This is so exciting! Joanna is being awesome and is loaning out her copy of Jess Hutchison’s out-of-print toy pattern booklet to a few of the folks from the Knitty board.

It got to me today, and I have until December 4th to play with it. So the next two weeks are for knitting toys. I just found some stash worsted and declared it a robot, so I’ll hopefully post photos soon. I think it’ll go pretty quickly, both because it’s a fairly small thing and because I’m excited about it.

I’m still hoping to be able to buy or trade for my own copy of the book at some point, but having it live with me for awhile rocks! I’d still been moping about that whole “robot on the cover of Craft magazine that we weren’t given directions for” deal, so I’m thrilled that I’ll finally get to learn to make my own. Thanks again, Joanna!

Must… make… pirate… dice bag.

My current D&D character is actually a pirate, so this is extra perfect.

I’ve been playing with some sweater ideas recently, and have bought several types of yarn to swatch with. I got a few yarns from Knitpicks, and some others from my LYS. Once I finish all the swatches, I’ll try to post them.

To be honest, the LYS yarns are more tempting so far. But they’re also quite a bit more expensive. They’re not unreasonably pricey, but this will be my first sweater. (Yes, after about 4 years of knitting. I’m slow, okay?) So I’m leaning towards one of the KP yarns just in case it turns into a train wreck. I feel like a good, sturdy Wool of the Andes sweater would frog more easily than the more tempting but delicate yarns that I’m crushing on from my LYS. Maybe it’s bad luck to plan a sweater from the perspective of frog-ability, but I’m trying to be realistic in my expectations.

Maybe I’ll make two sweaters this winter. A basic wool “starter” sweater followed by a cushier one after I have the technique down.