happy belated 4th!

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday. It rained here, so no fireworks for me. :o(
The arm warmers are done. I'm not posting a pic of arm warmer #2, because it looks just like arm warmer #1. And also, I'm too lazy. My tension stayed pretty even over both pieces, so they're almost exactly the same size--hurrah! My major problem seems to be binding off in the round--how do you not end up with one end higher than the other? I assume there's some trick to working the yarn back into itself to make both sides look even, but it's a magical move I haven't been alerted to yet, so both warmers have a bit of a wonky blip on the top edge where I did my best to make an invisible seam. But unless you're looking for wonkiness, you wouldn't notice, so I'm happy with them.
Now I am again without a project on needles. Still a few days until KnitPicks Cotlin becomes available, and I'm at a loss for other projects, since my Knit Knack exchange hasn't started yet and I still haven't decided what to make most people for their upcoming birthdays and Christmas (I do want to make me a set of arm warmers, but I really need to take a break from circular knitting for a bit.). I got a coupon for my LYS, so I might trek over there soon. Hubby is traveling for work next week and maybe the week after (boo!) and my new job hasn't started yet, so I have plenty of free time for knitting and should definitely take advantage of it. I did get a few cute yarn books from the library, but most of the patterns are way over my head--some of the charts in No Sheep for You look like abstract art rather than knitting guides, I can't fathom how anyone would make any sense of them.