The Independent Stitch

Copyright infringement: Response to a comment

I was writing a response to a comment a reader left on one of my posts about the copyright infringement and my remarks seemed to get pretty long, so I'm turning them into a post.

Here's the comment:

Hi, I was watching the debate from the other side of the fence - I'm from Poland and have seen the Picasa galleries with scans, as they are plentiful and from all around the world. I enjoyed them. Why? First and foremost, because the stuff scanned is not available in Poland. There are no libraries where I can borrow an English knitting book, there are no bookshops selling the knitting magazines from all over the world, so I can't even spend some time among the shelves, leafing through the pages. Believe me - if I could, I'd gladly pay for my own copy, to hold and cherish, and make notes on the margins when I convert inches into centimetres. And I'm not the only one. The books are the lesser problem, with amazon.com - if you want something, you can buy it, especially now. But the magazines? Can you find a solution to this conundrum? There are beautiful pictures of patterns published online, you want to buy a copy of a magazine, you are a holder of a valid Visa card, and then... it turns out you can't, because they don't ship outside US and Canada. That's the Vogue Knitting case. I can't subscribe, no matter how much I want to. Then some of the US online shops don't accept credit cards issued in Poland.
Yes, publishing scans is piracy and stealing and I don't ask you to turn the blind eye and pretend the problem does not exist. Just try to understand that sometimes there is simply no other way to even see a design. And I guess that 99% of those who have visited the Picasa galleries would go out and buy the books and mags - if they could.
Please, don't rip me apart for this comment. Just try to put yourselves in our humble Polish shoes for a while, with three or four Polish knitting magazines available, an ocassional copy of VK available in the biggest bookshops in the country and publishing houses reluctant to publish anything that won't generate instant, enourmous profits. I personally can't see any easy solution, although I do understand and respect the action taken. I'd love to try and find at least a common point for discussion.
All the best, Jo.

And here's my response:

Hi, Jo:

I certainly wouldn't rip you apart for your comments! And I welcome your observations. We've got a similar problem in the other direction. While reviewing the sites with the books posted, I noticed two Russian books that I would love to have copies of. I tried to order them through several online channels as well as through the publishers' sites (in Russian . . . I read several languages, but Russian is not one of them!) and did not succeed.

I can't speak for the magazines. And Vogue, which you mentioned, is a very large publishing company. I can't speak for them, either.

I am one person who publishes a few books, one or two a year which is as fast as I can work, with graphics processing help from my daughter. We both work other jobs to pull this off, and we do without some things that other people take for granted in exchange for doing work we believe in.

It is possible to order the books that my small press publishes through Amazon. The books can also be ordered directly from my press's web site. Payment is via PayPal, which will accept international credit cards and currency, and I'll package the books myself and drive to the post office to ship them! I sure wish the postage costs were less . . . although our books can go in flat-rate envelopes by global priority mail. Amazon is probably more reasonable in terms of shipping and the current exchange rates. European yarn shops can, and some do, obtain our books through a wholesaler.

I'd love to have you be able to leaf through the books to see if you want to buy them before you get them, but at present the contracts with various easy-to-access providers who allow that are not okay for small publishers to sign, in my opinion. I keep trying to figure out a way around that one, but have not succeeded yet (in part because I don't have time to devote to hunting down a solution, or I can't afford the ones I have located). I buy knitting books sight-unseen myself, because the ones I am most interested in are also not in local bookstores or yarn shops (although there is one yarn shop about an hour from my house that does have a good supply of all sorts of things; I do get there a couple of times a year).

I'd love to come up with a different way to fix this: a way that perhaps publishers, large and small, could deliver their content digitally *and legally,* so the designers and editors and others could earn a bit of money for their efforts.

I'm delighted to try to put myself in your humble Polish shoes for a while, and appreciate your efforts to put yourself in our humble U.S. shoes, too! Some U.S. residents aren't humble (I'm sure some Polish ones aren't, either), but the knitting designers and at least the independent publishers (and the editors at the big houses) are doing this because we love it, not because it's the most effective way we could find to earn a living. We do have to make enough money to pay our bills at least minimally or we can't continue. And to keep doing our work, every cent (or grosz—do I have the smallest increment of currency right?) matters.

The articles, magazines, and books posted publicly are available to EVERYONE who has access to the internet. If everyone else gave their work away for free—doctors, grocers, house-builders, and the like—we could, too. But they don't.

One thought my daughter had was that if knitters in Poland wanted magazines or books on a regular basis that they could not obtain otherwise, they could perhaps arrange for knitters in countries that can obtain them to send them copies. Money could be transferred through PayPal. Maybe this could be set up through Ravelry or another network. Or maybe there's an opportunity for someone to set up a business importing these magazines and books. They could be pre-ordered and prepaid, so it wouldn't necessarily be a gamble. It's a thought. . . .

All best, Deb

P.S. We work to put metric conversions in our books whenever possible. There has only been one item so far that I haven't been able to convert; it was a concept based on yards per pound, and just didn't work out neatly in the metric system.

P.P.S. My press's web site is www.nomad-press.com . It is not quite up-to-date, because we haven't had time to work on it lately. We're working on the next book. . . .

3 of 3: Knitting in the Old Way and Ethnic Knitting Discovery: What's the difference?

This is the third in a series of posts comparing Priscilla GIbson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way (KITOW) and Donna Druchunas' Ethnic Knitting Discovery.

The first two posts introduced this series and gave quick overviews of the original and revised editions of KITOW.

This post looks more closely at Ethnic Knitting Discovery, and then offers a few comments on the collection of books as a whole.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery

After Nomad Press released the revised edition of Knitting in the Old Way, we learned that some people are overwhelmed by all the possibilities in KITOW, or would like step-by-step help in getting from idea-in-head to garment-on-needles (or, better yet for some, to finished object). (Then again, many thousands of people liked KITOW exactly the way it was. It's just that we don't want any knitter to miss the delights of "knitting in the old way"!)

Our desire to make sure that contemporary knitters don't stay tied to line-by-line patterns (because we know how much fun it is to make your own knitting trails) is where the Ethnic Knitting series by Donna Druchunas comes in.

I remember exactly when Donna and I first talked bout this: it was several years ago, in a funky coffeehouse that no longer exists in Loveland, Colorado. A book is not an overnight project.

The Ethnic Knitting project is a series, with three volumes in the works. It was conceived as a progressive, integrated introduction to the

    way of thinking about knitting

embodied in Knitting in the Old Way, with explicit instructions. The Ethnic Knitting books are still not pattern books, but they act more like pattern books than KITOW does: you can fill in the blanks to make a pattern.

The Ethnic Knitting series is not entirely coordinated with Knitting in the Old Way, although the books are based on the same philosophy and there's some crossover.

The first in the series, Ethnic Knitting Discovery (EK Discovery), was published in October 2007. We're already in production for the second volume, Ethnic Knitting Exploration (EK Exploration), which is scheduled for October 2008. And we're also well underway with the third volume, Ethnic Knitting Adventure (EK Adventure).

Here's the cover of EK Discovery:

As you can tell from the subtitle, this book looks at the knitting traditions of four regions: The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and The Andes. It also focuses on one basic sweater shape, with some variations: the drop-shoulder sweater (known in KITOW as gansey), with and without modifications like gussets, steeks, and very simple armhole shaping. EK Discovery looks at two traditions in terms of texture patterns (The Netherlands and Denmark) and two in terms of color-stranding (Norway and The Andes).

