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.