Late birthday present

My Mother-in-Law (hi, Vickey!) sent me a very generous gift card for my birthday, so I decided to use it to buy books! Books, of almost any kind, are a great weakness of mine. They hold so much knowledge and so many new ideas! The librarians at my local branch of the public library know me (and sometimes hate me, I'm sure). Right now I have 23 books checked out and 17 waiting for me that I've requested from other branches. The Tulsa City-County Library system is absolutely incredible!! I can go online and search the catalog, then request a book and when it's available they'll bring it to the library location I specify! It's a truly fabulous thing. [O.K., not all of the 23 books are mine, 10 are my kids' books.]


Back to the gift card, I've just used it to purchase four books I've been wanting for a long time:

The Sweater Workshop is a really good book--I didn't really like it until I started reading it, then I had to make the sweater sampler (also known as The Thing) and I learned so much! I highly recommend this book for any novice knitter, and even intermediate knitters. I'd consider myself an intermediate- to intermediate/advanced-level knitter, and I still want this book for a reference. My library system doesn't have it, so I've gotten it through inter-library loan, but this is a book I want in my personal library.

Subversive Cross Stitch is probably the only cross-stitching I'll do for a long time. Yes, some of the designs are quite rude, but I just love the irony of having those cutesy/fancy/girly borders, then something rude paired with it. I'll probably never make some of the ones with profanity (having two little kids in the house and all) but I can see making some of the slightly rude ones. It's gonna be fun!

I've heard good things about Mary Thomas' books, and this one looks like it'll be a good one. I've never actually had my hands on a copy so I'm looking forward to it. I love collecting stitch patterns!

Victorian Lace Today has many of the lace knitting lists all excited, and I can't wait to get it in my hot little hands.

Of course I should be working on the projects I've got started already, but I can't be monogamous to any one project--I have to have a few different ones going of varying skill levels. Right now I've got a super-secret project that's mindless knitting but I've designed myself into a corner, so that's going to be a challenge; the Hanging Garden Stole is currently stalled since I messed up purling back and haven't had a chance to site down uninterrupted and figure out where the problem occurred; the Rose of England shawl is stalled because of Christmas knitting, but I'm itching to get back to it; and I just cast on for yet another hat. However, I did pull a hat off the needles and re-wound the yarn since I just wasn't liking it. Not sure what I'll do with the yarn--it's Red Heart variegated and really scratchy. I washed another hat using the same yarn and it softened up a little, but not enough to be used as a chemo cap. I might end up giving the rest of the skein away since I've got more yarn that's more suitable for chemo caps.

Of course, instead of blogging or playing on the computer I should be either cleaning, doing housework, or knitting, but oh well--it'll all still be there in a little while. :-)

I'm sitting here listening to the rather miserable weather outside. It got really dark at around 3:00 this afternoon, like almost-night-time dark, and the wind has been blowing for a while. This morning when I took Gillian to school it was in the low 70s, and over the course of the day I've watched the temperature drop and it's now 33 degrees outside! It's been raining and is supposed to snow late tonight, so we'll have a wonderful coating of ice covered by snow. Woo hoo! Not.

I'm halfway hoping they cancel school tomorrow, but DS has a doctor's appointment on the other side of town and we won't be missing that! It won't be fun getting there or back home, but we'll just have to be careful. I think it's going to be a good day to stay inside and do housework knit.