For Gaye as I am obviously too tired to focus on work for more than 90 seconds at a shot

I read this the other day and thought of you and your yarn. Seriously, send it to me. We'll get it washed up and then when you're here in October, we'll find just the perfect pattern to turn its potential into something warm and cozy (and practical for PA visits).

From At Knits End (still making me pee my pants in PA) by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Some knitters purchase yarn with a pattern and a plan. They buy with a specific goal, and most of it is used more or less immediately and as planned. Others talk about the yarn "telling them what it wants to be." They buy and hoard yarns, seemingly at random, until a yarn speaks to them about its destiny. There is sometimes a lag of 20 years or more between a yarn purchase and its realization as a knitted item, although there may be several periods of swatching and "false starts." This process cannot be rushed or failure is certain.

I'm definitely in the latter camp. But since I've decided to make more time for activities that make me feel less like a worker bee and more like The Queen, I've noticed my yarn is VERY, VERY talkative. Do you think it has been yelling at me all along? Oh wait and see what that blue cotton yarn that my grandmother bought for me 7 years ago wants to be. It wants to be VERY VERY cute and matching in a little boy's size 6, is what it wants to be.

A few days ago I splurged and bought a new knitting book. I wanted seven of them, but the twins had already Barnes and Nobled me into temporary bankruptcy with a run on board books, flap books, and an interesting hologram book with a focus on shapes, so I let myself pick just one while they charmed an elderly man who'd fathered seven children. I'd seen this one around, of course:


(that's clickable by the way)

and always brushed it off as too detail oriented. After all, as I believe I've confessed in the past, I've knitted a million items on DPNs but remained terrified of a simple garter stitch sweater. Now that I've overcome my phobia and produced a rather sweet baby outfit, (immediately returning to shawl and poncho making during the move), I'm very interested in trying all sorts of new things, but frilly edges still seemed a ways away. THEN I OPENED THE BOOK.

It's not a book about knitting on the edge! It's a book of pattern samples! I mean, it looks and acts like a book about edges, but many scream to be converted into an entire garment. I was hooked. I don't know what I'm going to DO with the book, but it clearly wanted to come home with me. I haven't used it AT ALL yet and still I am convinced that it belongs in your knitting book stash, too.