Thursday, June 07, 2007

More knitting. Heeheehee.

I've finished the regular decreasing and am about 1/4 of the way across the first shoulder strap. Now that I look at it, it might be better to wait until I finish all the decreasing to write directions for it; the pictures will be clearer. Is anyone waiting for decreasing directions RIGHT NOW, or can you wait another week for them? I'll still present the directions in two sets, the regular decreasing and the shoulder straps/back of neck, but with it all done it's a lot easier to look at it and get the feel for what you're doing.

In the mean time, I've begun wondering if the arms are too long:

A little too long is fine; long sleeves mean warm hands, and this is intended as an outdoor jacket. Super-long sleeves are an old trick used by the ancient Chinese and the Medieval Russians. They dealt with colder climates than I ever will, and if it worked for them, it'll work for me. But really really long sleeves are going to result in a tutorial on how to shorten them; the ancient Chinese and the medieval Russians never had to drive a car. Oy.


When I took a photo of my knitting chair the other day, someone commented on a book that was in the corner of the photo: The Day the Universe Changed, by James Burke.

If you remember the documentary series "Connections" from the nineties, that's the same guy. It's the history of science and technology, and an easy read. All in layman's terms. They should be using this book as a text in colleges, or making it required reading in Western Civ. It's that good. Basically it's the tale of how we got to where we are -- all the useful stuff history has to learn, with none of the stupid crap we don't need. (I love James Burke.)

4 comments:

Amy Lane said...

OKay...I'm taking online units in the world most boring class as soon as school ends...I've got to tell you that for a while, if it doesn't have vampires, blood, and/or lots of hot sex, I'm just not going to make it through... maybe at the end of summer--I really do like to know stuff like that... (The sweater looks really good...it's all I got since I wasn't part of the steek-along, but I just bought a book on Latvian mittens, so if you want to do that in the fall, I'm SOOOO there...)

NeedleTart said...

We love James Burke, too. In fact I actually bought the computer game (about 10 years ago) and played it obsesivly until I had beaten all the levels (no, I won't tell you how long that took,but I did start playing solitare with all that free time).

debsnm said...

Have you seen the knitting book Selbuvotter? Wonderful patterns for gloves and mittens. I saw it in my knitpicks catalog last night. It's WAY cheaper than the Norsk knitting one we talked about using in the fall. I think it's my next non-yarn purchase, I want to make socks with those patterns on them, and want to look at the charts.

Sheepish Annie said...

The sweater is looking goooood! I do love a longer sleeve. It keeps the hands warm and means I don't have to find my missing mittens.

The colors are great, too!