Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Here’s the current state of the Little Boy sweater. When its turn comes up again, I’ll press on to the finish, but today I want to get back to pressing on towards the finish of the Princess border.



One of the things I’d like to figure out how to do, is to add labels and little arrows to photographs, and to draw borders around particular parts. Here, I’d like to point out – although I guess it’s pretty obvious, if you peer – where the sleeves were joined in, and where the first big decrease round occurs.

There is a distinct change when the sleeves are added. I like the round-and-round stripes of the lower body better. But it’s the way the colours swoop about between the first and second decrease rounds that especially delights me.

Maybe I don’t need to take any further trouble over achieving ikat: just knit one of the The Yarn Yard skeins on 200 stitches, which is the number I think I had at that point. One could knit a tube all the way up, then cut for sleeves and a dropped-shoulder. That would yield a sweater of very nearly the same size as this: the lower body was worked on 196 stitches. The sleeves would inevitably be different. I'll think about it.

Blogs

Annie Modesitt is back up.

Lee, thank you for the reference to the Baghdad diary of the Library director. There’s a lot of solid prose there. I got a bit bogged down, and then decided to earmark it with the intention of reading, every few days, the entries for exactly a month ago. It is truly extraordinary to read of the semi-familiar frustrations of a man in his position, dealing with beauocracy, dealing with government ministers, amidst the unfamiliar setting of death and inconvenience-by-terrorism and helicopters overhead.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:16 AM

    The swirls on the sweater are so good - that's what makes it a unique piece instead of just a jumper.

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  2. Anonymous3:11 PM

    I love the swirls -- they made me immediately think of marbles, most particularly the agate marbles we so covetted as children.

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  3. Anonymous3:58 PM

    You mentioned adding notes to your photos. Adobe has a program called Photoshop Elements that's easy to use and you can do text and graphics (outlines, arrows and such) right on your photos. It costs around $100 here in the U.S. Very useful.

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  4. Anonymous9:00 PM

    I am not sure if you have a Mac or not. But if you do, adding the labels and arrows is easy-peasy (and if you are a PC owner, don't you just hate it when Mac owners say this?).

    There is a program called GraphicConverter X - which comes with most MacPros (or used to at least) but is cheap enough anyway - namely it's shareware and $30.

    You load the picture. You click on the A icon on the menu, you put the cursor where you want to put the text, you type your text. You double click on the line icon on the menu, change it to arrow instead of line, point it where you want and - viola! There you are. Photo with text and arrow. Save as (renaming at the same time to make sure you didn't muck up the original) a jpeg of the proper sizing and you are good to go.

    If you are using a PC, then I suspect you can use a program like PrintMaster or such without popping for the $$ picture imaging software.

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  5. I spy two swirlies on the 200 stitches, so you should get a similar effect with 100. Just do the cuffs in another color and increase rapidly.

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  6. When you said 'swirl' I hadn't quite believed in the drama of the action that I'm now seeing. Glory be! it's beautiful. Expected?

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