Last weekend we went to the Cotswolds on our regular visit to my husband's step-mother. All down the M11 the information boards warned us of severe weather to come. We recalled the time we drove across the A66 just before the closing of the snow gates. I always felt that the words would not be out of place in a work of magic realism.
It was bitterly cold in Stratford - -8 outside, we were told. We stocked up with provisions - I even invested in two travel rugs - then ate the earliest possible lunch before setting out on the return journey. Not a flake of snow fell on us before we reached home, fortunately; but, by morning, Essex was transformed. This is a view across the fields to the village, some days later.
And here's my current project. I would like to say I am making progress, but this would not be true. The reason for being stuck lies in a shift of method in pattern-writing. Some years ago, I knitted a lovely blue cabled jumper for my husband from this Hayfield pamphlet.
It came out really well, so that when he wore it on our visit to the Aran Islands themselves, it drew comments.
However, in the intervening years, I have got used to reading charts of cabled patterns, so that returning to this one, where the picture is on one page and the instructions on two different pages, written out as panel patterns line by line, I find myself getting lost very easily. Can this be another example of the increasingly visual culture in which we live?
I also feel this may be more in the modern idiom with the neckline adapted to make it a gilet, instead of a Vee-neck waistcoat. We'll see.
.JPG)
3 comments:
I am glad you made it home safely before the snow started to fall! I hate driving on roads in the midst of a snowstorm.
The sweater pattern is very nice. I wonder, would it be possible to get some graph paper and chart the instructions yourself? It might save you time in the long run.
We have had much milder weather here for the last few days, after some wonderful bright frosty days.
I prefer written patterns to charts - somehow my brain gets in a tangle with charts!
I think the written/charted pattern is a change we have got used to - years ago I knitted a "shetland" shawl from an old pattern, written. I went back to it recently, thinking I might do it again, but, now that I am used to reading charts, I don't think I could cope with it written out any more. Too many opportunities to lose my place, especially when reading subtitles! I find the transfer of a chart to the contents of the needles flows well now that I am properly trained.
Post a Comment