Yarn-along: March 23rd and the swatches are almost done ...

~ 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 single 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, Small Things

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Unfortunately, last week was a tough week for any kind of knitting as my laptop was dying a slow death and I was in the "denial" stage most of the week, trying to get the blasted thing to limp through its work.  Well, it made it till Thursday a.m. and I quickly hopped on dh's and ordered a new Toshiba (and a wireless printer while I was at it) -- thank goodness for overnight from Amazon and for design sales!

Well, this week is starting out much better! I've been knitting and reading and generally doing the good.

On the needles:  swatches for my talk at the Dog House Yarns Retreat (will we see you out at Graves Mountain on April 9th?).  The morning session will discuss how to substitute yarns for designs so I collected up different yarns, all in worsted weight, and am doing 50st by 72row squares(on size 8s) to show the differences in gauge, feel (or "hand"), drape and other characteristics.  I'm finishing up on the midnight blue wool/silk blend and then I have one or two to go and then I'll be ready to move on to real knitting again.

FYI, the yarns shown (clockwise, starting at the lower left) are:

• Plymouth Yarn's Boku (95% wool, 5% silk) in color 8 (very autumnal stripes)
• Universal Yarn's Poems Silk (75% wool, 25% silk) in color 803 "Baffinis" (greys and blues)
• Plymouth Yarn's Jelly Beenz (75% acrylic, 25% wool) in color 9623 (rosy pink with dashes of brights -- perfect for a little girl's sweater)
• Cascade Yarns' Venezia Worsted (70% merino, 30% silk) in color Forest (a gorgeous dark green)
• Plymouth Yarn's Royal Llama Silk (60% fine lama, 40% silk) in color 1842 (midnight blue)
• Stonehedge Fiber Mill's Shepherd's Wool (100% wool) in Antique Rose (a pale, but warm, pink)

On the reading table:
Our current read-aloud is the sequel to the wonderfully fun-to-read-aloud, A Whole Nother Story.  We just started Another Whole Nother Story yesterday, and it promises to be just as much fun as the first.

I just finished reading the fascinating, based-on-fact, novel, The Daughter's Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick.  I have now turned my reading toward that pile of books you see in the upper right corner of the picture:  lots of books on decorating on a shoestring!  Spring always gets my interior design creative juices flowing and these books have gorgeous ideas:  Flea Market Style, Simple to Sew Slipcovers and Cover-ups (especially for the leather furniture -- we stick to it in the summer!), Country Living's Cottage Style, Better Homes and Garden's New Cottage Style, HGTV's Design on a Dime, and Country Living's Shoestring Chic.  If those don't keep me busy this week, I've also got a few Windows 7 books to help me deal with all the changes to un-broke Windows programs that Microsoft decides we all need!

Go check out Ginny's post for today and add your own knitting/reading activities for this week!