Someone Had Some Free Time

You need to be sure to watch the little dragon on the table beside the bookcase. Makes me giggle.

Someone Needs To Hide My Credit Card

I was sitting this afternoon, skimming through this nice book that my brother-in-law and his wife gave me for Christmas...

It's an Interweave Press book, so, as I've said before about Interweave books, it's a nice one. It's a sequel to Vicki Square's first kimono book and they are both full of gorgeous designs. As I was admiring the cover kimono I looked over the requirements... It's knit out of Berroco Mica. "Hmmmm," I thought, "that sounds really familiar. I think that might be on sale at Webs." Went and checked and yes, it is...half-price. So I now have enough Mica to knit this sweater coming my way from Massachusetts. In purple. I had a hard time deciding on the color. They had the pretty yellow shown in the book, but yellow can be hard to wear. There was a color called Cinnabar that might have been nice, but it looked like it might have been too melon-y pink. Rachel was on the phone with me and looked at the colors, too, and she agreed on the purple. So purple it is!

In other news, this weekend I made significant progress on Rachel's alpaca sweater. On Saturday I finished knitting the sleeves, sewed one shoulder, knit the collar. And today I sewed the sleeves onto the body. Know I just need to sew up the side seams and arm seams and weave all the ends in. The end's in sight!!

I also started one of the baby hats for one of the two office babies. Out of the yarn that had the little baby block beads on it. I think they are going to be pretty darn cute. Pictures when the first one is done.

Button, Button, Who's Got The Button?

So I finished the third hat for Kelly. It's simple and I was planning to do a little embroidery and decorate it with some buttons. I bought some buttons that I thought were cute but when I was finished I took them off the card and laid them out on the hat...

and they were....blah....dull....nothing. They don't show up at all. So I dragged out the button box.

(By the way, look at the cute "knitted for you" labels I found at JoAnn's last week. Can't wait to use them in something.) But scrabble about among the buttons as I might, I found nothing that looked right. These were the right shape and size....but definitely not the right color!

So I am thinking now that the hat will be simple and unadorned.

And I have an idea for another one...Kelly better watch out. She's going to have a hat wardrobe to rival Imelda's shoes.

I Love Three-Day Weekends!

I went nowhere yesterday and did very little. Listened to Car Talk and Wait, Wait and the wind howling around the house and rattling the windows. (It was very windy.) I read and knit and played computer games and just vegged out. And then the day was over and you know what?!!

There are still two days before I have to go back to work! It's like magic.

Today we will be going out. I want to hit Trader Joe's for some more of these great little pasta dishes that make good lunches for work. And I want to go to Joann's for buttons and such because I have a great idea for a little decor on the latest hat I'm knitting for Kelly. And we will probably run into Tuesday Morning for fun, though generally there's nothing we want. Although lately they are carrying yarn and while it's usually crap, sometime you find good things.

More later...

Attention Knitters!

I have a couple of new books to mention here but no one but the knitters will be interested. But the Knitting Book Fairy was very nice to me this week.

First, I got this:

Okay, it's an Interweave book, so right away you know it gorgeously designed with beautiful photos and great patterns. I mean, look like this:

I'm not sure I can imagine knitting all those cables, but my god, this is gorgeous! And look at this pair of pretty fuzzy mittens!

They look so soft and yummy...and I love the tiny pearl buttons on the cuffs. Want mitts instead? How about these?

Such a pretty stranded pattern...of course the colors are lovely and that helps.

Finally....look at this hat!

Mary Linn, this hat made me think of you... I love it.

For the knitty-gritty (see what I did there?), the book contains patterns for -- eight sweaters (five cardigans, 3 pullovers), two shawls and a scarf, four hats, three patterns of stockings/legwarmers and four patterns for mitts or mittens. So, 22 patterns, mostly lovely. (Okay, the cardigan with beavers? Not so much me.)

And what else did the Book Fairy bring me? Well, we're going from the sublime to the silly....

Hee...these guys just make me laugh. I think I need to knit me some monsters.