New book, no new projects!

I made my way up the hill to Knitomatic the other day and finally found a copy of Norah Gaughan's new book, Knitting Nature. (If you look at it here you can see some of the designs.) I see there's a knitalong! I really like the Vortex Street pullover, and the chemical waves mittens. Her explanation of how basaltic columns form is unfortunately wrong, but we can't have everything. I'd like to show her my spiral defect chaos sweater, so then she'd say, "Oh, you are so clever, we must write a book together!" Right now, though, I'm not starting any new projects, no-sirree!

I've got my second pooling sock, which seems to be pooling a bit differently from the first one (we went to Ikea yesterday, which is a loooong subway ride, so I got a few rows done on that, first in a while) and my Rockpool green cotton cardi, which is getting into the really-long-rows stage. Here's a corner, where back meets sleeve.

And, just in case anyone is thinking of dishcloths for Christmas (only 136 days to go) you can get Sugar n Cream yarn by the cone or ball at Mary Maxim. My old fave store here for such things was Lewiscraft, which has gone belly-up. I've heard that Mary Maxim may be opening some of the old Lewiscraft stores (including the one at Yonge and Eglinton), which would provide us with loads of Sugar n Cream, plus all the tacky plastic canvas kits you'll ever need. But, I repeat, I'm not starting any new projects right now!!

Oh, and about that Ikea trip. Never take small children to Ikea! All through the store we heard miserable kids being dragged about by parents trying to choose between birch and beech without going loopy. We were on our own, and managed to find several things, all of which were more or less in stock (we did have to get a grey chair with a beige slipcover, but that just allows us to have either a beige or grey chair, right?). A lunch of meatballs, hand over the credit card, ride the little shuttle bus back to the subway, and await the delivery truck. And if they say they'll deliver between 4 and 10 pm, they just might show up at 9:58, just telling ya!