Each region is in a separate chapter that begins with a bit of history, a few techniques, and a handful of versatile pattern charts. Three project templates follow: one for a small, simple project that introduces the techniques (a scarf, a cap, a headband, or a change purse), and then two for pullover, drop-shoulder sweaters. (Later volumes will tackle other sweater shapes.)

Here's a quick overview of the information that's presented:

• The Netherlands: Working texture patterns in the round and back-and-forth, and the simplest sweater construction options.
• Denmark: Working more complex texture patterns, making welts, and adding gussets, plus working a fitted sweater profile.
• Norway: Working color patterns, and how to make stitch-and-cut armholes and necklines (KITOW's "modern Nordic" working method).
• The Andes: More color patterning, along with Andean-style knitting, edging knitted fabric with puntas (as a cast-on technique or applied to a finished edge), and making steeks.

Some of the structures and designs correlate closely to information in KITOW. For example, EK Discovery's Pullover with Single Motif (from The Netherlands) is structurally the same as KITOW's Dutch Fisherman's Sweater with Single Motif, although the anchor motif chart in EK Discovery is simpler than either of the motifs KITOW offers.

EK Discovery doesn't stick as closely to tradition as KITOW, while it honors the same roots. EK Discovery provides simplified approaches to some of its designs, using contemporary techniques. For instance, it offers a neat, self-finished square neckline for the Danish garments.

While the Ethnic Knitting series grows from the same soil as KITOW, it also looks into some new areas—like Andean-style knitting and the construction of puntas

Although the Ethnic Knitting series has been carefully planned to support people who are new to this type of knitting, it is not watered down! Heck, there are cut armholes and steeks in the first volume. (Haven't done this before? It's easy. . . . )

In the Ethnic Knitting series, each project is presented in worksheet formats with three levels of detail, from "I can work from a sketch" (close to KITOW's method) to "I like to get all my numbers together in one place" to "I like a fully detailed set of instructions." Because of the worksheets, readers can design their own sweaters from scratch while having help in remembering all the steps and navigating the transitions from each part to the next.

EK Exploration and EK Adventure will increase in complexity and will cover new geographic territory. EK Exploration travels through Lithuania (not a KITOW country, but one that links to Donna Druchunas' heritage), Iceland, and Ireland. It looks at raglans, circular yokes, and saddle-shoulder construction. It also tells how to turn any pullover into a cardigan (part of chapter 8 of the revised KITOW, approached from a different angle).

EK Adventure? Even more cool stuff, but we're keeping it under wraps until we're farther along with our work on it.

Which is the book for you (or for the friend you have in mind)?

As someone who's been knitting for a very long time, I love KITOW. It's a splendid desert-island knitting book. You could knit for several lifetimes with the information it contains.

I have also learned magical things from EK Discovery. I adore the puntas. I especially like the detailed instructions for the Danish garments. And my daughter is knitting her first-ever project based on EK Discovery's Pullover with Single Motif, although she's chosen a motif more like the God's-eye in KITOW and she's planning to steek the armholes.

EK Discovery has the nifty little projects, which I enjoy all on their own (I could get hooked on making variations of the Andean change purses).

KITOW lets you jump headfirst into simple designs (like speckled frocks) or complex ones, some incorporating crochet or intarsia. However, you may not realize initially that there are simple projects in KITOW, because of its comprehensive nature.

Leaf through both books at your local yarn or book shop, or by borrowing them from a library (interlibrary loan works great if your neighborhood doesn't have copies yet). See which has a project or idea that grabs you.

That's the book for you right now.

If you're evaluating for a friend, it's a matter of personality and of the stage that person is at in his or her knitting life: do you think this person needs an international smorgasbord (KITOW) or a series of carefully planned, nutritionally balanced meals from several different cuisines (EK Discovery)?

2 of 3: Knitting in the Old Way and Ethnic Knitting Discovery: What's the difference?

The last post gave an introduction to this series and a quick overview of the original edition of Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way.

This post resumes the discussion with notes on the revised and expanded edition of the book.

Moving on: The revised edition of Knitting in the Old Way

In 2004 and 2005, Nomad Press published in hardcover and then in paperback the revised and expanded edition of Knitting in the Old Way (KITOW). (Nomad Press was begun by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and then handed off to me just as the hardcover KITOW was about to be released.) The new edition contains 312 pages.

The cover on the paperback, which is a lot more fun than the cover on the hardcover version, was designed after we knew the book would have widespread distribution (the hardcover version was designed before the shift). Here's what it looks like:

(Note: The hardcover edition of KITOW has a few advantages, even though the snazzy cover design isn't one of them. It's got a smyth-sewn binding. This used to be standard for hardcover books, but because of the extra expense and bindery time it's now being used mostly for Bibles and for other books that are expected to get a lot of wear over many years. Smyth-sewn books also lie quite flat (for books) when they're open. Libraries love smyth-sewn bindings. And the paper-over-boards cover was also designed for maximum durability.)

So. The new edition has 312 pages and the original edition had 187 pages.

What happened? Bigger type? More white space?

Nope. Both editions have reasonably sized type and comfortable amounts of white space.

In the almost twenty years between editions, Priscilla discovered and figured out a lot of things that she wanted to incorporate. A lot of new garments were added, new techniques were included, and the previous material was clarified and presented in more detail.

I've made up a summary chart that shows the differences in the sweaters between the original and revised editions, with a few brief notes about where technique information was added. It's not a very detailed chart, but it highlights where the major differences are. It's a 51k PDF: Download KITOW-comparison.pdf.

In the new edition, assume that everything has been at least lightly rewritten. Priscilla did a whole lot of new drawings and charts. My daughter scanned Priscilla's inkwork and cleaned the scans and, when any of us found something that needed to be adjusted, made minor revisions to the drawings electronically so Priscilla didn't have to re-draw the whole item. I worked at bringing all the elements together in coherent page layouts (and did a few other things, like the expansion of the entrelac coverage).

The overall content and structure of the revised edition are similar to the way they were in the original edition, although the information has been broken down into different chunks, the presentation is different, and there's more of everything. The big changes between original and revised editions come in chapters 9 through 13, although chapter 4 now includes a fuller presentation of knitting methods.

So here are the contents of the expanded edition:

• Introduction
• 1 Origins - Slightly revised from original.
• 2 Traditional Yarns - Slightly revised from original.
• 3 Equipment - Different presentation of information that's similar to what's in the original.
• 4 Knitting methods - Three basic concepts and three fundamental approaches, including Western, Eastern, and combined methods.
• 5 Techniques - Slightly revised from original, with amplification and modification.
• 6 Tools for Planning Sweaters - Sample plans and working with percentage/proportional systems, charts, diagrams, and stitch and construction symbols.
• 7 An Evolution of Shapes - The 15 basic sweater shapes, with new information on shaping sleeves. (There is also a quick-reference guide to the basic shapes at the front of the new edition.)
• 8 Style Alternatives - Cardigans, necklines, and collars.
• 9 Color Stranding - The same countries and regions are covered as in the original edition, but instead of 24 sweater concepts and charts or chart combinations there are now 33.
• 10 Intarsia - This is an entirely new section. It includes four intarsia techniques and 5 sweaters (one of those was repositioned from another part of the original edition, where working techniques were not specified, and four of the sweater concepts are new).
• 11 Texture - Again, the same countries and regions are covered as in the original edition, but instead of 19 sweater concepts and charts or chart combinations there are now 27.
• 12 Geometric Patterning - This covers the same countries and regions as in the original edition. The number of garment concepts has not increased (still 3 sweaters, plus a cap), but the information on entrelac has expanded from one diagram to a detailed set of instructions.
• 13 Crochet-Enhanced Knits - This is another entirely new section. It includes information on Eastern and Western crochet, plus 1 complex new sweater that combines crochet with knitting (Korsnas-style, from a Swedish-speaking part of Finland).
• Bibliography (extended), Abbreviations and Quotations, and Index

Technical enhancements aside (and not counting bonus charts not attached to a specific sweater concept), the original edition shows 47 sweater concepts and the revised edition presents 65.

