~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~ Ginny at small things

Yarn-along: July 10, 2013

Sorry for the size of the picture this week … I wanted to emphasize the enormous-brightness of the yarns I’ll be using! What do you think?

I’m just about done with the super-secret project I gave a glimpse of last week … just have to finish one sleeve and start/finish the other. It’s going to be a beautiful garment and hope the magazine likes it as much as I do!

So then what to do?

Well, the yarns shown above are my next project(s) — hats! When I was at TNNA in June, I got samples of yarn to design hats for teens. The brights are amazing, yes? I love the color .. as do my kids … so hats will be popping off my needles this week (once I’m done with the other project). I promise pictures next week of what I create with these five balls of scrumptious brightness!

And since it will be killer-hot today (90s and humid and possibly stormy), I’ll get lots of indoor knitting done … and maybe just a bit of reading?

And what am I reading knit-wise:

• Warm Knits, Cool Gifts by Sally Melville and her daughter Caddy Melville Ledbetter. I was fortunate enough to take a class from Melville while at TNNA. She is a wonderfully gifted designer/knitter from western Canada and this book she’s put together with her daughter is a great joy to read. The designs in here are great for gift-knitting … or just for self-knitting … and the fact that a mom-daughter duo has compiled the designs is very cool.
• Pop Knitting: Bold Motifs Using Color and Stitch by Swedish fashion-designer Britt-Marie Christoffersson is a treasure trove of “outside the box” knitting stitch patterns that fully utilize bright, contrasting colors. Some of these patterns even look great done in a solid, monochromatic yarn. This book has got my mind reeling with design ideas … and I love how she gives the basic directions for executing the pattern … and then stands back and lets the knitter do it! Very cool stuff packed in this one.

For regular reading, I’ve finished up Strange Rebels and it was as good as I thought it’d be — quite provocative and a good read for high school or college modern history. 1979 was an amazingly pivotal year (besides being the year I graduated high school, of course!) and this book points out just how much of what is going on now can be linked to what happened during 1979! I have a book waiting on the table for me to start: Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. This book was recommended by a customer in my LYS … a well-educated German woman who thoroughly enjoyed Isaacson’s re-telling of the man who once said “I don’t think God would play dice with the universe”. I’ll let you know how the book goes.

So … what’s on your needles and reading table? Wanna come play …