Look what arrived in the mail today!  Traditional Knitting from the Scottish and Irish Isles by Debbie Bliss.  Santa placed an order for this way back on December 6th and it finally arrived!  I first read about this book at Wendy’s Knits and had it on my wish list at Amazon for over a year.  Unlike what I thought, many of the sweaters are not knit in flat rows, but rather in the round up to the underarms, nice!  The variety of sweaters is tremendous, and sizes for the whole family.  The yarn used was Jamieson and Smith (US size 2 needles), mostly in neutral/natural and autumn shades, with a few designs in primary colors.  The women’s sweaters are very feminine, no masculine unisex type sweaters here, true to form for Debbie Bliss today.  Even though this book was published in 1991, there are no tell tale signs of the 80’s in any of the designs.  The colorwork charts are all in black and white, colors designated by symbols, and all the patterns are true to the XO patterning but not literally X’s and O’s, beautiful snowflake, sunflower, starburst, and other designs with bands of color running through in graduated shades.  This book was much less expensive than an out of print Alice Starmore book, but equally if not more spectacular.  Another nice little treat and fun discovery was finding Tasha Tudor’s Old Fashioned Gifts at an antique shop the day after Christmas which had color work patterns for Norwegian style mittens and slippers.  I have Tasha Tudor’s crafts but nothing in it included any colorwork knitting patterns at’all, these were especially pretty and it was so nice to have the beautiful illustrations on the pages with the patterns.  It was a first edition 1979 copy but pretty stained on the cover so I picked it up for a really great price.  Now I need to make a pretty cover for it to match the beautiful illustrations on the inside.  What a treat to have a craft book with these incredible illustrations!  There are lots of recipes inside too for things like peppermint patties, almond brittle, taffy, candied apples, and hot cross buns.  All of the crafts are focused on the holidays, things like a paper valentine mobile, and a cornucopia for Thanksgiving.  Very charming gifts for children included a child’s pinafore, cloth book, and a hat box for dolls and their tea party accessories.