(Personal note: One of those new designs . . . added at the last minute . . . has 20 charts associated with it. In looking through this book again, I'm amazed that Priscilla and my daughter and I survived its production and I am not surprised that it took us several years to put together the new edition. I see things that I would change about what we did, but if we'd done those things at the time the book would never have gotten published . . . which is also what everyone who worked on the original edition must have felt the first time around. We worked as long as we did even though we were standing on the shoulders of the previous edition. There's a whole lot of material in any copy of this title.)

So that's how the revised and expanded edition of KITOW is different from the original edition. Oh, and the book is now produced according to the standards of the Green Press Initiative, which wasn't around in 1985 when the original edition was published.

The next post will look at Ethnic Knitting Discovery in the context of Knitting in the Old Way's history.

1 of 3: Knitting in the Old Way and Ethnic Knitting Discovery: What's the difference?

A friend-I-haven't-met-in-person-yet wrote this week to ask what the difference is between Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' new edition of Knitting in the Old Way and Donna Druchunas' Ethnic Knitting Discovery, both published by Nomad Press. It's a great question that requires a somewhat lengthy answer, so I said I'd do a blog post in response. At my daughter's request, I'm breaking the resulting discussion into three parts: (1) Intro plus the original Knitting in the Old Way, (2) the revised and expanded Knitting in the Old Way, and then (3) Ethnic Knitting Discovery (and related series), plus conclusions.

The knitter who asked the question owns the original edition of Knitting in the Old Way (which I'll talk about in this post and will compare to the new edition in the next) and wants to give one of the currently available books to a friend and doesn't know which one to choose. Maybe some of this history and detail will help . . . and perhaps be interesting to other readers!

In a nutshell

Although Knitting in the Old Way is at its core the same in both the original and revised editions, the versions differ in the amount and, to some extent, type of material covered. The revised edition contains many more charts and half again as many sweater concepts. The charts have all been checked, corrected, and, when helpful (which is usually), labeled. The text pertaining to each design has been revised and moved so it's adjacent to the appropriate drawings and charts. The original edition contains information on spinning that was not readily available in the mid-1980s but is easier to find now, and so was omitted from the revised edition in the interest of including more garments.

Knitting in the Old Way in both editions offers a wide range of possibilities and information but almost no hand-holding.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery was conceived as a way of helping knitters bridge their way into the skills required to use Knitting in the Old Way. It is the first in a series of three books that will do this, chunking down its information and building progressively to more complex ideas.

The Ethnic Knitting series of books was also conceived as a sequence of independent titles that would stand on their own and would appeal as well to people who have already become comfortable with Knitting in the Old Way. It is based on similar ideas but does not cover exactly the regions or techniques that are in Knitting in the Old Way.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery provides small skill-builder projects that help readers master the techniques it presents, along with three types of worksheets to help them organize their thoughts and determine (and keep track of) the specifics they'll need to make original sweaters using traditional methods.

Some knitters are gutsy enough to launch, or to have already launched, into Knitting in the Old Way without further ado. Others will welcome the more methodical approach offered by the Ethnic Knitting series.

Many, like me, will want all the books, for different reasons at different times. There's stuff in Ethnic Knitting Discovery (and the whole EK series, when it's completed) that isn't in Knitting in the Old Way (KITOW), and vice versa. Sometimes my life is so fragmented I need worksheets to keep track of it. Sometimes I just calculate my cast-on number and wing it from there.

A bit of history: The first edition of Knitting in the Old Way

In 1985, Interweave Press published the original edition of Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way. It was in paperback (either perfectbound or spiralbound), had 187 pages, and looked like this:

Here are the contents, with notes about what's in the chapters:

• Introduction
• Origins
• Traditional yarns - Information on yarn construction and evaluation, plus the 100-yard rule (coordinating yarn to yardage for a plain sweater)
• Knitting Techniques - English and Continental methods, plus equipment, techniques, and the basics of diagrams and charting
• Sweater Plans - Gauge, working with the percentage or proportional system, sample sweater plans; 15 basic sweater shapes ("the evolution of the sweater"), plus cardigan variations, and necklines and collars
• Color Stranded Sweaters - Garment concepts from Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, Lapland, the Cowichan tradition, and using American folk-art designs (24 sweater concepts).
• Textured Sweaters  - Concepts from Denmark, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, and Austria and Germany (19 sweater concepts).
• Sweaters with Geometric Pattern - Concepts from Denmark, Finland, and Scotland (3 sweater concepts, plus sketch of cap).
• Spinning Techniques - Selecting fleece, preparing fiber, yarn types, selecting sheep breeds suitable for knitting yarns, plying, and finishing yarns.
• List of Suppliers, Bibliography, and Index

This edition also contained color photographs of 9 completed sweaters. The charts for the sweaters shown in the photographs were not included in the book. For example, the luskofte, Bohus, Fair Isle, and other sweaters in the photos use different charts than those that were printed with the drawings for those styles of sweaters.

(Personal note: When I first got this book, in 1985 or 1986, I really wanted to work out the plan for the Bavarian vest in the photo on page 156. I ultimately gave up, thinking I wasn't smart enough or lacked sufficient patience to figure out how to put the garment together and to connect what I was sort of able to see in the photos with the charts that were provided. Only when editing the revised edition did I discover that the charts are not in the original edition of the book. They are in the revised edition. I haven't made the vest yet, though! No time so far. . . . )

The original edition of Knitting in the Old Way was visionary, an outstanding and unusual accomplishment that brought together traditional knowledge of knitting with the handspinning tradition. It set a new standard in knitting books and helped many knitters and spinners break free from line-by-line patterns.

But by the early part of the twenty-first century, it was time for an update.

Proceed to part 2. . . .

Score one for the little guys: copyright infringement

We just received an e-mail communication that relates to my post of February 14. It was written by someone for whom this is already Wednesday, February 20, but just barely. It says:

Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:43:53 -0000
From: "Picasa Support"
Subject: Re: [#242066335] Picasa DMCA Complaint processed
Hi,

We have completed processing your infringement complaint dated 2/14/08 in accordance with our Copyright Complaint procedure. We have removed from Picasa Web Albums the image(s) that formerly appeared at: [URL removed]

Please let us know if we can assist you further.

Regards,
The Google Team

Not only was the scan of our book taken down, but the other forty-nine books, magazines, and pattern collections formerly at that URL have also been removed.

