This cute pig bowl was given to me by my good friends Ricki & Peggy. I am getting a little thrill linking to them – they have been blogless for so long, at least now there is Ravelry! Anyway, the bowl was a birthday gift and I love it! He looks very handsome on the kitchen table. If any of you are pig collectors, or just want to see some very cool things, they ordered it from Napa Style.

50 Heirloom Buttons to Make was brought to our last guild meeting by Martha, she of the prodigious talent. ~ ooo!! another Ravelry tingle!~ She actually saved my butt by bringing it, it really helped when I gave the program on Dorset Buttons and in browsing through it, I saw that my simple little buttons were just the tip of a button iceberg. I don’t know if I will ever actually make any of these buttons, they are so intricate, but I love looking through this book and seeing what is possible.

and here is a picture of Banana-Buttermilk Cake. I whipped this little piece of heaven up last night – yum! Thanks to Norma I now have another recipe in the arsenal!

I have a standing Tuesday night date with two good friends. One of these ladies suffers from Reynauds. If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I don’t know that I would believe it – her fingers turn blue! And not just a slight, bluish cast, but blue. It really is an alarming sight. She is very proactive and stays on top of the symptoms, always bundling up and keeping those little packet hand warmers in her pocket. Dr. PurlingSwine however, is prescribing a pair of mittens. My knitter’s heart believes that hand knit mittens will do a much better job at keeping her blues at bay than those store bought ones. I was hoping against hope to have these finished for tomorrow night, but I don’t think that will happen ….. seeing that I only cast on last night, it was a foolish dream.

Up next on the list of things to show you is my Jeanie. This is a brilliant pattern! It is blowing my mind with the reversibility and dropped stitches – all the magic tricks in one lovely shawl! The Dream in Color is fantastic too – this project is turning out to be knitting nirvana!

I love the way Flickr greets its users in different languages. (I think this hello! is Korean)

Many of you have already seen the Curlicue Coverlet. If you fall into this category, move along…… I promise some progress pics from a new knit project on Monday.

This is the blanket I knit for the baby shower. Thanks to Kathleen’s excellent suggestion, I used Ty-Dy by Knit One Crochet Too. It is a great pattern and an easy, yet compelling project! One little tip I discovered the hard way ….. this is knit using short rows.  At a few points along the way, you will end up wrapping your stitches twice.  On my first time around, I thought I should pick up one and leave the other behind to turn into a garter stitch bump.  This led to a very lose join and had to be ripped.  The truth of the matter is that on my true first time around, I blamed the lose pick up/join row on the cotton yarn and not on the single wrap pick up.  I thought I needed a tighter tension.  So I ripped and knit it again.  This time much tighter.  Which did not make a bit of difference and needed to be ripped again!  argh!  Moral of the story:  when it comes time to pick up the wraps, be sure to pick up both wraps.