Lucky me!

I love knitting books. I don't have a huge knitting reference library, but the books that I do have, I love. This year I was lucky enough to receive a few more books to add to my collection. My mom gave me these three books:

Family Album, Fishermen's Sweaters and Vintage Baby Knits. Vintage Baby Knits I had requested, Kaffe Fassett is always a good buy, and Fishermen's Sweaters is a book that my mom found second hand at our local V.O.N shop for $3! It's a beautiful book full of great patterns and lots of information about regional motifs. Plus, since it's second hand it came with a bonus:

The previous owner's notes and thoughts are paper-clipped to a couple of pages. I think that's just so neat!

While we're on the topic of books, my little brother Vincent gave me the three volumes that I was missing to complete my collection of these gorgeous Penguin Classics. I had started collecting them this summer, but could not find three of the titles, they were sold out everywhere I searched, including online, I had accepted that I would just have a collection of seven rather than all ten. Vince is apparently much more resourceful than me and was able to track them down. Isn't that a great gift!? Thanks Vince.

Though this last photo has nothing to do with Christmas or gifts, I just can't believe how well my orchid is doing. I bought this plant from Costco in May, I was impressed by how well it did all summer and was perfectly ok with the fact that it had lost all of it's blooms by fall, but now not only is it blooming again, it has sprouted a third stem with 4 new buds on it. Best orchid ever.

I received a couple more crafty gifts from my way too generous mom this Christmas, a bunch of beautiful buttons, a quilt pattern and a collection of beautifully coordinating batik's in shades of blues and greens to make a quilt. Lucky me!