Friday, January 12, 2007

Episode 25: Fox, Geese and Thank Yous

This show features a thank you, an attempt to explain how to change the size of a hat and a new book.

The Book of the Week:
Favorite Mittens by Robin Hansen.
This is the description from School House Press
"Two long out-of-print books, Fox and Geese and Fences and Flying Geese and Partridge Feet, have now been combined into Favorite Mittens, which, after considerable delay, has finally appeared. The patterns are The-Best-Of from those two wonderful old books. and, as anticipated, it has been worth the wait. The new title contains dozens of historic mittens from 'Up North and Down East'. Softcover."
In my opinion, it's worth it just to look at it, but it's also rich with the history of mittens and traditional techniques that you could glean from somewhere else, but they're very well described and illustrated here.

Download Episode 25

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Becoming a knitter's book review podcast really wouldn't be such a bad idea. I really love listening to book reviews because it helps me decide what books I should take a look at for my own collection.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lara: I'm a listener in Las Vegas, which may as well be a desert island sometimes. I just caught up with a recent sock episode, [I listen out of sequence], and I especially enjoyed your personal story about learning to knit and later visiting a book store in Northampton. I've visited that village about 12 years ago and enjoyed it as well. Your podcast was like a nice little postcard from New England!
I'm sort of an 'interknittant' who picks up her needles when the moon is in the right phase and the kids aren't bugging me. In other words, a Novice. Yet I seem to want to run before I know how to walk. I have this desire to knit socks, but haven't quite got coordination for DPNs yet. I'm trying the 2 circular method, which is a natural choice for me. I love my circulars. I stuck my bamboo straights away since I woke up one morning to find my kids had pulled off my project and were fencing with the needles. Arg!
With the 2 circular I'm finding I can't get my two needles close enough yet. The cast on seems OK, but after a few rows I find my work is loosened up. And the tail end is annoyingly tight, so I can't get it over the ridge in the needle. I think this would happen to me with DPNs as well, uh, except the ridge part. So I'm going to keep trying!
Love the podcast! Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with me!

Sasha said...

Just a quick note as I'm running out the door to my spinning group - late as usual!! But have been wanting to say THANKYOU and that i ADORE your podcast, for a long while, and decided to grab this moment to pass the sentiment on :) So thanks so much for all the work you put in Lara, I look forward to each podcast and love listening to your tips, advice and patterns! More descriptive comment of email later - gotta run! THANKS!! -Sasha (your friendly aussie knitter)

Anonymous said...

Hi Lara,
great that you are back. I just wanted to let you know that I found a great tip how to wind a center pull ball of yarn with a balloon.
You can find it at torsades.canalblog.com entry Dec 18th 2004.
What I do differently is that I blow less air in the balloon and gently push it into the shape of a cylinder.
Thanks again for your great podcast!

Anonymous said...

How fun! I was also named after the main character in the Dr. Zhivago book. Born one year after the original book was published, you of course are a lot younger than that! The original name was Larotcha and the nick names: Larissa, Laura and Lara. I am not sure how my parents ended up with Laritza, it might have been the way it was spelled in the Spanish version of the book. One day I will make it to Russia, if nothing else to see the Gossamer Web Shawls :D