New Old Books

The Husbeast and I have been ransacking the house since we've been here trying to go through all the piles of STUFF so we can get things ready for the baby. There's been a lot of shuffling things around, including a bunch of old books that have been doing nothing but gathering dust for the past 20 years or so. So we started going through them, got the OK from Mum on the ones we wanted to get rid of (so we didn't unknowingly oust some hugely important sentimental tome), and went up to a used bookstore that takes books for store credit.

Can I just take a minute to say....WIN!

I got a copy of Knitted Gifts, which is by the same lady who did Zen and the Art of Knitting. I loved that one, and will hopefully someday have it again (I lent it to a friend in Pittsburgh after teaching her to knit) so I'm excited for this one. It's kind of nice that it's a bunch of little short pieces--very handy for waiting rooms, which I've been seeing a lot of lately.

There's also French Chic Baby Knits, which seemed to transcend hours of Ravelry-induced baby-stuff-overload. It was like, "Here, it's a perfect simple romper just like you've been looking for but never quite nailed down. And a jacket or two, and some different booties and hats as well." Fan-flippin-tastic. The only issues are that A-it is French, so it admits early on that a lot of the yarns used aren't easily accessed outside Europe and B-it's an older book, so even the yarns that are in Ravelry have been discontinued. Ugh. Lots of fingering-weight stuff from the look of it though, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and whip out some gauge swatches. Siiiigh....it'll be worth it though, right?

The last one is A Passion for Color. The first half is on dying techniques using natural dyes, which is really the coolest thing ever and had me all excited in the store. The second half is a total trip...The patterns are HORRIBLE. Like, cartoon jester horrible, complete with poofy sleeves, a gathered waist and cuff with ginormous ruffles....Halloween costume worthy ridiculous stuff with CRAZY amounts of patterns going all over the place. The saving grace for the pattern half of the book is that some of the fair isle charts are pretty neat, so long as you take them individually. Throwing 15 on one garment? Total train wreck...but there were a good lot of them that I think will be awesome by themselves on hats and things.

All in all, very exciting...

As far as actual projects, the Moderne baby blanket is done save weaving in ends, including the crochet border I did since I don't have the book to see how it was actually supposed to be done. I just wish I could find a flipping tapestry needle--it's SO FRUSTRATING being so close to being done (on two projects, mind) and not being able to just wrap it up and finish.

Other than that...the only thing still on the needles right now is the mohair scarf. I want to start something new, but I can't quite decide what it should be. I'm torn between wanting to do baby things (which is sort of limited by what I have in the stash that's washable) and feeling like I should put things together to try and sell. Maybe I should just take already finished things out in the sun for a photo shoot tomorrow, and then let people look at pictures to order things rather than trying to guess at what they'll want. Mum stole my February Lady to take to school a while back, and people keep telling her to bring a portfolio of what I can do so they can order Christmas gifts...hmm....