Friday, January 12, 2007

Musings.

I just spent fifteen minutes trying to do a screen capture of Vigo Mortensen in a Dale of Norway jacket. I don't know if it's some anti-piracy BS or my own ineptitude, but I can't get the damn thing to paste to Paint properly. At any rate, the image can be found in "The Passing of an Age" on disc four of the director's cut of Return of the King. It's in with all the discussion of the different world wide premieres of the movie; the one he wore the sweater for was the Oslo premiere, of course.

Stupid programmers.

Anyway.

I'm thinking anything remotely Scandinavian for a Strikke-Along in the fall. "Norse Strikkedesign" is of course the obvious go-to place for patterns. "Poetry in Stitches" is also nice. "Traditional Scandinavian Knitting" by Sheila McGregor contains enough information to design your own norgi. "Knitting in the Nordic Tradition" by Vibke Lind is also great, if you can find it (I think it's out of print, but I first saw it in a library, so you never know). "Two-Ended Knitting" by Anne-Maj Ling contains all the info you need to knit a two-ended sweater, a technique that might be Swedish, but I'm sure it's Scandinavian of some kind.

"Knitting in the Old Way" by Gibson-Roberts and Robson contains the information you need to knit any traditional sweater, from anywhere, to any gauge, with any yarn, if you are so inclined. It uses the EPS (Elizabeth's Percentage System, developed by Elizabeth Zimmerman, which we are using on the steeked jackets), and breaks it down into, I think, fourteen different styles (eighteen?) including yoked sweaters, raglans, drop-shoulders, and five or six other sleeve/shoulder treatments. This book, and the EPS in general, is my starting place for any design I develop myself. So if you're of a mind to make your own norgi, it's for you.

We'll start it up sometime in September or October and give us all a long time to find a book, find a pattern, budget in the yarn, and otherwise pull ourselves together.

How's that for a whole post with no real details in it? Hah.

Just had another go at screen-capturing Vigo. No joy. But I'm sure that's a Dale sweater - the tag is on the sleeve.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I looked up the book your ganser (I refuse to learn how to write out the full name at this early hour of the day) and just fell in love. Absolutely. Completely. It looked so amazing on the gorgeous woman wearing it.

So I'm in.

Amazon appears to have a good amount of such books so I know where to get them now.

Julie said...

Heh heh heh. Another one lured to the dark side.

Anonymous said...

yeah well it's your influence Ms Samurai. Entirely your influence. although I wouldn't go if I wasn't willing, huh?

I've always been a sucker for the dark side though. At least the dark side of knitting won't get me into as much trouble as other kinds of dark sides!

Anonymous said...

OMG--I have to do it just because Vigo looks tasty and nutritious! (But I'll stick with mittens.) And, of course, I'm going to need to surf back to this in a month when Mate says I can buy more books.