Many items are still publicly posted at other locations nearby, and it's highly likely that our book has been picked up by other people and may be posted elsewhere.

The person who had put up these linked albums had 290 books, magazines, and collections illegally posted. She now has 240. A number of knitting authors and publishers will be filing complaints about the illegal posting of their material. (The complaints have to be filed by the copyright holder or that person's authorized agent).

Maybe we can make a dent in the practice.

Undercutting designers, publishers, libraries, and booksellers could truly damage the flow of creative ideas into and through the knitting and crochet community. In the short run, posting the books may look like a fantastic way to make great information widely available. In the long run, stolen material distributed free means that people who write and design lose the ability (and desire) to develop and share their work with other folks.

Special thanks to one blog reader in particular who helped enormously by tracking down the person who was posting this material, and other people with similar ideas. Now I know a whole lot about this person, who is probably not the scanner . . . which I can say in part because it wouldn't be possible to knit as much work as is being shown on the poster's blog and also scan as many books as are being posted.

The person who helped me out—someone who, by the way, I've known in the virtual and sometimes real world since the internet didn't have a web and electronic communication occurred through green or amber text on a black screen—showed me in new ways how small the globe is and how much tracking can be done through internet clues. Quite amazing. And alarming, of course.

The issue of copyright is enormously complicated and profoundly important. There are no easy answers.

But just now there's a bit of success to celebrate in protecting the work of a few creative souls. At least for today. And maybe, since the note from the Picasa team was written tomorrow, for a little while into the future, too. Every scrap helps.

A gem of a new PieceWork magazine, plus miscellany

I've been trying to get this posted for about two weeks but life has intervened. If you are a knitter and haven't seen the new issue of PieceWork magazine (January/February 2008), you might want to grab a copy. It's a fine gem. (That's the cotton chenille sweater behind it; this post has taken long enough to complete that the body, shown below, is now finished and I'm doing the sleeves for the second time.)

Although slim, this publication is packed with terrific articles by fantastic people.

For one thing, it's got the first published information about the mittens of Rovaniemi. This is the technique that I took a workshop on last fall at the Nordic knitting conference in Seattle. (The whole trip was Stephanie's fault.)

For another, there's an article on poetry mittens by Jane Fournier (one of the best spinners and generally most knowledgeable textile people I've ever had the pleasure of spending time with) and Veronica Patterson (poet and former editor of PieceWork, which is now edited by the wonderful Jeane Hutchins, who has put together this magical issue, along with many others). So . . . poetry mittens by a textile genius + an astonishing poet.

Here's the coolest thing. Veronica wrote about the history of poetry mittens. Jane designed some mittens . . . using a poem of Veronica's!

There's an article about Maxine Tyler, who knits stuff from bear hair.

There's an Estonian lace scarf designed by Nancy Bush.

There's an article on Lithuanian knitting, with a pattern for baby mittens, by Donna Druchunas, who has been following her own heritage and writing about it (more to come in her fall 2008 book, Ethnic Knitting Exploration).

There's an elegant cabled cardigan designed by Ann Budd, combined with a history of the kimono by Vicki Square (Ann's sweater has a kimono-inspired front opening, along with fitted sleeve-and-shoulder sections, a fine integration of ideas from disparate sources).

And Lita Rosing-Schow offers a detailed examination of two pairs of Danish knitted gloves, and a pattern for making a set of reproduction gloves.

Sometimes it seems that prices are going up for all sorts of publications (they are, for all sorts of reasons) and that I can read through a new magazine (even, alas, too many books) in fifteen minutes or less and catch everything that interests me. It's not that I'm uninterested in things. It's just that after a certain number of years, there's less stuff that strikes me as magical . . . although there are always new and wonderful things to learn about knitting, spinning, weaving . . . ! The trick becomes finding those things . . . which is why I continue to publish and write about textiles. I spend my time putting together information that I either want to know about now or that I wish I'd known about in my past fiber-exploration stages.

This issue of PieceWork strikes me as an absolute bargain, and as a library addition to treasure for anyone who has even a slight interest in historical knitting, or in making history with his or her own knitting.

I could cast on for several new projects right now that would be inspired by this issue. I'm exercising some discipline and intending to finish some of what's in progress (the blue socks are almost done, and I've nearly completed the chenille sweater's sleeves, although they are in a knitting bag that I have misplaced somewhere . . . in the house . . . as long as the bag's in the house, I'm okay; it's been a multiple-deadline week, which is how these misplacements happen . . . ). Nonetheless, I am happy any time my cupboard of knitting daydreams has been restocked.

___

Breaking in the new car

Sometimes breaking in a new car means working in the engine for the first 500 to 1000 miles.

For me it means filling it with the types of music it may expect to experience while I'm driving. On a trip to Denver—the first extended trip, and therefore the first real music opportunity—here's what got played:

• Dixie Chicks, Home
• Norumbega Harmony, Sing and Joyful Be
• Anonymous 4, Gloryland--thanks to Knitterguy's recommendation for this and for American Angels,  one of my favorite CDs . . . so much a favorite that I picked up Gloryland at Twist and Shout on this trip and listened to it on the drive back; I also found a used copy of Love's Illusion, but the drive today wasn't long enough so I haven't listened to it yet

I haven't had a CD player in a car I owned before. CDs are easier to manage while driving than tapes are!

And now I've established one of the car's set of vibes.

____

My extremely intrepid, creative, and talented niece made me a wonderful Christmas present, although the process sounds like it was traumatic. She got an exceptionally fine blog post out of her efforts, though. (Here's an account of some of her projects that went more smoothly.)

Copyright infringement and other threats to independent designing, writing, and publishing

The post that I was going to publish tonight will be released tomorrow morning, except for this section that I've pulled out. This was going to be just a small portion of one of my usual multi-topic posts, but it's too important.

Item 1 under "minuses" is a matter of vital importance not only to me and to the authors whose fine work I publish but to a lot of other people as well. It is serious enough to threaten the creative survival of the good and visionary and hard-working people who provide energy and ideas to so many other people through their designs and publications.

I stay pretty mellow most of the time. Sometimes someone steps so far over the line that. . . . Well, read Minus #1. The rest is just business as usual. Minus #1 is not.

On the independent publishing (Nomad Press) front:

MINUSES:

1. Shortly after I woke up this morning, I learned that someone has gone to the trouble of scanning every page of one of the books published by Nomad Press (that's me, working in my basement in a room that only has a plug-in space heater) and posted the results on the internet. I'm all for freedom of information, but the author and I also like to pay our bills (maybe, some day, install a heating duct in the office, stuff like that). I don't know anyone who is doing creative work in textiles who is not hanging on by a thread and doing without stuff other people take for granted. The author invested a number of years in envisioning, researching, and writing the book. I invested several years and put my so-called retirement at risk to design, produce, and publish it.

It was a lot of work to scan the book—probably as much work as we put into doing the rough scans for the preliminary layout. It is also illegal (and, worse, immoral) to post the scans.

Clueless? Cruel?

The author and I have taken the appropriate steps with the hosting site to have the scans removed, but wow, I shouldn't have to do this! The material has been up since last August. When I wrote an account of this discovery at the start of the day, I said I could only hope that it's inspired people to buy the book, at the same time that I was working to protect the author's and my ability to earn a bit of income for the years of labor that went into developing this book.

