Flounces and frills

My two latest projects employ short rows and both are frilly frothy girly garments. The scarf was knitted on 23 stitches so much easier to handle than the hundreds of stitches needed to create a similar effect with increases.

The shrug made me thank heaven for the long cable on my circular needle and I couldn't bring myself to count how many stitches I had.

Nifty notions

Since it is the holidays I took the opportunity to check out a couple of local wool shops and I picked up a few nifty items including a couple of useful tools that I had been thinking about buying. A definite impulse buy was the 'Stitchopoly' game which is a needlecraft version of Monopoly (not knitting unfortunately but appealing anyway). I also picked up a knitting calculator which makes working out stitches to cast on based on stitches in a tension square a breeze, very handy and low tech. Both of those were at the wool shop in Toronto.
                                                                             Later in the hols I finally found where Hand to hand has relocated and found a set of marking pins which I had seen online (plus some of that furry yarn which I thought would make a good trim with a black wool).