Skeinspotting

Although it looks like there are no new knitting posts here, I am actually adding my current project details to the How to design....section and will be updating it regularly so that my design method will all be in one place. Have a look if you like working with Fairisle, I have been placing designs on an Excel sheet. I will add some photos of the actual knit both before and after blocking.

Books I have read

Moving away from knitting slightly, I have just finished reading Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks. I really enjoyed the early chapters and as it was set in the late 19th Century with descriptions of lunatic asylums, it had a very Gothic Novel feel to it. Some of the case studies were fascinating but I did feel towards the end of the novel that the pace moved faster and faster towards....nothing actually. There wasn't a satisfying conclusion except for the fact that the Human Mind cannot yet be mapped and psychiatrists have only scratched the surface of what it is that makes us Human. I do like Sebastian Faulks' writing and have read most of his other novels, obviously Birdsong being the most acclaimed. I am quite unnerved as well by how good he is at describing the internalisation of women's thoughts and feelings. I wonder if his wife feels that he understands her?

I have now started Misfortune by Wesley Stace. Also 19th Century style modern novel but it is very humourous. It is Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mervyn Peake and Mark Gattis (The Vesuvius Club and the League of Gentleman). My only gripe about this novel is that it is printed in a classic style and the print is very very small so difficult for someone like me with all my eye problems! I have started it quite a few times and had to put it down as the tablets I take jsut before bed blur my vision too.

I won't go on about that too much though, what with that and the 'arm/hand' problems, people who have commissioned knits from me might wonder how I am ever capable!

I hope you don't mind if I put up my favourite books and films as well as the knitting. I know that people who knit seem to like to read and watch films too so let me know of your favourites as well.