The palm of my hand is bruised, but...

(Whew, I was beginning to think that Blogger thought my knitting was too fug to allow any photos of it to be published. Turns out, it just takes FOREVER for my pictures to upload and I forgot about that since the last time I shimmy'd here at PurlyTwirly was about a week-and-a-half ago. Sorry, I'll be better! Please ignore the lighting by lamp. I wanted to write this tonight, which meant no natural light to show true color. But we'll get there as the projects progress, promise.)

So, I have been keeping myself really busy in my spare time lately with plenty of yarn on the needles.  Ysolda seems to be a bit of a muse for me. Aside from her lovely wavy blonde hair and timeless pretty face and charming bloggy wit, she's got a genius pattern planning brain. I have three projects in the works that are of her sweet, whimsical design. I should have just gone ahead and purchased her first book, Whimsical Little Knits, but I couldn't bare to wait for it to be delivered. So, I purchased the instant pdf download of her Poppy and got to work immediately. Now, I have two Poppys ready for their debut. But for now, just in case anyone who actually knows me in real life decides to be sneaky and lookyloo over here before these darlings can be gifted, I'll only be sharing a snippet. Here's the one (she's the blonde, for Miss Addison) who isn't packed away for the drive up for giveaway. I still cuddle on her. I'll still be sad when they're both out of my hands. She waves hi.

The third project by Ysolda is one that I've got on the plastic size US6 needles: Elijah the elephant. I can't wait to pick up the stitches necessary to make those big, floppy ears on the sides of that huge head! I love the yarn I'm using from my stash, Lion Brand's Cotton Ease in color 11 Lake. It's a great-looking muted grayish blue and I'm really happy with how it's knitting up. It's pretty firm and sturdy, which makes for a great stuffed animal yarn because his little stuffed animal guts aren't squishing through the loops (so sorry for the graphic nature of that sentence!).

And finally, of course, is an update on my New Year Secret Scarf Exchange scarf. Y'all. I am truly in love with this pattern, Branching Out by Susan Lawrence (and it's published over there at knitty.com). It's very pretty. It's growing (seemingly) quickly. It's just easy enough to keep me proud of myself for totally getting it, and just tough enough to keep me working at it, because honestly, I don't know what the heck I'm doing. To attend to my super-secret scarfee's preferences, I selected a heathered dark blue yarn, Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool in color 95. While it's not my favorite color, I will admit that it is a very lovely yarn. Indeed! And, yes, I bunched it up on purpose so that you couldn't really see anything. I'm very, very sneaky.

The palm of my hand is bruised because my genius boss (owner/mogul of SuzannesQuilts.com (check out the blog, SuzannesQuilts.com/blog! (yes, that was a shameless plug for the blog I keep at work, and yes, this is a TRIPLE parentheses, thankyouverymuch!))) decided that for Fat Tuesday, we'd have a "Buy 20, get 10 free" sale on all fat quarters in the shop. That means that for all of my Monday, all.I.did.all.day.long. was cut fat quarters! And, well, the rotary cutter, cupped in the center of the palm of my hand, decided to go ahead and bruise it while it was there. Have you ever had a bruise on the dead-center of the palm of your dominant hand? It sucks. Wiggle your thumb. Ouch. Wiggle your fingers. Youch! Pick something up. You guessed it. So I'm knitting a little slower than my typical slow knitter self, but I'm still truckin' along! GO TEAM USA!!!

What's on your hot little knitter needles?