Sorry, had to get that out of my system. My favorite football team, the Iowa Hawkeyes,
just beat Iowa State, our rival, which always makes me happy. And, of course, I'm also happy that we have cable now, because otherwise I'd have to find a much more difficult way of getting the play-by-play. And after watching every game for four years as a member of the marching band, well, it's important to see the play-by-play. And the best thing is that the networks are getting better about playing footage of the marching bands and having a microphone on them, which (I think) really improves the broadcast.
And that's enough football, isn't it? Apologies for any tangents I take from now until, oh, early January. I'll try to keep them minimal :)
In other news, um, I didn't knit anything yesterday. But I did read some more of those library books, and some of them were great. I checked out
Barbara Walker's fourth Treasury, which is interesting, but a little too much about mosaic knitting for me. There were a lot of great lace patterns, although one was a bit too much like a swastika for my tastes. All in all, I'll be making some notes, and I'd check it out again, maybe photocopy a couple of great patterns, but I wouldn't buy this book unless I found it for $5, which is unlikely.
I also checked out
Knitted Shawls, Stoles, & Scarves by Nancie Wiseman, and it's okay. The only thing I would knit out of it is the Lavender Linen Lace Shawl, but if I ever want to do entrelac, her instructions seemed pretty good.
I got another Wiseman book, though, that was interesting:
The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques. It covers various cast-ons and bind offs, as well as increases and decreases, seams, picking up stitches, etc. Some of the information was really basic, and in many ways I prefer the articles
Knitty has had on cast-ons and bind offs, but I hadn't seen the chained cast-on before. It's a provisional cast-on worked by crocheting a chain over the needle, which eliminates the need to pick up stitches from a crocheted chain. I think I'll definitely use this one. This book is useful, and it's spiral bound, which is a huge plus, but I think a lot of the techniques are adequately covered on the internet. It would be good to have around if you didn't want to have to look things up online, though.
I'll save the other two books for a little later, but they're the two I liked best. Besides, I've got another football game to watch....
