My new toy... (ahem) tool!

I had a great time on Sunday destressing from a whole day of being chased by six kids (hubby decided to take one child off my hands - how generous) on Saturday. I still had six since my stepdaughter had a friend over, so no real change from my daily grind :D... Any way, Sunday I slipped off to town by myself for a change for a couple hours. I stopped somewhere I haven't' been in far too long and a place I used to go before children, a place where I instantly relax as soon as I set foot in the door and get a wiff of the baking cookies and brownies and gourmet coffees; I stopped at Barnes & Noble. I had great fun thumbing through all of the knitting and crochet books. So many good ones! I wanted to bring them all home with me and give them all a new home, but alas, my pocketbook is too thin! I settled on a book entitled Knitting Design: Working from a Master Pattern to Fashion Your Own Knits. Now I just need to take time from my busy design schedule to read it! LOL! After I selected this book, I wondered over to the magazines and found this great magazine. I got a great bonus, a new toy...er, I mean tool! The Spring issue came with a Free Row/Pattern Counter! A really, really good one! Not only does this cool toy (er, tool) count your rows (counts to 999), it keeps track of increases, decreases, and repeats! It has a small 4 1/4 inch ruler at it's base for swatching, measuring your work, or tension! I have a standard knitting counter and it's good but this great new counter will be the one I will carry with me from now on.