Friday, October 03, 2008

I’m feeling a bit better about life. The debate was inconclusive, again, but at least no gaffes from our side. The BBC man wrote a live commentary as it proceeded – I could wish the moderator had tried to get them to answer the questions.

I’m feeling happier about the Princess, too. The repeat for the centre pattern is only 12 stitches. I have accidentally offset it by half, and the vertical lines of the pattern continue upwards pretty well. (That’s how the mistake happened, and why I couldn’t see it right away.)

The thing to do, I think, will be to get the next repeat, No. 8, back on track. And when that’s finished, to decide whether to go ahead offsetting every repeat, or to press on leaving repeat No. 7, the current one, out of step with the rest. I’ll pause after each repeat as before, and take pictures. Sometimes, at least for someone as unobservant as I, the camera sees things the eye has missed.

A dressmaker friend – she made Rachel’s wedding dress, more than a quarter of a century ago – said to me once, “If you can’t hide it, make a feature of it.” Sound advice, in any craft. That’s an argument in favour of offsetting every repeat from now on.

Cynthia, thank you for the formula for calculating how far you’ve got. It sounds so simple. I’ll apply it when No 7 is finished – not long now, I’m more than half-way through, counting by line-numbers, and by now the additional stitch-per-row adds relatively little in proportion to what’s already there.

So, London

It was tough. My husband is pretty slow on his pins these days, and tires easily. And London requires a lot of getting-around. We were helped by the fact that, most unusually, he wasn’t interested in either of two big shows: Bacon at the Tate or Rothko at Tatmo. We went to Dulwich (always a pleasure) to see the De Brays (17th century Dutch portraitists, father and sons); the Courtauld for Cezanne; the Portrait Gallery for Wyndham Lewis; and the BM for Hadrian – a mistake. It occupied a whole day, was hideously crowded, hideously expensive with no reduction for Old Age Pensioners, and, to our taste, not very well labelled.

These are the postcards I brought back as potential colour schemes for Ketki’s sweater. The angel is in the permanent collection at Dulwich; Edith Sitwell was in the Wyndham Lewis exhibition. I rather incline towards the angel.



7 comments:

  1. On your recommendation from some past blog we went to Dulwich 4 weeks ago to see the De Brays and the beautiful collection there. Thanks, it is a real gem with a bonus of a delightful garden with named trees.
    Another Gem of a Gallery, if you can get there, is Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance. Fantastic exhibitions, lovely permanent collection and a beautiful setting.
    I also would go with the angel; good colours there and positive thinking.
    Judith

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  2. Wasn't there a post where you feared a particular outfit or hat (can't remember) would end up looking like Edith Sitwell? Perhaps the angel is best, although I do like the greens in the Sitwell portraitt.

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  3. Anonymous12:46 PM

    Have you come across the palette generator on the web? http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/colors.php
    I put the angel through it and wasn't too impressed with the results, though. Muddy waters, rusty nail and foggy grey amongst other rather dull colours.
    It can be fun to run a few photos through it!

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  4. Thanks for the BBC Live Commentary link. As soon as the debates are over I always switch to BBC America. I love their news, because it's actually, you know, "news".

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  5. Anonymous6:40 PM

    I suppose it depends whether you want more light blue or more green; the main yellow gold is about the same. I like the blue better but the green (teal?) is pretty too. I just learned that yarn looks darker when it is knitted than in the ball.

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  6. One of the reasons I love your blog is that I'm always learning something new, Jean. The same goes for those folks who leave comments - I learn from them, too. Thanks Clare G. for that website.

    I really like the idea of using a picture as a inspiration for a knitting palette. It gives me a whole new purpose when in museums.

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  7. In this post, when you mentioned "The Princess", for an awful mement I thought you meant Ms. Palin. LOL

    Listening to the debate would have been fine because you would have been spared the sight of her winking at the camera.... those who watched on TV were not.

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