Manic Monday

First off, I finally finished Mom's purple and red silk azalea pins.  They will go in the mail, along with Dena's Nostepinde, when I get around to it.  Hopefully, they will get to her house before Mom does.  I think I am completely over knitting silk azaleas.  I think I might be over knitting with mawata - at least for a long while.

This is a Pretty Thing (by Yarn Harlot) that I started to make.  It's almost halfway done, but I ran out of yarn. I knew that there might not be enough yarn left in this ball, but I was hoping.  Since the object of this endeavor was to use up the leftover yarn, I will not be going out to get more of this yarn to finish this thing - it will just get ripped back to nothing and the ball of yarn will go into the box I take to class for beginners.  I've started another Pretty Thing in some handspun alpaca and it's already a bit farther along than this one.  

These three photos are of the Estonian Patent Stitches sampler.  I somehow lost mine (I think Dena has it) and felt like I really needed to make a new one.  I want to use some of these stitches to make myself a vest using the sloper instructions that Merike gave me.  The vest will have to wait for a while though because I've fallen in love with a new project and can't take my hands off it.  More on that later.

This book came in the mail - I ordered it when I ordered my Mother's Day Wii game.  I like it.  It has lots of little motifs in it that I think I can probably make.  I've seen a ton of things tatted from this book on Anika's blog and I love them.  When I went to order the Wii game, I was going to have to pay $5 postage.  If I added this book to the order, it was slightly less than $10 more than the game alone.  I figure the book cost me less than $5.  

The book is spending some quality time in my knitting bag because that goes everywhere with me.

I moved these guys down to the new knitting room.  I'm accumulating a lot of knitted things in here.  I like it.

This is the inside of my new knitting bucket from Erin Lane Bags. It's very roomy - that is 5 skeins of Galway worsted - which are pretty big skeins.  Those 5 skeins are the new project I'm working on and absolutely loving.  More on that later.  (Did I already say that once?)

The Bucket Bag was a very last-minute, impulse buy at Stitches South.  Dena and I were actually leaving the convention center and turned around to go back and look at the bags.  We saw some of this cute sheepy fabric at the information booth when we stopped to ask if they'd found either of our bracelets.  The girl told us where she got the bag and we had to go check them out.  As if I hadn't already spent way too much money, I had to have one and this is the one I got.

I just love the knitting sheepies.  They are all knitting different things in different colors.  I love the way this bucket is completely lined and has a little loop to keep your yarn under control.  The only thing I would change is the handle - I would like it to have bigger handles.  That's only because I'm not used to carrying bags in my hand - I always toss them over my shoulder.  But it works ok and I love the size of this bag.  It is big enough for a good sized project without but not big enough to hold everything I own - so it doesn't weigh a ton.

And best of all, it's embroidered with the cutest saying  . . . . .