Monday, March 26, 2007

Halfway through row 168. The next landmark, 4/5ths or 80%, will be row 176 – not too far away.

Kathy, I love the account of Princess-knitting in your blog, and will watch breathlessly for your account and photograph of the insertion and the beginning of the centre. You are weeks – months – ahead of me, but/and your progress is enormously encouraging. I do so agree that the Princess, at this stage, takes over one’s life.

Our friends from Boston will arrive tomorrow, so this is the last day in which I can cram the Princess into every otherwise-unoccupied 10 minutes. One can’t sit down and do just-one-row, but one can easily do just-one-pattern-repeat, and then why not just-one-more?

On ssk’s – I was astonished when Sharon’s book first appeared to discover that she doesn’t think it matters, in garter stitch with fine yarn, which way you do a decrease. I’ve been doing them all the way through the Princess in the way they are written: k2tog for / and ssk for \. Except that sometimes, due to yo’s in the preceding row, ssk can be tricky, and then I revert to k2tog without compunction.

Other…

I’m still worrying about the non-appearance of the books I ordered from Schoolhouse Press, probably three weeks ago today. There were two other books, ordered the same day from two different American booksellers found through Abebooks: both arrived promptly.

One is Annichen Sibbern Bohn, “Norwegian Knitting Designs”. I said here not long ago, I think, that I had never heard of it, but now that it is in my hands, I’m sure I have. A Norwegian knitting friend lent it to me once, decades ago, when we lived in Birmingham. It is a slim vol consisting pretty well entirely of photographs and charts, and it’s terrific.

My other new book is Solveig Hisdal’s “Poetry in Stitches”. This one is a coffee table knitting book in the modern style – patterns based on traditional Norwegian, carried dramatically forward, dramatically photographed. I have heard that Hisdal doesn’t actually knit, and that some of the patterns suffer thereby when one comes to get to grips with their execution. I have no idea whether this is true, and anyway the patterns are sufficiently elaborate (and glorious) that no one except a fairly experienced knitter would be bold enough to tackle them.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Jean,

    This is my first time to post a comment on your blog, but I have been reading and enjoying it for some time. I just wanted to let you know that my orders from Schoolhouse Press seem to take a few weeks as well, and they only have to make it to Canada. Don't give up hope yet! It will probably arrive this week.

    Kristie

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  2. Oh my! for the shawl! You are getting there.

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  3. Hello Jean,

    The Princess looks marvelous. What a great job you are doing!

    Take care,

    Rosane.

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  4. Anonymous10:05 PM

    So beautiful!

    I confess to using k2tog exclusively with the wedding ring shawl--saves a little bit of my sanity. :)

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  5. Hi Jean, I too was shocked to see Sharon say this, I have always knit as written. The K2tog though in the insertion did save my sanity too. Also makes it a bit quicker, not much though, as I seem to knit 2 tog quicker than an ssk.

    Your progress is beautiful, I am always stunned by pictures of it, even though I am knitting it myself.
    I have found that when knitting it I am taken over by it, but as soon as I stop it disappears from mind pretty easily.

    This said, now I see people working on theirs, I want to get back to mine. I haven't much of the centre done, not even one repeat.

    I had ISP issues since yesterday, until about an hour ago, so will post the new photo's soon, before the internet goes down again.

    K

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  6. Your Princess Shawl is just beautiful! I can belive it takes over every spare moment of time. I'm another person who just uses k2tog rather than trying to do left and right slanting decreases. I initially started the Wedding Ring Shawl using directional decreases but switched and you really can't tell with such fine yarn. I look forward to watching your progress through your lovely project.

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