Monday, April 09, 2007

Last night we watched the Masterpiece Theater version of The Wind in the Willows. I kept trying to really like it, but in the end was just disappointed and sad. It was if someone had said to a child, "This is a rose" and handed her a very well made plastic flower. The production was sprightly, well done in its way and completely without the subtlety and lyricism of the original. I don't know that it's entirely the producers fault. I'm not sure that the original is translatable to the screen. Possibly with animation of a painterly sort. I would like to see the folks who produced The Snowman give it a try.

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On the other hand, I was quite delighted with the Knit Picks catalog that arrived this week. It focuses on lace, and the things I like about it are:

It has pictures of projects from several books, worked of course, in their own yarns. I like seeing the garments on a "real person" type model (meaning someone closer to my size than to a size 0).

It has a good tutorial on knitting lace from charts. I'm a confirmed chart user myself, and believe it offers real advantages to the lace knitter, but from discussions on some of the forums this seems to be a stumbling block for a number of new lace knitters. So it's good to see the basics nicely laid out, with a free charted pattern for a little lace purse for practice.

There is also a tutorial on dyeing a lace scarf in graduated color, something I have thought about doing myself (the dyeing, not writing up the tutorial), and an overview of different blocking methods, including a link to a page on their website with instructions for building a blocking frame. Not being handy with tools myself, I won't be attempting this one, but maybe Mr S......

(Personal disclaimer: I was also excited beyond measure to see I Can't Believe I'm Knitting Socks appear in the book section.)

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Speaking of lace, I'm using Little Leaf Stripe in the first of the baby sets and I'm reminded again what a very good beginning lace pattern this is. It's quite pretty, very easy (only two pattern rows) and uses/demonstrates three basic decreases.



So an idea I will file away for future reference: scarf pattern with variations - just Little Leaf Stripe, LLS with wide border at each end, LLS with knit on narrow border all the way around.

2 comments:

YarnThrower said...

I enjoy hearing your thoughts on books and catalogs. Your lace pattern is pretty!

CatBookMom said...

It's being slow here. No KnitPicks lace catalog, no Spring Knitters magazine, and NO YARN from WEBS. They said they sent it UPS ground, but that was last Thursday. I could have driven to WEBS to pick it up myself, lol!!

I enjoy reading your blog every time. And one of these days I'll tackle your lovely shawl. {VBG}