Last week Kathy asked for knitting tips on her blog. She said the best tip would win a prize, and by gosh by golly that was me.

My tip was: When starting to knit in the round I knit the first stitch with the working yarn and the tail from the cast on. It makes the join snugger and you don’t have an obvious join for the first few rows.

For my tip Kathy sent me a wonderful surprise: a skein of gorgeous yarn from Lorna’s Laces shop in Chicago (which I’m totally going to visit the next time I’m there) and a shawl pin. I think I’m going to use the yarn for a brioche cowl, because even though I said I wasn’t going to knit brioche again I actually do want to knit it again. The shawl pin will get a lot of use this fall, especially because the sticks on my current shawl pins are too wide and start to pop out while I’m wearing them.

Thank you for the wonderful surprise, Kathy. I am so happy to be a part of this great blog community.