Saturday, April 05, 2008

Briefly, this morning, as I must put out fresh towels and strew the path with petals in the expectation of the arrival of The Picture. See Thursday.

Matthew, I suspect you could find a sophisticated Darning Tutorial if you Googled. Essentially, you hold the hole open, perhaps by putting a fist inside the sock. You don’t want to distort the shape of the sock by pulling it closed. There are things called darning eggs made for the purpose. Some of them are beautiful.

Then you thread a needle with yarn, anchor it at one corner of the hole, and create a warp (or do I mean woof?) by working back and forth across the hole, leaving the threads floating. Then start again in the cross-direction and simply weave.

The smaller the hole, the easier the job.

The packages were duly dispatched yesterday, gansey to Denver, socks to Loch Fyne. My husband tottered down to the post office with me, the first time he’s been out for a stroll since this tooth crisis began.

I’ve finished the ribbing of the first Fog sock. I’ll take a pic tomorrow, when I should have finished the first complete pattern repeat. It’s terrifically exciting, the first time through – how wide will this stripe be? What colour is the next one? It’s most interesting to see how the final assembly of stripes and colours pulls itself together even though the first few inches look rather boring.

Helen sent me these pictures from Thessaolniki yesterday – they’re from some movie, and she admired the coat. It would be a real stash-buster all right. Does anybody recognise the film? I disapprove of fringe.

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:34 AM

    the film is the Golden Compass from the Phillip Pullman book - I think it was called NorthernLights here in Europe
    jenny

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  2. I have that movie (Golden Compass) in an Amazon pre-order order -- I think I ordered just to see the knitted creations that everyone said were in the movie!

    Jean: I'm still working on the Earth Stripe stole, along with other WIPs of course. At this rate it will be Xmas before I get finished with it. But it is lovely and soft.

    Can I ask: do you usually just pn;u work on one or two things at a time? I think that's the only way to go in the future. While I've been very disciplined and not started anything for a while, I do have multiple projects going. And I want to get through them before I start anything else. So my Ravelry queue keeps growing, but I've somehow restrained myself.

    We can't wait for the arrival of the picture though! Maybe a knitted red carpet?

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  3. Anonymous1:20 PM

    You are such an inspiration. I got my sock needles out last night and started on the second of a pair - the first having been knitted months ago. Thanks for the nudge.
    Ron in Mexico

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  4. As others have said, the film is The Golden Compass. I haven't seen it yet, but I read the books (as an adult, though they are geared to older children) and absolutely loved them. I am hesitant to see the movie, because it might destroy the lovely pictures and voices I have in my head from reading (not that I have voices in my head, but I think you know what I mean).

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  5. Here is a link to a video on my blog on how to darn
    http://lizzysends.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-did-spinning-thing-again-yesterday.html

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  6. The clothing design in the movie, The Golden Compass, was lovely. There has been such interest in the knitwear, there are several websites that have come up with designs close to the hats and this coat in particular. Googling will bring them to light

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  7. As several others have said, the film is 'The Golden Compass' based on the book by the same name by Philip Pullmann.

    Plotwise, it did follow the book rather well although they did compress the plot down a bit (and it was still a long film).

    It had some pretty fantastic knitware on display throughout the film and I believe there's a group on Ravelry about it.

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  8. I'd give the film a miss... the books were good, but they eliminated most of the plot elements that really EXPLAIN things. Oh, but Robert DeNiro's role was great!

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  9. But what if I buy the wool? Delving into KF wool catalogues would be a delight in itself. But will it just take up all your time and not be interesting enough? You could skip the fringes.

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  10. My father used to darn socks using the wooden handle from an old cabinet's door. The handle was round with a concave circular depression, making it very easy to weave the needle in and out of the raggedy edges and beyond. It was my father who taught me to darn.

    I think the coat's fringe is supposed to work as a foil to the girl's hair. I love spotting the knits in movies; did you like the ones in The Others?

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