Things are progressing quiet nicely on the lace sample for class and it is about half finished. As I mentioned before, I was having a hard time finding a pattern that met the criteria I wanted for an Introduction to Lace class. These criteria included:

• Scarf size
• Purl on backside
• Garter stitch border
• Simple design that had less than 12 rows per repeat
• No knit 3 together, no nups, etc.
• Had to have a design that allowed the knitter to place stitch markers for each repeat so they can count to make sure they haven't lost any stitches.
• Needed to look interesting and like lace, so folks would want to knit it

Apparently this was a tall order. So, I whipped out the stitch dictionaries and came up with this:

I'm not sure if grabbing a stitch out of a stitch dictionary and adding a garter stitch border makes me a designer. I see all of the work Chrissy puts into her designs and I know this is nothing like that. On the other hand, I think this is going to work nicely to demonstrate the things I want to teach in the class, so that's good enough for me. If RaNaye wants to sell it, even better.

The yarn is JoJoland Melody in color Y-20. It has a very subtle color change between lavender and blue that doesn't show up very well in the photo. I wasn't too sure I liked it until I pinned it out to measure my progress last night. I look forward to completing this one and taking a picture outside, in natural light. The basement guest room just wasn't cutting it, even with extra lights!

On another topic, since a couple of you seemed interested in my Children's books, I thought I'd share another one. Still no scanner, so more not so great photos.

The Time to Sleep Book by Kathleen Allan Meyer, Illustrated by Rod Ruth in 1978 by Golden Press

I found this one at a garage sale this past weekend for a quarter. I think I may have had it when I was little because it looks really familiar. The front and back covers look the same, with the little sleeping girl and teddy.

Inside, the book has the sweetest pictures of sleeping animals and talks about how they sleep.

Isn't that sweet little chimpanzee adorable!

I just love this alligator, with it's legs hanging down. The entire book makes me sleepy whenever I look at it. The last page shows the little girl in a picture much like the cover and says "When it's time to go to sleep, I sleep like this". A. saw this in my office today and wanted to read it right away. That kid loves books as much as her mama.