This evening, near the end of a normal fifteen-hour work day, I learned that this person has also scanned and posted on the internet—also in their entirety—many other books and magazines on knitting and crochet.

I can't think of a more effective way to cut off the trickle of lifeblood that returns to the designers and writers and publishers in these crafts. Believe me, it's not a river of support that they dip into, and creative people have to eat, require shelter, even occasionally need to visit a doctor or dentist.

This person's activities in making our work available free on the web are definitely heartless, whether intentional or not.

[ADDED 2/16/08: Thanks to several friends, we have traced the person who is doing this. I suspect she is not aware that her behavior is causing great harm to other knitters who are doing their best to make a partial living by publishing their research and designs. She appears to be an excellent craftworker who appreciates the designs to which she has access because we are publishing them. If she chose to simply say that she likes our work and then suggest that other people purchase the books in question or borrow them from libraries—she obtained our book from a library; the classification label is visible on the cover of her scan—that would be extremely helpful to us. People throughout the world can buy our books through Amazon's various channels. Libraries are often happy to purchase books when patrons request them. And then we would be able to continue creating more books that she, and others, could enjoy. But not scan and post on the web, please.]

2. All of the shipping companies have just raised their rates (due to gas prices). Because cover prices on books have already been set and distribution terms cannot be easily changed, this is extremely hard on publishers, especially the independents who don't have a lot of flexibility to develop compensating income streams.

3. Almost all of the people we sell our books to are prompt and efficient about paying for the cartons we ship out. Some are late, but that's because they forgot or were out of town or the cat ate the invoice. They pay. Right now I'm having to deal again, however, with a re-billing of someone who was a new account, for whom I made a special trip to Kinko's to ship out a carton of books so it would arrive in time for an event, and whose payment is now four months overdue. I've mailed statements, e-mailed reminders, and left voice mail messages.

Blecch.

PLUSSES:

1.The fall title is coming along. It's in one of its nit-picky phases, so things are going slowly, but they'll get done.

2. I heard recently from an author of a much-anticipated future title that she may be completing the manuscript soon.

3. One of the wholesalers ordered four cartons of books yesterday. I packed them up and my daughter helped me drop them off at the package service on the way to a doctor's appointment.

4. Spinning in the Old Way just went back on press for the fourth time. A new print run of Ethnic Knitting Discovery has just been delivered, shortly after a new print run of Knitting in the Old Way.

5. I have plenty of freelance work right now, the stuff that helps support me while I do all the publishing work. I just need three of me to stay on top of all the deadlines and schedules!

And I always do my best to end thinking of the plusses.

_____

To support that habit, I'm going to go read some more in the issue of PieceWork that will be the primary topic of the next post.

Eric Maisel's The Van Gogh Blues: an important book

Eric Maisel's The Van Gogh Blues has just been released in paperback. I bought it in hardcover a couple of years ago, and reading it provided insights that have been incredibly helpful to my life. I only wish it had been available earlier! But it's here now, and has the potential to help other people find their way more easily through a few thickets that I nearly got stuck in.

This post is part of a blog tour [PDF schedule] for the book's release although I'm not following the general format for the tour. Many of the participants in the tour have been asking Eric specific questions relating to their own realms of creative work and you might find both the questions and the answers interesting.

My post follows a different path because I have lots to say on the topic myself. This discussion will be long, even for me, but if you're not interested you can come back in a couple of days when I'm talking about something else . . . and if you are interested it won't seem long enough and you'll need to go find the book, too!

Here's the book, in the two versions that I own. I love the new paperback cover, which to my mind more accurately reflects what's inside. The full title is The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path through Depression. The paperback edition comes from New World Library, an independent publisher.

(Yay for independent publishers! Most of today's publishing is done by five international media conglomerates. I love the fine work that the feisty independents do. All independent publishers are feisty by definition; they have to be to survive.)

This is actually an opportune time for The Van Gogh Blues to be brought back to my immediate attention. I've danced with depression since my late teens, and even though I generally like winter the cold and dark times have been more challenging for me the past few years.

I suspect it looks from the outside like my life has had a plan and a direction. That's only true when it's viewed retrospectively. From the driver's seat, it looks like I've taken one fork in the road after another, sometimes making my best guess about which direction to go and sometimes compelled by the need not to continue with the path I was on mostly because I wasn't sure I was going to survive if I didn't make a dramatic change.

That's where The Van Gogh Blues comes in as helpful in helping me see why I've felt like I needed to head out cross-country in my life's choices instead of taking the interstate or even a well-paved two-lane highway, when either of the latter two choices would have been a heck of a lot easier. Still would be. As I said a few days ago, "Sometimes I wonder why I sit in my basement for long hours almost every day, editing and laying out and checking and producing and publishing books on traditional fiber knowledge." That's not all I do with my life—and some of the other parts may be even more important—but it's a big part of it. It's not exactly a career path that would show up on any vocational test.

Okay. Let's talk about Eric's theories and his book for a bit. While it's well written and easy to read, the ideas take a little time to wrap a brain around because they cast some familiar concepts in new frameworks.

___

Psychologist Eric Maisel—also a novelist, and thus a creative spirit in many dimensions—has spent his professional life as a counselor and coach working with artists and other creative people (including those who create in non-arts fields, like science and math). After some years of this work, he postulated that a certain percentage of the population consists of people who are born with a need to be creative and that if they don't find a way to honor that necessity they'll be plagued by depression.

He also noticed that that these people's depression could not be resolved with the treatments that are ordinarily effective, even though those treatments might provide temporary or partial relief.

Over time, as he looked at the incidence of depression in creative people, he pinpointed a potential cause: an inborn need to make meaning, to live a "meaningful" life—yet where that "meaning" could only be determined by the individual, not by adherence to anyone else's standards or beliefs.

He called the frustration of this need—for whatever reason—a meaning crisis, and conceived of it as an existential crisis, or a crisis pertaining to why the person experiencing it even exists. He saw a particular type of depression as a symptom of this meaning crisis.

The Van Gogh Blues explains this in depth, and much better than I can.

What I can say is that these insights have enormous implications for some people's lives, including mine. Through luck and stubbornness, I haven't succumbed to my experiences with depression, although I've weathered divorces, transcontinental moves, years of counseling, prescription medications, and other things that might have been avoided (even just moderated a bit would have been nice) if I'd known what I was up against and how to deal with it . . . both of which are explained in this book.

When I discovered The Van Gogh Blues, I had many AHA! moments and finally felt like maybe I wasn't nuts. (High-functioning nuts, but nuts.) By writing this book, Eric helped me understand that I wasn't just a misfit who simply couldn't manage a "normal" life.

As you might imagine, I'm grateful he wrote it and I found it. If any of what I'm writing here sounds interesting to you, I strongly urge you to get a copy and spend some time developing an understanding of its concepts and practicing its suggestions.

Book overview, with quotes and comments

Note: Eric balances his pronouns between masculine and feminine. The selections I have chosen happen to overrepresent the feminine alternatives. Because I grew up in an era of omnipresent masculine pronouns, I think that's okay.

