Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Bad Day at Northern Rock


So here we are at the OK Corral, to mix references.

I keep thinking about the time-lag between the stock market crash of ’29 and the bank failures – ’31? was it? – which triggered the Great Depression. We’ve had a whole four years since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or whatever the hell they’re called, but…

One sort of feels that nowadays with computers and a Greater Understanding of Economics, everything is going to be all right. Whereas in the early thirties all we had was Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda. But I also wonder whether there might not have been Men in Suits even in those days, who understood a certain amount and had meetings and inspired a measure of confidence and still it kept coming.

We shall see.

Knitting

I finished the body of the Brownstone, as hoped; wound and attached the 7th skein; picked up the collar stitches; and am now knitting short rows back and forth across the back-neck. Jared is very non-prescriptive here:  “Repeat rows 3&4 until you reach the markers at base of v-neck shaping OR until collar measures 4".”

One takes in two more stitches with each pass. I don’t think I’ll make it to the markers.

Picking up stitches used to a nightmare for me. The result inevitably looked a mess, and I could never find as many stitches as the pattern said to pick up. Jared’s instruction, on the long fronts, was to pick up two stitches for every three rows – i.e., far fewer stitches than would have been easy even for me. The result looks really rather tidy and has come out remarkably even, left side compared to right.

Comments

There’s lots I want to say – about astronomy [I want to look at the Kahn Academy, Sarah] and about mourning [prompted by Kristie’s very moving blog post and my visit to C’s house as part of our walk on Monday] and about getting the Interweave brioche stitch workshop into an iPad [there’s something I don’t understand about Adobe Flash – Big Thomas will have to explain when he’s here at the weekend].

But there’s not much time left this morning. I was struck by your remark on Sunday, Kristie, about having five men potentially to knit for, and only one sweater-wearer among them (and he dauntingly large). I found long ago that knitting for grandchildren doesn’t necessarily work – the modern child wears fleece, even in quite chilly circumstances. I was so very pleased when Big Thomas actually asked for a sweater. But I noticed that the one he sent me to measure, was cotton.

I emailed Alexander and Ketki yesterday with my idea of knitting a reduced Brownstone for Little Thomas with the left-over yarn. Ketki said he’d love it, so I’ll go ahead with that. Even if neither of them ever wears his sweater again, Big Thomas and Little Thomas can go about as an electric red team when we meet on the shores of Loch Fyne at Christmas time.

2 comments:

  1. Jean, I don't think any of Apple's pods, pads, or phones can use Flash. It may have been a decision Steve Jobs made, on principle (though I don't understand what principle, or why).

    I could, of course, be entirely wrong about this. I do know that there are things on websites that I can't see with my iPad, and there's always a suggestion (from the website, not the iPad) that I need Flash.

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  2. Maureen in Fargo4:09 PM

    Kate, you're most definitely right, the iPads and iPhones and iPod's DO NOT use Flash! One of the late Steve Jobs' idiosyncrasies, I guess...I understand he had many, unfortunately.....

    I had a "discussion" on Ravelry with someone from Interweave regarding all the emags they were creating that weren't going to work on the iPad and she said they preferred to use Flash as it worked so well for the demos. That effectively eliminates the ipad as a platform for them, she said they were designed more to work on the computer anyway.

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