lions, tigers, bears, oh my.....and knitting needles.

A few days before Christmas I received the latest book from Blogging for books to review.

This is the cutest craft book ever! It's called "Gramma Nancy's animal hats (and booties, too!) by Nancy Nielsen and foreworded by Vanna White.

First I have to say that the cover of this book is the cutest darn thing ever! It has two babies on the front with crocheted chicken hats and booties on. They are in front of a  yellow picket fence to round out the barn theme to go with their accessories. ADORABLE!

If you like to knit, this is the book you need! It has step by step instructions on how to make hats, fingerless gloves, socks, and animal faces. They take you through each step to making and assembling the animal faces for all the hats with worded instructions as well as illustrated instructions with photos.

Within the pages of this book you get to choose from

•  rolled brim hats
•  earflap hats
•  fingerless handsies
•  The forest favorites collection; which include bear, beaver, fox, owl, rabbit and toad
• The Jungle Jubilee; which includes monkey, fish, lion, elephant, panda and turtle.
• The Barnyard Buddies; which include cat, chicken, bluebird, dog, duck, lamb, and pig.

Each hat in the different collections comes with matching booties and the detailed instructions for those as well.

The back of the book has felt templates for the bootie paw prints. (they think of everything!)

Each pattern is accompanied with a finished product modeled by a sweet and utterly adorable baby. That alone is worth the purchase of the book in my opinion.

The back of the book has an index that is pretty amazing. You can look up any hat by any key word that is related to it and you will be directed to the right page to get you knitting right away.

My heart strings blossomed when I was reading the acknowledgements in the back of the book and seeing all the people that the author gave a special thanks to, but the very last paragraph is what made me smile and feel good inside. 
The authors aunt became a patron of Danny Thomas St. Jude Children's Research Hospital the same year she taught Nancy to knit. This just so happens to be Vanna White's favorite charity as well and if you purchase "Vanna's Coice yarns" a portion of the sales from each skein of yarn that is bought is donated to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.  How can you pass up an amazing book that also encourages you to purchase materials that go to help children. This is definitely one of the best $18.99 that I have spent in a very long time!

Now where are my knitting needles??