Introduction

• "[V]irtually 100 percent of creative people will suffer from episodes of depression. . . . Because every creative person came out of the womb ready to interrogate life and determine for herself what life would mean, could mean, and should mean. Her gift or curse was that she was born ready to stubbornly doubt received wisdom and disbelieve that anyone but she was entitled to provide answers to her own meaning questions. . . . What is clear is that some people grow up doubting and questioning while the majority don't. These meaning investigators are our creators, and they are prone to meaning crises and consequent depression by virtue of the fact that they find meaning a problem and not a given." (p. 4)

Eric sets this type of depression in context and relates it to our understanding of the biological and psychological depressions that can be concurrent with meaning-related depression: "Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning" (p. 5).

But of course creating itself is difficult, and I'd add that in many contemporary industrialized societies it is severely undervalued (even more so as creators' copyright protections are being eroded and payment for creative work is diminishing). There have been times and places in history when it was feasible to make a living as painter or a poet without the assistance of both hard work (which is under personal control) and a miracle (which is not).

1. Two meaning casualties

• "Depression in creative people is essentially a meaning problem and must be handled by a meaning expert: you. . . . If you don't . . . you will find yourself unhappy, regularly uncreative and unproductive, and sometimes even suicidal" (pp. 23-24).

This stuff matters. The suicidal instincts may be obvious or not. One of mine manifested as anorexia; some people do drugs or alcohol to numb themselves. Eric shows how meaning crises can play out in people's lives.

2. Reflecting on meaning

Meaning problems can be extremely complex. They aren't easy to unravel or resolve. The solutions we come up with may depend on whether we believe or don't believe in a higher power—neither belief nor unbelief saves a creative person from the work of making meaning.

• "We must investigate meaning even though we wish we didn't have to, even though we pray that meaning would just stay put, and even though we dream of a time when life might simply mean. . . . What a creative person may learn from her inquiry is that, despite the fact that she has no choice but to experience pain and suffering, on the one hand because she is alive and on the other hand because she is determined to create, she can nevertheless make sense of her time on Earth by deciding to take life seriously" (pp. 42-43)
  

3. Meaningful life, meaningful work, meaningful days

Not only the overall life needs to feel meaningful, the work we do has to feel meaningful and the tasks that we do each day also need to feel meaningful.

Although I didn't know it, this awareness—not articulated—has been pushing me since I graduated from high school. I can do really boring things (like making big spreadsheets of wool qualities, or pushing type around in a layout program a quarter-point at a time . . . there are 72 points or 288 quarter-points in an inch [2.5 cm]) as long as the bigger project I'm working on has meaning.

• "Creative people . . . do not experience time as something to be happily squandered but as successive chunks that they will either force to mean or carelessly waste."

Some of us can only stand to watch television if the program relates to our personal meanings and we can knit or spin while we're watching! (It's a curse, I tell you.)

• "It turns out that it is fiendishly hard to carry out the intention of living your life plan, creating worthy work, and making everyday time feel meaningful. Can anybody do this? The only person who has a chance of pulling off what amounts to a miracle is someone who has recognized that the universal silence is primarily punctuated by one sound, the sound of his own thoughts. If his thoughts further defeat him, he has no chance. But if he can enlist his own thoughts on his own behalf, then the realization of his intentions becomes a possibility." (p. 63)

(Aside: Although The Van Gogh Blues is complete in itself, another of Eric's books, Ten Zen Seconds, is especially useful with regard to enlisting our own thoughts on our own behalf.)

4. Sounding silence

So we have to learn to listen to ourselves.

• "If we had the consciousness of a cat or a dog, we would have it in us to become perfect Zen masters. . . . But we are human beings, and we possess that odd duck—human consciousness." (p. 65)

More about how to unsnarl the mental bonds and have enough courage to change thought patterns so we're not sabotaging ourselves. (It might be a blessing, if I can figure it out.)

5. Opting to matter

• "Brooding about meaning is depressing and unproductive. But stepping back . . . and examining meaning . . . as an observer of your predicament and not the subject of a cruel joke, helps enormously." (p. 77)

Taking control of this mess involves a seven-step process. It's do-able, but it takes courage.

• "A painter facing a blank canvas, a writer facing a blank computer screen, an actor facing a cattle call audition, a researcher facing a mass of data all face this postmodern question: 'Do I or my efforts matter?' . . . Maybe we are trivial creatures in a trivial universe. Will you allow that suspicion—even that fact—to paralyze you?" (p. 87)

6. Reckoning with the facts of existence

• "What are these 'facts of existence' with which a creative person must reckon? At a minimum, they include the shape of each creative discipline, the nature of the creative process, and the nature of the species." (p. 90)

A subsection here is "Dreaming large while reality-testing." This dual focus is crucial.

One of my biggest challenges has always been how to be responsible to family and society while doing the creative work that both drives and grounds me. I don't know that I'll ever get that problem resolved, although I'm doing better each year at balancing between these requirements.

And no, I don't have answers, except for myself, except for today, and then only provisionally, because if I don't make a provisional decision, nothing will get done and depression takes over. "One day at a time" helps a lot, although only if there's a big picture as well to give that one day a chance of connecting to bigger work. "What's the best thing I can be doing right now?" is how I move from one handhold to the next.

7. Braving anxiety

• "Primary existential anxiety . . . is the anxiety we experience when we doubt our motives, our beliefs, and other core elements of our existence." (p. 104)

This is exactly what we face when we pick up a brush or begin to choreograph a dance or think we might have the temerity to create anything.

• "Creative people are anxious not because they are neurotic but because the meaning crises they experience precipitate anxiety. . . . The second most potent anxiety-producer is inner conflict." (p. 106)

A subsection in this chapter is "Managing your many anxieties."

8. Nurturing self-support

• "If you naturally enlist your own support and proceed with your creative efforts like a pair of good friends on an outing—you and your self-support arm-in-arm—you are very lucky. It is far more likely, however, that you are self-unfriendly and reluctant to grant yourself real permission to create." (p. 116)

For those of us in the second group, there are ways to take care of ourselves, and sometimes that involves reaching out to others to keep the depression at bay.

9. Disputing your happy bondages

• "Creators are prone to addictions because an addiction is an ineffective but tempting way to handle meaning crises." (p. 128)

Eric shows me how to perceive addictions in a more understandable and more humanly complex way than I'd seen them before. They're coping mechanisms that don't work very well—most of us know that. But his view of the reasons they're attractive and the reasons they don't work is fascinating. You'll need to read the book for his full perspective, but here's a snip of his conclusion:

• "In actual fact, this bondage is anything but happy. . . . The addicted creator is a wounded creature who is made ferocious by his felt lack of meaning. . . . If you are not addicted or if you have not experienced the lure of an addiction, you may believe that you are not at risk. . . . Every creator is susceptible . . . because the pressure to make meaning and to continue making it minute-in and minute-out can send anyone scurrying away in full retreat . . . toward . . . some . . .  powerful meaning substitute." (pp. 135, 137)

10. Confronting narcissism

• "Every creator is a mixed narcissist—part healthy narcissist and part unhealthy narcissist. He must confront and work on his unhealthy narcissism while reckoning with the meaning issues that his healthy narcissism provokes. Healthy narcissism is an asset but presents a set of real problems; unhealthy narcissism is a curse and presents even more serious problems." (pp. 139-140)

There are lots of challenges in balancing our need to create with the ways we interact with the world and with others. Some folks manage this better than others; Eric gives tips for walking the beam without falling off (too often).

