Wednesday, October 07, 2009

New books

It's autumn so I'm buying books again.
New knit books: Noble, Knits from the north sea. This got criticized on Amazon and my shawls email group because it wasn't strictly Shetland even though the second author comes from there. But I liked the patterns mainly and I have several of her books. Then Sue Flanders, Norwegian handknits. This with my Minnesota background brings back the memories but I doubt if I'll be doing anything as we no longer wear those warmies.
Crochet: Werker, Crocheted gifts. Has some nice quick projects especially the Willow hat. Leinhauser, Granny crochet favorites was ordered from ABE a nd my copy is pristine and I love it. Muriel Kent, Complete crochet course. bought sight unseen because of her Broomstick lace book. Similar material here too.
Rowan picked up this summer in England: magazines 43,44, 45. Classic alpaca book 13 and Purelife winter collection.
Ultimate design sourcebook for crafters to use when I do embroidery. I'm a little disappointed with it as the designs included don't really have what I'm looking for.
I just got the new Knitn style and the latest Interweave crochet which is really good this time. I know they changed editors so that might be the reason. Werker is a good editor but she was relying too much on her group which just hasn't got it yet.
I'm also wary of Interweave because they are bombarding me with lots of patterns for pay and these are mainly reprints from their older stuff
which I've got (if I could just settle down and find it).

I pulled out one of my fairisle projects which I started last winter. I changed it to be 9 1/2 repeats instead of the smallest size of 10 repeats as I generally get 7sts to the inch except that after I had to rip and restart as I had forgotten to start with the last 8 sts of the 32 st pattern, I then discovered that my gauge is exactly on which means what I'm knitting now will be 38" around and I want about 42". So I can't rip again as this pattern is flowery and giving me vision problems anyway. So I'm upping my needle size to 3.25mm which is called for in the pattern anyway, and if that doesn't work, I'll just block it out to be bigger when it's done.

Vision: well, two drs have examined me. I have 2 cataracts (I do have 2 eyes) and one is not ready which they both agree. But the left lazy eye might be ready and one of the drs wants to operate but the other one says to wait. So I'm beginning now to suffer. However I still passed the Israeli driver's eyetest by buying new lenses. I hate this ripoff. Spend the money and you pass. My friend J. who is quite deaf somehow passed it too (they also check hearing) but he spent a lot of $$ with them this summer on a multifocal with a very expensive Italian lense.

No comments: