Spending money to save money

I know, I know, it doesn't make sense. But if you were going to spend the money anyway...

What the heck am I talking about? Well, when my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince arrived last month, tucked into the package was a Chapters/Indigo "Magic GiftCard", the value of which was an unknown dollar amount somewhere between $5 and $1000. In order to find out the value of the gift card, you had to spend at least $50 in one of their stores during the month of August.

So I asked my mom if there was anything she was planning to buy at Chapters/Indigo, to try and create a $50+ purchase. Fortunately, she did have some things in mind and today I went and bought stuff. (My Magic GiftCard was pathetically worth just $5 - big surprise.)

(Ramble, ramble, ramble. Sorry. I'll get to the point.)

One of my purchases was Zoe Mellor's Double Knits, which Chapters/Indigo has on special at $4.99, down from the list price of $24.95. I'd seen this book before and thought it was pretty cute, so I bought it, figuring that if I didn't want to keep it, I'd be able to think of someone who'd appreciate it as a gift.

My initial reaction is that it's a pretty cute book. There's not much in there that's really unique or spectacular, but the patterns are all pretty solidly attractive. This definitely gives me more fun things to make for babies when I don't feel like designing something myself. The items I especially like, upon the first skimming of the book, are the jester booties and the all-in-one.

Fair isle romper for baby Marte

No sign of the royal blue yarn in the mail yet, obviously, but in anticipation of its arrival, I have restarted the swatch of the fair isle motif. I've gone as far as I can without the blue, and now I'm waiting - very impatiently! - for it to show up.

Striped socks for moi

Well, work continued on the socks today - I'd guess I've got about five inches done on the foot so far. The pattern of the yarn has emerged, and it's, well, weird. It is sort of striping, but it is also (get this) pooling at the same time. Here's what I mean:

I have to be honest, it's not jazzing me. But I am still enjoying the knitting.

Stornaway sweater for BIL (blue)

I've mentioned before how badly my camcorder takes pictures of this particular colour of yarn. This is the best I could do, photowise, after all the natural sunlight vanished with the setting sun:

You are looking at the progress of the back of the sweater. Please try to ignore the suckiness of the picture quality as much as possible. Even though the pattern of the sweater is barely visible, you should still be able to see the needle, which indicates where I am in my back-of-the-sweater progress. You can see that it is very close to being the same length as the front of the sweater. With a little bit of work, I expect to be finished the back by the end of tomorrow. Yippee!