sensitive and gentle dog there is.
...Wow, this is harder than i thought, so I can say I'm very thankful that I will never receive an Oskar or anything of that sort, because that way I don't have to make this a public speech...
There are so many things in the world I'm thankful for. I could start with sunshine and end with moonlight and will be thankful for everything in between as long as it has nothing to do with cruelty against any living creature.
Oh and I must not forget: I certainly am thankful for Isa's recipes! (Buy her books!!!)

4. What is the ideal setting for enjoying the perfect cup of coffee? Who would be there - or would you be alone? Inside or out? Morning or night? With food or just the steaming cup of joe?

First of all my perfect cup of coffee would probably be cold chocolate soy milk. I can imagine a perfect setting with no other person around as well as with a friend.
In the first case it would be me, my chocolate, Juri, Mücke and Lale sitting in front of a fireplace - which we don't have by the way -, I'd be knitting or maybe stitching, while everyone else would be sleeping. (The cats would for once not ask me every other second to go outside just to come right back in letting me play the window-woman (get it?)).
In the second scenario it would be some stitch 'n bitch without the stitch, because I don't have friends that knit. I think there'd be some toffee popcorn involved or even better: some homemade cakes or cookies.