Ooooh, Goodies!

I love days when the post delivers not one but TWO goody packages.

First off was my order from Amazon. (Just a couple of knitting books, nothing surprising there. I needed a pattern from Last Minute Knitted Gifts sort of ASAP, so I had to go ahead and order it, even though it was previously on Not-Dire status.)

But the other I actually didn't open right away. (By "not right away," I mean I waited about four minutes after getting home, allowing the suspense to build until I just couldn't stand it any more. Yeah, you can imagine how unbearable I am at Christmas time.)



My One-Skein pal sent me gifties! First, the soy silk yarn - I have been ITCHING to work with soy silk (even going so far as to purchase a bit of soy silk top during my Asheville fiber blitzkrieg...which fiber has yet to make it to spindle). I just haven't gotten my hands on the right yarn. My LYS carries a brand that feels lovely, but the shade selection wasn't to my taste, so I never bought any. I do, however, LOVE this blue. (If your LYS doesn't carry this yarn either, you can find it here, and there's even a few shades on sale!) That, and I am so tickled by tape yarns. I always play with the cotton tapes at my LYS - there's just something so amusing to me about yarn that looks like it's been knitted....and then you knit with it! (I'm so easily amused it's stupid.)

The book, Needled to Death (HA!!) is written by the author of Knit One, Kill Two (double HA!! - again, a tickle to my easily amused side). Please PLEASE note the ball of yarn/skull in the cover illustration. I kid you not, I spent a moment trying to figure out how I could wind my skeins to look like that. 'Cause it's so punk rock. I won't lie, I'm diving into this book as soon as I hit "publish" here. When I was in middle school, I went through an Agatha Christie phase, and then a Lillian Jackson Braun phase, and then a Sue Grafton phase, and then, far too young, a Dean Koontz phase - and my best friend and I traded those Young Adult thriller novels (Christopher Pike, anyone?) with alarming speed. My love affair with mystery novels is finely aged, unlike my love affair with knitting - but it runs just as deep. And who can resist a knitting murder mystery that includes a knitting pattern for a tank top and a recipe for blueberry pie? (July is Blue Month. She's good at continuity - remember the postcard that coordinated with the yarn back in June? Slick little thing, ain't she? Appeals very much to my easily-amused side AND my obsessive-compulsive side.)