New toys, ribbons of all sorts

Did a wee bit of shopping this morning. I figured I wanted the book Scarf Style, since I've been seeing great things knit from it on various blogs. And I went to three bookstores and found not a single copy of it, but of course I found lots of other things. I saw The Celtic Collection, which I had thought out of print, but I knew I'd never actually knit anything out of it, and I just can't stand looking at the model in that book! Holy eyeshadow, Batman! So I put that back. And I saw other scarf books, but they seemed second-best, so I put them back, too. But then, holy smokes, I found 200 Knitted Blocks! Wowee wow wow. (I can't find a link with my cover -- maybe different covers in North America and England?) I'm a sucker for those nice bright colours and oh-so-neat squares! I wonder if I have the patience to knit enough similar squares to make one of the blankets pictured. I think I would make 'em all different! Anyways, it will be fun to look at for a while... until I've finished some of what I've started! And really, I'm working on it...

And as you can see I also got me some pansies, some maps (the scale is 4 cm to 1 km, or 2.5 inches to the mile!) so we can find every little hedgerow around here, and a wondrous thing they call a Romanesco broccoli, but which I've always called broccoflower. Tastes like broccoli, looks like it comes from outer space.

This weekend was the fair near my parents' place in British Columbia. I got them to enter a scarf I had made, in the "knitted article -- any other" category, and I got a third. They didn't actually go to the fair, so I don't know what my competition was! But since this was all kind of spur of the moment, I'm happy to get a ribbon. My dad got two firsts and a second, and my sister a second and two thirds. I think it helps if you study your categories. Who knew you could win a ribbon for using scrap wood to make something useful? I'll enjoy the ribbon when it gets here, and I'm thinking of next year!