Sunday, March 17, 2013


All went well yesterday, except that France beat Scotland.  My husband likes his Toshiba laptop, and worked steadily on it without constantly calling for help. The Surface has served us well, in a sense. Instead of complaining about the extravagances of the modern computer as compared to his good old DOS-based system, my husband was glad to have solid ground under his feet. And I had picked up enough about Windows 8 to broaden the cursor and dim the screen without fuss.

I’ve also learned (not difficult) how to search his entire oeuvre, over several folders. I'm pretty sure that can be done in DOS as well, but I don't know how.

Knitting (remember that?)

I’m now within a couple of rows of the shoulder and neck shaping of the Relax – real progress, if ripping doesn’t prove necessary. And a good thing, too, because a skein of Beyond the Whirled Pakokku arrived yesterday, colorway Just Figs, the gift of one of you – I set out trying to buy it from her stash, as advertised on Ravelry.

I’ll take the current sock along when we go to Loch Fyne for Easter. I’m doing the leg of sock-number-one, on that one. (And I love Mary Lou’s solution to the problem of Second-Sock Syndrome, not that I’ve ever suffered from it. I wish I had done the current pair that way.)

One way or another, either when I finish those socks or when I finish the Relax, the Pakokku should feature in my near future. I’d attempt a photograph right now, except that time is tight on Sunday mornings.

I mentioned the ebook of “What Would Mme Defarge Knit?” the other day. Does anybody know how to get it from an email attachment in PDF-form into my iPad book library? One of the very interesting things about it (I hope I haven’t said this already) is that it is illustrated throughout with line drawings, not photographs.

I was startled, at first. The introduction remarks, rightly, that you can see all the photographs you want of the various designs by looking in Ravelry. The drawings are very expressive. It is often the case in horticultural tomes that a drawing gives a more accurate impression of a plant than a photograph can. Does the same apply to knitting?

I didn’t get to the Wool Festival yesterday. I was needed here to supervise the first steps with the new Toshiba, and I didn’t feel up to seizing the day by the scruff of the neck, anyway. We eat at odd hours – the only way for me to go anywhere more ambitious than the St James Centre is to organise a sandwich lunch for my husband. That doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes, as yesterday, it is more than I can face.

I look forward to hearing about the Festival.

15 comments:

  1. I look forward to reading your blog every morning. Thanks for the peek into your life!

    Re: the saving of a PDF on your iPad. On mine I have JKnitHDLite and iBooks and the kindle app. After I open a PDF I touch the upper right hand corner of it, and a drop-down menu appears. I choose which one to move it to, and pouf! There it is. Magic almost as good as turning a heel!

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    1. Alas, I have archived Mme Defarge on my desktop machine, so that she no longer appears in the email list on the iPad. I'm working on it. Thanks for this.

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    2. Deborah Bennett4:55 AM

      Find the PDF on your desktop machine, and copy it to your dropbox. Then open it from dropbox on the iPad and select "open in iBooks" and it will be copied into your iBooks library.

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    3. It worked a treat! And was much quicker than turning a heel. Mme D. Is safely in my .PDF library, and I am deeply grateful to both.

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  2. I find line drawings for techniques more clear than photos. I am sorry to see so many books moving away for. That, but it is certai ly easier and less expensive. I'll have to take a look at Mme. Defarge. I did laugh at the service performed by the Surface. I could imagine that in my house, as well.

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  3. pdf are opened in the ibooks app-free from the app store. there is a place for books and a place for pdfs. I keep many knitting patterns there. good reader is another pdf reader app which I like because I can annotate the patterns.

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  4. I didn't make it to the yarn festival yesterday either - so I can only hope it happens again soon. It even got a mention on radio 2 on Friday!

    The Scotland game was a bit of a damp squib after Wales v. England, which I enjoyed immensely. At least Scotland finished mid table, this year...

    Glad to hear your technical travails are on the wane.

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    Replies
    1. I've never enjoyed a one-sided game so much in my life as Wales-England yesterday! Perhaps like you, I was too exhausted to care by the time France-Scotland kicked off.

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  5. =Tamar6:52 PM

    There's always the long hard slog: print out the pdf, scan it, upload the scans. If you scan the text and the pictures separately, an OCR program scan can make the text easily quoted. I don't do this, but sometimes I wish I would.

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  6. Anonymous8:46 PM

    I also am unafflicted with Second Sock Syndrome. Sometimes - if trying a new idea - I may get First Sock Syndrome, however. But the thought of two sets of DPNs is much more sensible than Two At A Time on Magic Loop...I find that approach too "fiddley". Take care - Joe-in Wyoming

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  7. Anonymous10:01 PM

    To get a PDF into your iPad:

    Plug the iPad into your computer and open iTunes. Click the iPad button at the top right (in the new version of iTunes).

    Click the Books tab at the top right, and check that Sync Books (and either "All books" or "Selected books" too) is ticked. Then on the toppermost menu click File, then "Add to Library". Choose the Defarge book from your file list and click Open. It should now be in your iTunes list of Books with a tick mark next to its name. Click Apply on the bottom right and it should sync to your iPad.

    Judith in Ottawa

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  8. Anonymous10:44 PM

    Oh, and, when you open iBooks on your iPad, if it says "Books" at the top of the shelf, click the Collections button and choose PDFs.

    Judith in Ottawa, again.

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  9. Anonymous9:08 AM

    From your desktop computer, attach the PDF to an email, send it to yourself, pick it up on the iPad and save it to where it should go.

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  10. If I remember correctly, the /S switch forces DOS to look in all subdirectories. So dir frog*.* /s would look for all files starting with frog in all subdirectories.

    You can also do dir /? to get a list of all switches.

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  11. The Yarn Festival was amazingly busy.
    I blogged about it here:
    http://www.roobeedoo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/edinburgh-yarn-festival.html
    And my friend Christine has an interesting post here:
    http://christinelaennec.co.uk/2013/03/17/a-knitting-and-crocheting-escapade/

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