My husband was trying to get an Amazon order up to $25 so he’d qualify for free shipping.  He asked if I had anything I wanted to add to the order.  While I was tempted to buy Knit Your Own Dog, I opted for something more practical:

That’s Nicky Eptsein’s Knitting Block by Block, a solid addition to my collection of reference books.  There are some great things in here that will hopefully jump-start my designing momentum, which has been a bit stalled the last few months.  For example, I love how this hat was made with blocks:

Here are some other blocks that contained some element (not necessarily exactly as shown) I could use in a new design:

But then there are some really…weird (um, yeah, let’s go with weird)…blocks.

This isn't toooo bad...

 

 

But, uh, what?!

 

What is going on here?

 

Or here?

 

Many of the "embossed" designs fell really flat, in my opinion.

 

What?!!

 Generally, though, I’m happy to have this in my collection and I expect to turn to it in future designs.  Speaking of designs, today is the last day of my pattern sale fundraiser for Japan.  🙂