2.15.2008

books

About a month ago I decided I was going to read more books because I couldn't knit, due to the pinched nerve in my shoulder. Well, I'm happy to report I've been successful in that endeavor. I read an entire novel - Extravagance: A Novel - which was fairly entertaining, and very fluffy, despite the high concept (same story told in 2 different places and time periods) and stuffy subject matter (stock trading). The book had been left lying around my house for months, I was pretty sure it was my brother's. A perfect reaction to the novel was when I mentioned to my brother that I had read it, he couldn't remember it. His wife recalled he had read it, but it was so unmemorable that he had no clue. Now I'm on to one that he's recommended - The Anubis Gates - so I know it's at least memorable.

So my reading of fiction is on a very slight up-tick, but there's no worries about my knitting and crocheting reading. Here's a shot of the books I've got out from the library right now.



I've added a handy Amazon widget on the side of the page that lists all these books. I'm obviously not hurting for patterns to try.

My Fairy Princess Palace
And last, but not least, on the subject of books and knitting, I thought I'd reveal a pet peeve of mine. My daughters have these totally cool pop-up books, you open them all the way up and tie the front cover to the back cover, and they make awesome fairy houses, and they come with little press-out paper fairies. These books entertain the girls for literally hours. I actually love them so much, that I bought 2 extra copies of My Fairy Princess Palace for when the first copy gets destroyed. Don't get me wrong, these are pretty sturdy books, but they are after all only paper.

So my one gripe is with My Fairy Treehouse. Which brings me to my pet peeve. I HATE it when knitting is depicted like this:



It's awesome that the book features knitting at all, especially a little boy sitting under next to his mother ironing, but really?



Does anyone knit like this? I don't think so. Why don't these illustrators ever look at how knitting really looks before drawing it????

2.09.2008

clapotis finally finished

I finally just finished my clapotis scarf today. Well, I finished knitting it yesterday, then I washed it and lightly blocked it (very lightly, I just spread it out on the floor and reshaped, no pins). Today I wove in the ends, and it's done!

I took a photo of myself modeling it as a head scarf. Sorry for the bad lighting.
Clapotis Scarf

I kinda love it, despite the fact that it's one-sided. Meaning one side of it is clearly the Right Side, and one is the Wrong Side. I don't usually like scarves that have a right and wrong side, because when you're wearing a scarf you don't want to worry about which side is showing. Plus they move around so much, you might inadvertently have the wrong side flip forward. But whatever. It's gorgeous and soft and not at all my colors, and I still think it's gorgeous. Took long enough, so it better be.

Here's the Right Side.
Lace weight Clapotis

No point in showing the other side, because it's Wrong.