Yes! Now stay with me and you will appreciate my logic.

Hot water bottle covers are small, portable knitting projects. Not heavy in your lap and easy to tote around while you are on vacation or just heading out for a picnic.

You can use up bits of yarn from projects you knit last fall and winter.

There are tons of fun designs - knitting and felting.

And, they make phenomenal gifts! Just be sure to include a bottle with the cover.

You can buy the bottles in the first aid section of your local pharmacy or even on Amazon!

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I'm sure some of you out there love a good puzzle and we've definitely been seeing some wonderful guesswork about the swatches on our latest catalog cover! I'm here to solve some of them for you by listing what yarns, colorways and stitches we used in this lovely photo.

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Have you seen our new selection of tonal yarns yet? There are so many reasons to love adding the subtle shifts of color found in tonal yarns into your projects. Tonal yarns are a wonderful way to add the subtle variations of a color to your project without fearing that it will distract from textured stitches, cables, or even lace patterns. Each of our tonal yarns are made up of seven different shades of your favorite colors, which combine together to create complex, monochromatic colorways. Not only do tonal yarns add lots of visual interest when worked up with simple stitches, but they also beautifully highlight intricate stitch patterns.

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I’ve gotten so much in the habit of knitting socks that I have forgotten that hats have many qualities that make them ideal, portable projects.

When I received a review copy of Weekend Hats it reminded me of the advice Elizabeth Zimmermann gave regarding knitting hats as swatches for sweaters. She suggested watch caps for quick swatch hats. But, I don’t really want to knit such simple hats. In their book Weenend Hats, Cecily and Melissa have provided me with a selection of stylish hats for our favorite waitress and I can pick out something for myself to swatch for the cardigan that has been on my To Do List for waaay too long.

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I really think I'm on a sweater kick this year, and it's got me thinking an awful lot about favorites. You see, now that I'm knitting a little cardigan for myself, and I'll be starting one soon in Tropical colors (thanks for your votes, everybody!), what I find most interesting is that in both cases I pretty much want to make the same sweater. A V-neck, lightly shaped cardigan. That's pretty much The Cardigan I Want all the time.

I must admit that being a designer has its advantages. I can knit the same sweater several times but it doesn't really look the same. Different weights, different colors, different sizes, and maybe a different finishing touch, but I can essentially just plug those things into a formula and get my same, favorite, familiar sweater. My 'go-to' cardigan is based on a simple, light grey alpaca cardigan that I picked up at a thrift store for $5. But I love it so much that I want to re-create it over and over again. So, I just plug a new gauge into the same shape, and out pops a 'new' sweater.

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