11. Repairing the self

There are other personal issues that can get in the way of creating, and they've formed who we are and how we approach our meaning challenges and crises. Sometimes we need to do deeper work to free ourselves.

12. Forging relationships

Egads, and then there are the other people in our lives! We need solitude to do our creating, and we have responsibilities, and we get moody, and sometimes we fall in love with (or give birth to) other creators, whose needs bump into ours. . . . And we have more relationships with the people who help us publish or sell our work, so we can eat and pay the rent. . . .

• "Creators know they should create—creating is in their blood. They are less likely to recognize that they have an equal need to relate. Cyril Connolly declared, 'In my religion, all would be love, poetry, and doubt.' We creators already have the poetry and the doubt; now we need the love." (p. 177)

13. Meaningfully creating

• "A creator needs to know what constitutes meaningful creative work for her, and she needs to do that work if she is to keep meaning alive. . . . Just as needs collide . . . so meanings collide. . . . A writer is offered a book to write. Will it or won't it constitute meaningful work?" (p. 181)

How to choose between creative projects—and how to deal with the fact that we can never know for sure that we've chosen correctly.

14. Taking action

The difference between being busy and taking action:

• "It is especially the act of creation that requires bravery. Our ability to make and maintain meaning is threatened by the intrinsic hardness of creative work. It is odd but true that most creators do not recognize this reality." (p. 199)

15. Making meaning

Even with all the discussion of making meaning, Eric realizes that we may not quite get it. He brings up the heroism of creating, of making meaning, despite feeling like we're in a fog and don't quite get it. He also talks about the mess that is life, and how we can muddle through anyway. Those are my words. What I'm saying is that he doesn't oversimplify either the difficulty of understanding what we're up against or the challenge of making it through every day.

• "In order to deal with existence as she finds it and in order to make sufficient meaning, a creator faces difficult tasks which, by virtue of their difficulty, require true heroism on her part. She must brave anxiety. She must rebuild her personality and choose worthy creative projects. She must bear up under the pain of not creating well enough or often enough and the pain of losing vast amounts of time to work done to pay the bills. . . . I understand that part of you would like your depression to be something other than existential." (pp. 215-217)
• "Perhaps making meaning is just an illusion, a trick you play on yourself in order to go on. What if it is?" (p. 218)

Conclusion

• "You were not taught at home or in school . . . to think about meaning, but you can't use your lack of training as an excuse. The stakes are too high. . . . You may be a great painter, . . . [b]ut if you haven't learned how to effectively deal with meaning crises, you will be depressed. Your next hundred paintings will not be enough to save you: look at van Gogh." (pp. 224-225)
• "What will save you is your expert work at forcing life to mean." (p. 225)

Appendix: Your vocabulary of meaning

Because these ideas require thinking about experience in ways with which we aren't familiar, Eric offers sixty terms as a starting point for processing experience within this framework. For example, "24. Meaning investment. Possible usage: "I'm about to make a big meaning investment in the idea that psychological research can be meaningful by choosing to get a doctorate in social psychology. . . . 27. Meaning leak. Possible usage: "The rejection letter that arrived yesterday produced a serious meaning leak and made me want to abandon writing. But I licked my wounds and made an immediate meaning reinvestment in the enterprise of writing."

What I think about this book

If any of what I've written and quoted above rings a bell with you, please find this book.

It would be best if you buy yourself a copy. The paperback is only $14.95, which is cheap for what it is, and then you can mark it up and practice with it and find it on your shelf in a year, or two years, or five, when you need it again. And each time you read it you can congratulate yourself on how much better you are doing now than you were when you first encountered it, and you can get even better at managing your life and your creative journey.

And I'll end with a similar sentiment, brought to my attention on Monday, February 4, by the 2008 Wild Words from Wild Women calendar:

• "I'll walk where my own nature would be leading; it vexes me to choose another guide." —Emily Bronte

Chenille sweater progress

I haven't talked much about one of my knitting projects, although I've mentioned it and shown it in the background of several photos where it seemed to fit. It's a sweater for my acupuncturist, who is allergic to animal fibers but needs something warm and soft and has a hard time finding garments that fit. She's quite small.

It took about a year to come up with a yarn that she liked. I have a lot of swatches. We ended up with Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille. She wanted gold or a warm brown, neither of which is a color that would look good on me!

The sweater she has requested is almost too basic for words. But that's what she wants, so that's what I'm making. It's true that it will be an extremely versatile garment that will go with many of her other clothes. She has low vision and I imagine the solid, warm color and lovely, cosy texture of the chenille fabric will be more pleasing to her than any knitting pyrotechnics I might devise.

So it's a simple drop-shoulder structure, with some bound-off stitches at the bottoms of the armholes. This is called "sweater with square armholes" in Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way. It's sometimes called modified drop-shoulder or peasant sleeve shaping. It's a minor modification of a regular drop-shoulder sweater. The construction is described in the worksheets for projects 11 and 12 of Donna Druchunas' Ethnic Knitting Discovery.

Binding off a few stitches at the base of the armhole not only sets the sleeves into the body a bit but makes the shoulders narrower. For a person of small stature who wears fairly trim clothes, this seemed like a good idea. (I offered any kind of sleeve she wanted, from drop-shoulder to set-in and everything in between, but she chose drop-shoulder. I chose to modify.) There's no shaping in the armholes other than that straight-across bind-off of about an inch (2.5 cm) of stitches at the base. The fabric above is curling in a bit on the front piece at the left in the photo, which actually isn't shaped at the armhole (the front edge is a V-neck and is shaped, of course!). The front piece that's attached to the right is folded back underneath.

Obviously, I'm making a cardigan. I'm working the body back and forth in one piece. This is described in chapter 8 of Priscilla's Knitting in the Old Way and converting a pullover concept to a cardigan will be detailed with step-by-step worksheets in Donna Druchunas' second ethnic knitting book, Ethnic Knitting Exploration (October 2008; one of my other major tasks right now is working on its editing and layout).

Here's the same arrangement as in the photo above, only flopped over to show the other side.

(Correct: those are different needles in the two unjoined shoulder sections. One's wooden and one's plastic resin; I've also used steel and bamboo circulars on this project—whatever was handy and in the right size. Oh, and one of my grandmother's crochet hooks, which happened to be the right size. That hook has good karma.)

Many (maybe most) modified drop-shoulder sweaters don't have shaped shoulder lines. I wanted a bit of a natural slope to the shoulders on this sweater, so I divided each shoulder into almost-equal thirds (the stitch count wasn't divisible by 3, so +/- one stitch in each section) and worked short rows: knit from neck edge to second marker, turn and go back; knit from neck edge to first marker, turn and go back.

As a bonus, I got a slightly lowered back neckline, which I also like.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how simple changes can affect a piece of knitting so profoundly. Here's the basic structure of the sweater body—€”not much to it, is there?

This is a challenging sweater for me because it's almost all stockinette. I have trouble staying awake while working on it, although we've watched a few movies and that helps. I'm also being lazy and inattentive because it's only 4 stitches to the inch (2.5 cm). I had to knit the front pieces above the armholes twice because I dozed off while knitting, and a couple of days ago I ripped the sleeves (which were finished) back to the cuff because when I temporarily attached them to the body I didn't like the way they looked. I'm using a different increase sequence the second time.

