Festive 2011: Acquisitions

Hello again, reader, I hope you had a lovely time over Christmas and New Year; the right amount of rest, relaxation and of course, knitting. It has been a good one here, just the right amount of time with everyone and doing all the things I wanted to, though mostly offline. So there has been a slight backlog of posts for me to write, so there will be a little flurry. I hope for some sort of review of 2011 and a look forward with crafty resolutions for 2012, all in good time.

I seem to have been given a lot of crafty things this year! Though some of them I have scooped up in sales with Christmas money and got using Amazon vouchers, my bookshelf has become much more populated.

I have mostly only flicked through them, but they are looking promising. I am on a mission to collect the Harmony Guides and colourwork seemed like a good choice given my new-found love for it. The sock yarn one-skein wonders will hopefully help with the small mound of single skeins of sock yarn I just keep on buying (especially the Wendy Happy, mentioned in this post (point 4). totally stuck with that one). The two S&B books I intend to read from cover to cover having skimmed several interesting sections, but also contain some promising looking patterns. Stitch! and A Rainbow... are basically cover-to-cover with things I want to make and do, so I'm hoping for more chance to do as Ms. Kidston tells me to and stitch a lot this year.... and The Twelve Knits Of Christmas is being put away for at least the next 10 months! I will write more about each of them when I have used them.

I also treated myself to this beauty in John Lewis with Christmas money from Grandma (the most senior living source of The Craft Gene). I think she would approve.

I have been very much wanting to get a sewing box for a long while now, as my sewing stuff tends to just get shoved in the nearest knitting bag, but not seen a good one yet. I saw this in JL just before Christmas and when I got a little money I knew just where it would go. It even matches my knitting bag! So now my little crafty corner looks like this...

No, I'm not saying how long I tidied it for before that photo was taken.