cute cuter cutest!

Imagine my delight when a little stack of these adorable new books of knit toys showed up at my house the other day from KnitPicks! But the real thrill was inside...

It's my sloth! I am so excited that my pattern for a trio of knitted & felted sloths was included in this ridiculously sweet collection of knit toys. If you've been a reader of this blog for a while (a long while), you may remember when I first got excited about the two-toed sloths and decided to knit a life-sized one. Sloth was born about six years ago (around the same time as the Little Pea), and has now made the big time as a knitting pattern - with two cute little friends.   

Sloth immediately became a beloved friend in our family. I hope he'll be one for lots of other knitters now, too! The pattern is available as part of the Cute Cuter Cutest book, as a stand-alone pattern to download, or as part of a kit made with KnitPicks Wool of the Andes worsted.  

quick peek

I have a new pattern coming out tomorrow via Knit Picks.

Can you guess what it is?

i'm crocheting!

Yes, that's right, I said crocheting!

I've caught the one-hook bug for sure. Over the winter I spent a lot of time hanging out with a couple of crochet evangelists, and they convinced me to try it. With some basic instructions from a friend, and an hour in front of my laptop with the Crochet Guru, here's what I made for my first project:

I didn't make all of these... just the wonky-looking beginner penguin on the left.

Even though I'm a complete novice and I only know three stitches, I find that crochet is approximately one million times faster than knitting. That's actually the reason I wanted to learn it in the first place... I decided to knit an afghan as a gift, and I just couldn't face thousands of yards of yarn at my snail-like knitting pace. Yay crochet!

Here's the afghan-in-process so far:

I'm making it with Cascade 220 Superwash, perhaps the most versatile wool yarn ever. Such a wonderful selection of colors. I chose 9 colors for this afghan, inspired by the colors of Fiesta Ware. The pattern is a simple Edie Eckman Granny Stripe pattern I got from the internets.

My next adventure in crochet may be with Edie Eckman too... I'm itching to take her Crochet Techniques class on Craftsy. Maybe that will be my reward to myself for finishing this afghan!