Thursday, September 24, 2009

More wandering about.

I decided to buy the Oliver sock pattern so highly praised by Franklin. Not available. Why can’t she just sell it as a download, like everybody else these days?

I went ahead yesterday and ordered Sally Melville’s book, mentioned yesterday. There are good designs there, and – as you say, Gerri – the pages on fit and body shapes looked interesting.

There seem to be other books, all of a sudden. Wendy Bernard’s Custom Knits, Jane Ellison’s Knits to Fit and Flatter, Pam Allen’s Simple Style, Debbie Bliss’ Design It, Knit It. Fit would appear to be in, this season. Comments very welcome from anybody who knows any of these books. I like Pam Allen, and have a couple of her other “Style” books. Some are better than others.

I decided against Signature needles for the moment. I’m perfectly happy with my Brittany birches, and the danger you mention, FiberQat, of holes in one’s fingers, has to be born in mind.

I should finish knitting the Griswold this evening. The designer offers an interesting way of joining the two halves, similar to the one Donna Druchunas recently included in her blog, derived from “Knits from the North Sea”(which seems to be unique among recent knitting books in that I am definitely not interested in it).

I can’t link to the Druchunas blog this morning. I get a very odd error message, “Page headers already sent out”, which in turn has an even odder effect on the computer. I couldn’t Restart, or even switch off. I had to get down there and pull out the plug. And then turn it on. And then reboot. I now seem to be back in business – but don’t try getting Donna’s blog just yet.

And since I positively enjoy Kitchener’ing, I think I’ll join the stole that way.

There was a men’s fashion article in the Telegraph yesterday with everybody looking a lot like the chap on the front of Erika Knight’s “Men’s Knits”. (The link is to Amazon.com. In the UK version, the poor fellow has lost his scarf.) The text in the Telegraph speaks of “oversized chunky details on knitwear…The look is very much hand-knitted, but way beyond anything you could hope to receive from your great-aunt at Christmas.”

Why is everyone always so rude about elderly female relatives and their knitting?

10 comments:

  1. Hi Jean, Just to let you know, the Oliver sock pattern is available as a download - just go to Ravelry, search "Oliver sock" and you should find it. It's $7 or something.

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  2. Oh good. I searched on Ravelry earlier, but just for "Oliver", which returned too many not-sock results.

    Jean, the reason some speak poorly of elderly women is that those making the disparaging remarks are ignorant buffoons.

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  3. Jean, if you have EZ's "Form Fitted Arch Socks" you essentially have "Oliver".

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  4. Hmf. As a younger relative, I'd love to have something made by a great-aunt or my grandmothers. I guess it's just more fun to mock things than it is to say nice things.

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  5. I have wendy's "custom knits" book-- I think it is worth it just for the instructions on seamless, short-row cap-sleeves--I had never seen that anywhere, and one things I do hate is the seaming of sleeve caps. Most of the patterns there are styled for the youngish set, and there is a lot of advice on styling one's own sweater, which if you have read EZ and others, it won't be very new, but it was the information on how to pick up stitches and knit a capped sleeve seamlessly that made me buy the book.

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  6. Gerri3:04 PM

    Jealousy, that's the reason for the disparaging remarks. Franklin has a good carton on it, if you have his book.

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  7. This great aunt would never knit for such an ingrate.

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  8. =Tamar7:38 PM

    I think the assumption is that elderly women only knit tissue-paper covers, penwipers, and unfashionable garments, nothing anyone with good taste would actually want to use. The image is late Victorian, made worse by commercial interests that to this day insist all handwork is badly done, a competitive attitude that goes back to 1589 and the first machine knitting.

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  9. I have Custom Knits out from our library and I agree with Angel. It's a decent book. The introductory chapter has general advice. Then there are 4 chapters of patterns (maybe 1 I liked) and then the best chapter is at the end - techniques for shaping, designing, etc. Great book for some.

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  10. Jean, good sock (shawls, too) patterns can be had from Anne Hanson's website, www.knitspot.com

    Downloadable, too :)

    No affiliation, etc

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