Paperback Buyer

TTHFCIF

Guess where I am? Guess what I'm wearing?

If you guessed my basement and footie pajamas, you are right.

If you guessed Tahiti and edible undies, you're a pervert, but thank you.†

Werk was really slow the last couple of days and I'm still coughing and wheezing a little, so I took a mental/chestal health day.

[SUMMARY: It's two vacations in one!]

By the way, I figured out why "Sohows Boobls & Thong" was so funny. It sounds like Foul Ole Ron and would go very nicely with "millenium hand and shrimp."

[SUMMARY: Buggrit!]

Anyway, here we are back at the book procurement arm of the Rickety Blog.

First, the book version of the Howl from yesterday:%




The ripples in the book just add to the artistry.‡

Speaking of artistry, I got my prize winnings for turning in the Kislings for their over-the-top Christmas light display from Cheryl. And it came with a postcard of the Stitch Diva... logo? mascot?




The prize, of course, my own personal copy of Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair.




Knitting From the Top,§ which I have been told is an excellent book, embracing not just the classic top-down raglan, but also top-down sweaters with inset sleeves.¶




Under the auspices of the current sweater-knitting# frenzy, I also got The Twisted Sisters Knit Sweaters, which gives all kinds of good info on fit, but I'm mostly interested in being able to make an effective V-neck. There are a lot of sweaters I see and think, "That would make me very happy, if only it had a V-neck."

Now I feel I have the tools to make those changes.††

I will say I hate most of the actual sweater patterns in this book, but I really like the clear illustrations of how to make the PARTS of a sweater and issues of fit.‡‡




OK, I took a lot of pictures of this last one. I got really excited about it, which is really strange for at least three reasons:

1. I have owned one tam in my life (I was eleven) and I never thought much of it, so I have no affinity for tams and, in fact, generally believe I will look dopey in them.§§


2. I get easily confused with concept. I like patterns that tell me exactly what to do. Oh, sure, when I get all cocky, I'll switch it up -- make a sleeve a little longer, use a different rib, knit it toe-up -- but I don't want someone to just tell me how to do it and let me do my own. I want just a little more hand-holding, at least at the beginning.


3. Not nearly enough colour pictures. I am shallow. Packaging, colour pictures, presentation embodying a modern graphic sensibility -- these are all things I look for in a knitting book.

Yet this one doesn't give pictures of twelve tams and the exact instructions for making them.¶¶ It gives a bunch of black-and-white photos with corresponding charts to show how to make various shapes, like petals and scallops (first pic) and leaves and buds (second pic).




It shows how to do decorative decreases like the swirl and the zig-zag.




And it shows the relation between the floppiness, rate of increase and diameter of a tam.##




Ooooh... kaleidoscope. Pretty.




So it appears my unwitting New Year's resolution may be to educate myself on the impetus behind knitted items rather than just picking shiny patterns and knitting them verbatim.

[SUMMARY: Sea-change... no sea needed.]

I don't know why this guy was taking pictures of the office building where I work. Hans and I speculated that maybe he's a downtown building photographer. We wondered where we could get a job like that. We wondered if he could see us. We wondered whether we'd show up in his pictures. We made faces and smashed our noses on the window.

Then Hans said, "I can't believe you're not blogging this."

Thus.




Oh, crap. I just found poker is on for tomorrow and now I really do have to ship-shape my stupid basement.

We always knew it wasn't going to happen until the last minute, didn't we?

[SUMMARY: Duh.]

You have a happy weekend. I'm going to go store some boxes out of sight.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): You are my new best friend!

%FOOTNOTE (percented): One of the many advantages to being at the home computer is access to that which Blogger ate yesterday.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Humour me.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): These two books were photographed using a very special technique wherein I stand each one on its spine on the bookcase in my office, take a horizontal photo, then turn the photo vertical in Corel. It's like old Hollywood special effects magic.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): And ponchos! And pants! I'm NOT going to knit myself a pair of pants or a poncho, no matter what Barbara Walker tells me to do.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Or, more correctly, "...the current thinking about knitting sweaters craze..."

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Delusion itself is a marvelous tool.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): 'Cause fit is an issue. Y'know... sohows boobls and all.

§§FOOTNOTE (tams on the fly!): Dopier.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (gooses stepping): In all fairness to Mary Rowe, she did include charts for all the colourwork shown in the book and did give patterns for knitting tams... just not one specific pattern for one specific tam, if that makes sense.

##FOOTNOTE (pounding like a ghetto hoopty): I love that illustration. It reminds me of the little black-and-white cartoons in Playboy. Or Women's Day.