Knit Lit

There are so many great new knitting books right now, and I just purchased two of them.

The first is Alterknits by Leigh Radford, art director of Interweave Knits and teacher at my local yarn store. I can't say enough good things about this book. The projects are creative and inspiring and the book itself is a work of art. The photography is beautiful and it has a cloth binding with a scallop-edged die cut. This is a real keepsake. Leigh is an inspiring teacher and I'm happy to see a collection of her designs all in one place. She has another book coming out in the spring called One Skein Knitting, or something like that, and I can't wait for that, either.

I also bought Holiday Knits because the woman ringing me up was looking at it and it was just too good to pass up. This book has projects for various skill levels, many of them good for gifts, but also some nice Christmas stocking patterns and other wintery stuff. Again, the book is gorgeous, but what do you expect from Chronicle Books?

The yarn store was having a sale on some gray and white Rowan Biggie, so I bought two skeins of that and a skein of cream Brown Sheep Aran weight Naturespun. I will use the Rowan Biggie to make another diagonal-stripe scarf.

Tomorrow I'll have photos of the baby sweater I just finished. Note to self: stop trying to knit with cotton! It is so unforgiving. My stitches look a little uneven and choppy. I always forget cotton does this, even when it's a heavier weight.