Books, Books, and More Books

We just had a wonderful visit with our dear friends Molly and Keva and their 3 month-old son, Kale. What a jolly little guy - he had so much fun in our activity center, we decided to lend it to them for awhile.

You can see from the above picture just how much I'm wishing to be a new mommy again. :)

I promised to share the knitting books I got for Christmas, so here goes. One was Nicky Epstein's Knitting Over the Edge which has directions for many different embellishments that could be added to a pattern or would be helpful for designing your own. It also has a great colorwork section with some fair-isle patterns that I'd like to try out sometime. I also received A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen. This is a book I've been coveting for awhile. I'm not brave enough yet to try some of the larger pieces (gorgeous shawls,) but there are some simpler projects including a beautiful pair of gloves and this purse...

I have in my possession the yarn for a Fiber Trends Leaf Lace Shawl which I intend to do first before attempting something like this...

In addition to these, I received The Knitter's Gift by Bernadette Murphy from my neighbor and I used my Ben Franklin gift certificate to buy (Yarn Harlot) Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's book, At Knit's End - both seem like quick and witty reading so far. The Knitter's Gift also contains a few patterns. I finally bought a knitting journal as well. It's pretty and simple - just a page for each project, space for a picture and a few facts about it. I'm so looking forward to having a portable record of my work!