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Carol Feller’s Short Rows Class on Craftsy

| Elanor

Carol Feller’s class on Short Rows is great. I learned the following new short-row stuff:

  • Japanese Short Rows
  • Set-in sleeves from the top down (picked up)
  • Bust shaping

I want a bunch of Craftsy classes for my birthday, starting with the Sew Retro dress, which I’ve had on my to-do list for about a year, then (in no particular order):

Sigh. Add another thing to the 3-yr plan: have my own course on Craftsy… Have to get good at something so. :))

Arm’s Eye

| Elanor

Etymology always fascinates me.

Armscye

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 

In sewing, the armscye is the armhole, the fabric edge to which the sleeve is sewn. The length of the armscye is the total length of this edge; the width is the distance across the hole at the widest point.

While the expression “arm’s eye” was used in older sewing texts (e.g. Gynametry by M. V. Coleman, published in 1887 by Byrd & Pattillo) it appears that in poor prints the apostrophe and the crossbar of the lower case “e” were indistinct. The neologism “armscye” was created by readers who concatenated the orphaned fragments “arm” and “s” with the corrupt “cye”.[citation needed]

Until the beginning of the 20th century writers favoured the original term or at least a more logical variation (e.g. “armeye” in The Perfect Dressmaking System by Ella A. Bennett, published in 1914). However, as self-proclaimed experts copied each other, the term “armscye” eventually became widely enough used by home sewers to gain general acceptance.

Knitting, Crochet and Yarn Oscars

| Elanor

Ninaknits posed a question in the Budding Designers Forum on Ravelry about The Value of Pattern Design. It got me thinking about how to constructively raise the awareness of all the hard work people put into their knitting patterns.

So here’s my idea: awards for the knitting industry as voted for by peers and industry leaders; i.e NOT a popularity contest. Something along the lines of the “1st Annual Knitting and Crochet Industry Awards”. With Knoscars or Ravtas (Although probs best to keep it distinct from Ravelry).

ImagePopcorn and Pretzel by Jessica Spencer

The idea is to follow the movie Academy Awards example and have nominees and winners announced with a big hue and cry. Lots of razzle dazzle and maybe one day a red carpet!

The thinking behind keeping it peer-reviewed is that Ravelry and PatternFish and sites like them are basically pattern popularity contests already, so we don’t need to replicate that. And also, a huge part of what we want to do is celebrate outstanding members of the design world, including tech editors, test and sample knitters, publishers, photographers, all the support crew without whom the really great patterns and collections would just be mistake-riven, badly-shown FOs.

We need a panel of judges that really know their stuff and have experience across the whole industry. Any volunteers? Perhaps the winners of the previous year could be invited to join the panel for the next year. There would be no prizes, other than the kudos (and, I imagine, the associated pattern sales boost). Incidentally, did you know there’s no crocheted or knitted “Oscar” pattern? That I could find on rav, anyhoo.

Categories could be:

The word “Best” looks weird to me now having typed it so many times.
So whaddya think? Can this work, can we make it happen?
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