Happy Holidays!

Lots of lovely press lately, including a three-page

profile of none other than me in the Australian craft magazine, Get Creative (page one at left, featuring my lovely daughter in Halloween 2007's knitted Strawberry Flower Fairy costume). And a nice plug for the audio books of Knitting Lessons and Knitting Memories in Knitting Daily (just follow the links to buy your very own copies, just in time for the holidays). 

Those of you looking for Hélène Magnusson's Rose Pattern Scarf: fear not, it is available still, from Hélène's own site, where you'll also find patterns galore from her excellent book, Icelandic Color Knitting. 

Finally, have you knit something strange for someone as a Christmas or Hanukah present? Send photos and a brief description. The strangest (by my estimation, anyway) will win an audio copy of Knitting Lessons. Deadline: January 15.

As the holiday season begins to descend in earnest, some of us (namely, me) prefer to think back to the dulcet days of Halloween than ahead to the lurking chaos of yule. Also, I'll be honest, I was just plain too lazy to get around to posting about this year's costume. Well, finally, here it is: Ada in her Bouquet of Flowers ensemble, the usual hodgepodge of knitting improv and the splicing together of other knitters' terrific ideas. References include Jan Messent's Knitted Gardens and Hannelore Wernhard's The Knitted Farmyard, and for the third year running, I-cord was the workhorse of the whole operation.   Anyone else out there knit a Halloween costume this year? Please give me a holler (and send photos) and I'll post here. 

In other news, I've finished editing three new Farmer's Wife cookbooks for Voyageur Press, on Slow Cooking, Cookies, and Canning & Preserving. They're coming out soon, so stay tuned for updates!