Merry Christmas From Grandma: A Belated Report

My grandmother, who you may recall is the one who taught me to knit, gave me some fun money for Christmas, and I put a little time into thinking about what to use it for. I mean, knit-related, obviously, but perhaps not yarn this time? Tools, or something else? In the end, I settled on two things.

First, a book that came out recently, a collection of photos of people knitting. Aptly called People Knitting:

I had to wait for them to reprint; perhaps the publisher underestimated the number of knitters who would be interested?

The photos are both of the famous and not, and I was happy to find that at the end, there are notes as to what is known of each picture. So, she looks familiar:

Ah, Joan Crawford, yes!

A very neat book.

The other item is one I saw online some time ago, a tool for blocking knits into straight lines. It's a cloth you can spread out to make things line up right. It comes like this, in a nice case:

And then unfolds when you need it. The little tag was stuck on, I think, but it caught on the case when I was putting it back in and popped right off. No harm done.

I think it will be very handy; hopefully you will see it soon.

Meanwhile, not with Grandma's money, I did a little yarn shopping on Saturday. The friend I made a pussy hat for (did I not blog that? well, no time right now to look further) asked if I could make one for a friend of hers who loved it, so I needed more pink yarn,

And as long as I was at Coveted, it's not like that was going to be all I got...

These two colors were next to each other, and I couldn't help admiring the contrast.

I'm thinking perhaps Farfalla, but we'll see. Now that the hat is done, it's back to the cowl first! It's growing nicely.

The actual color is even better than that. And so soft...