The only technically interesting thing in this sweater is that the edges (cuffs, lower edge) are crocheted. The recipient doesn't want ribbing, but obviously the edges need to lie flat or in years to come the knitter will wake up in the middle of the night, jolted into insomnia by dream images of ugly finishing. I've had to work hard not to be a perfectionist, but even after years of practice at eschewing perfectionism (which is, after all, what machines are good for and humans are incapable of, no matter how they try) I know I have limits of imperfection that I can tolerate.

There were lots of solutions to the problem, but I like this one and will use it again. I borrowed the technique from traditional sweaters from Korsnas, a Swedish-speaking part of Finland, although the knit-crochet combination looks really different (almost unrecognizable) when worked in a single color of cotton chenille yarn. . . .

___

I've got to share a gorgeous Fana-inspired cardigan I just noticed on Ruthless Knitting.

Sometimes I wonder why I sit in my basement for long hours almost every day, editing and laying out and checking and producing and publishing books on traditional fiber knowledge (there'll be a post on Thursday 2/7 that talks a bit more about answers to this question). Especially when I know that those books will never be perfect (I aim for "excellent," which is at least possible) and I have to work other jobs to support my publishing habit.

Then I come across a post like the one I've linked to that shows and describes a gorgeous sweater and the knitter's process in making it. When I saw that post, it brought tears to my eyes and I knew exactly why I stay at the computer, moving pixels around, until the information can get out there so inspired and courageous knitters can do something like this.

I love the way she worked herself into and out of corners throughout the project. That's the way I work. Dang, it's fun.

Except when I fall asleep (while still knitting) during the stockinette portions and have to rip.

___

Meanwhile, the car is going to get a test today for one of its selection criteria: managing snow. We'd already shoveled twice by 10 a.m. [Addendum: three times by noon. The photo was taken about 8 a.m.]

P.S. New car likes snow.

On the road again: car success

On December 24, a driver totaled our car while it was parked in front of our house. Thirty-six days later, we obtained its replacement, thanks to family and friends, research, and a bit of luck.

It's pretty obvious that the auto industry would like our decisions about transportation to be guided by television commercials and print ads and fancy brochures.

I don't watch enough television to be familiar with the commercials. I pretty much ignore the print ads because I am almost never in the market for a car (the one that was crunched had about 175,000 miles on it and the other vehicle that's still fine has more than 178,000). During my quest I was given two gorgeously printed promotional booklets and picked up a third myself. These print materials made me wish I had design and printing budgets of similar proportions for the books I publish for Nomad Press, although I didn't see any indications that the publications follow Green Press Initiative guidelines, as Nomad does.

My thought processes were guided more by a number of other items.

I relied heavily on a book from the library on the car-buying process, CarFax and AutoCheck reports (they don't show exactly the same things, and I find both useful), Consumer Reports car-buying guide subscriptions, spec sheets and reviews and pricing guidelines from Cars.com and Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book, and a clipboard for notes (both mine and my daughter's) from test drives.

I have specific and unusual requirements for a vehicle—the ability to easily transport heavy boxes of books and a hand truck, as well as dogs and dog crates, and to handle snow, ice, unplowed streets, and sometimes uneven terrain or flooding. I also like good fuel efficiency and safety features. And I like to drive (something that I most likely inherited from my father), so whatever car I end up with has to handle well: I need to feel like the engine, transmission, steering, suspension, and so on work well together.

I intended to buy a three- to four-year-old car from a private party. I narrowed my search to three makes, with one model each, and two model years that seemed historically reliable and offered the features I wanted (2004 and 2005 for all three cars). I watched local ads, Cars.com listings, Craigslist, the dealers' inventories, and other sources. I checked out cars and vendors, private and dealer, within forty miles.

There weren't many privately offered options. I found three—and almost responded fast enough to test one of them. The other two got away so fast it almost made my head spin. Most of the cars in my target range from the readily available sources were either overpriced or had odd histories (according to CarFax and AutoCheck).

One car that looked good in other ways had been to auction three times in less than two years, bouncing around between two owners in California (it seemed okay until after it left the second owner) and dealers in California, Arizona, Nevada, and California Colorado. It had been sold away from and back to the same dealership twice, with auctions and transport—but not many weeks—in between. There's a story there, but I'm not sure I want to find out what it is by living with the car.

Another that had an odometer reading of 20,000 miles in three years—possible, but how likely for a small SUV with a manual transmission? not exactly an "old folks just went for groceries" car—also had tires with uneven wear. Three of the tires had tread levels just about at "replace me now" and the other two tires (one mounted and the spare) had half that much tread. In other words, not bald, but not far off. The windshield wipers were so bad they were useless. The car drove well enough and was clean inside and out (the engine compartment was so shiny it looked like it had been steamed). I wondered why it was on a used-car lot and in need of new rubber in some obvious places.

Yet another had been moved into this area after it started out in New England, where it had been in a crash.

On a whim, I looked on the web for—and found, only sixty miles away—a twin of the car that we have that didn't get hurt: a 1994 Ford Explorer, green with tan interior, manual transmission, but with only 114,000 miles on it. For a short while, I was seriously tempted to check it out. The pricing on a 1994 car with more than 100,000 miles is certainly appealing. Then again, I've been extremely careful with the maintenance on my car, which I've owned since 100 miles before its original warranty expired. I got it because the previous owner traded up. I wouldn't have a clue how this apparent duplicate was treated for its first 114,000 miles. It might have had one oil change.

I ended up buying a car from a regular dealership, which was not anywhere in my original plan. The people were great to work with, and I got a car that meets my needs for an amount that fell within my limited budget. It even has a warranty for more than 100 miles.

I haven't thrown out all my research paperwork yet, but I plan to do so soon. There's quite a stack of well-scribbled-on sheets, but they've done their job and have turned into clutter.

The car itself is not being featured here yet, because it needs to work for that privilege. It's off to a good start. It took a shipment of books to FedEx on its first full day at our house.

Thanks to Judy for the photos of the car [added note: that's the color, in her abstract-like photo just above], and to all the other family and friends who helped in so many ways (if you're reading this, you know who you are). Although I'm glad the quest is over, it ended up being (mostly) kind of fun.

It's good to get back to work. I actually missed a deadline on January 9, which is not at all typical for me. Fortunately, the recipient of the items I neglected to submit (I sent half on time, and forgot the other half) was able to adapt for me and I didn't have to delay the fall Nomad Press release by two months.

And I'm probably good on transportation for another couple hundred thousand miles or more, with luck and care.

___

Reading notes:

During this time, I also read two books that paired interestingly in examining states of mental balance (or lack thereof) and of intuition as a guide to behavior.

Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Jeff Bell is an excellent first-person narrative about one of the many disabilities that can affect folks who appear to be normal. Bell would not have resolved the difficulties he was having (which were ruining most of his life) if he hadn't trusted his intuition and become his own best advocate. I liked the book a lot. Bell knew he had problems and looked for answers until he found them.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer looks at intuition gone wrong within a religious context. A bigger book than it appears to be, it looks at a specific set of experiences to demonstrate some possible roles of religion, faith, and other similar dynamics within social groups and individual lives. The focus is on people who think they have answers and that it's other people who have the problems, and who feel compelled to "fix" those problems violently. It was an excellent book, but (not surprisingly) unsettling.