I received many lovely gifts this year for Christmas. None knitting related, as it turns out. But, the best of all was what my sweetie, Kevin darling, bestest FEE-AN-CE ever got me!

A new digital camera! It’s a Casio Exilim EXZ57 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom. I love it. I had been whining for months now about how my previous camera - a minolta 3.2MP camera was just not up to snuff. It had no macro mode. It’s battery life was sad. It did not have the 5 MPs of awesomeness. Now, did I need a new camera? No. Did I desperately, with the heat of a thousand suns, want a new one? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I had put the Casio on my wishlist to keep track of it, since I liked it best - its tiny and has tremendous battery life.

But, it also has a massive preview screen, and this really neat “Bestshot” feature, which lets you pick certain kinds of shots, for example portrait, or scenery, or sunsets, or food. You can also program in your own, or just put in your own settings for every picture. Or, just go with automatic. It’s a totally geeky camera.

Kevin darling, being a smartass, asked if it had a “yarn on the carpet” mode. Well, let’s see…

That picture was taken in my office, with bad lighting. I used the “flower” mode, which is macro mode with high sensitivity. I think. On my monitor, the colors are reasonably true, and while the labels aren’t super clear in the shrunk down version, in the full size they are very readable.

Oh, speaking of yarn, that’s a collection the yarn that has wandered into the house in recent days. The silky tweed, galway and cotton sock yarn came from Mangelsons in Omaha. I love Mangelsons - its a craft shop on crack. It has REAL YARN, and on the day after Christmas, had all wool yarn 25% off. It also has aisles of baking stuff, beading, flowers… It’s like a non-scary Michaels. Every year that we go to Omaha for Christmas, I’m always “Hey, let’s eat at the restaurant RIGHT NEXT TO THE YARN”. Luckily, Kevin’s entire family loves that restaurant, so its not hard to convince them to go. This year, I actually convinced them all to leave me to the badly needed yarn therapy while they went and ran errands.

I also picked up some cane straight purse handles, some cool needles, and some food service gloves.

In knitting news, I’ve finished my last two Christmas scarves, although they badly need blocked. This picture was taken in the hotel room.

Also, Ringtail is working hard on Mom’s cardigan (the one from Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK book). It actually has the beginning of sleeves, although you can’t tell. The entire sweater, including the sleeves, are knit in one piece, except for the front bands, collar and sleeve bands.

Aimee reports that the sweater did fit, but she hasn’t sent me a picture yet. So, I guess she gets her own entry later.

This post was supposed to be one of those “sale and resource posts”, but I couldn’t manage to get up the strength to collect all the links. Mainly because I bought 10 balls of Rowan Kid Classic from Bo Peep’s Wool Shop 50% off sale. They don’t have much in stock, so its slim pickings, but its probably worth a look.

Oh, and Little Knits (Sue is so awesome - she actually refunded me some of my shipping charge in my last order!) has a variety of yarns on sale. I picked up some Classic Elite Blithe, because I drooled over it in Knitche for months until the last of it was gone.

I’ve decided to justify my evil yarn buying ways by noting that Wool and Company is not doing their 40% off sale this year. Instead, it’ll be 25% percent off everything in the store for a week, with certain yarns 40% off on certain days. I guess some people got all mouthy about standing out in the cold for 2.5 hours, waiting to get in. Personally, as one of those people who did that, it meant that I felt justified in buying even more yarn, because I had sacrificed, and my feet were totally numb.

Also, don’t forget to send in your nomination for the Knit Blog Awards. Joe of QueerJoe is organizing them, and I donated the domain name and hosting, so don’t nominate me. Not that I even deserve to be nominated, honestly. There are much better blogs out there, so go nominate them.

Now, on to the meat of the post. I’ve recently gone on a vintage magazine/pattern ebay binge. My first purchase arrived last night. It’s a 1961 Fall/Winter Vogue Knitting Magazine.

Let’s start with the ads, which, I must say, are awesome.

Can you imagine an ad like this in a current knitting magazine? I mean, not just the smoking. She’s so elegant. Don’t you want to be her? Most ads in magazines these days are more down to earth, and much less aspirational.

Okay, see, I could tell you what I thought when I saw this ad, but I can’t remember exactly what these peopel were called. They were tiny little people that would steal things like pins and little things that wouldn’t be missed, and made little rooms and houses. It was a book. Not The Littles - these folks were more Victorian. They had a teenage daughter, and there was a wife and husband. I loved that book.

Anyways, I thought about those people when I saw that picture, and thought they better keep their grubby hands off my yarn!

Edit: I rememered! It’s The Borrowers! I so loved those books.

On to the patterns. First, I’d like to point out that men’s fashioned have so not changed in 45 years.

Other than perhaps that sweater on the upper right, you could see any of those sweaters in today’s knitting magazines. When guys complain about the lack of patterns for men, its because when it comes down to it, men are BORING. They don’t wear new shapes. Those five sweaters cover almost the entire permissable man sweater spectrum. There isn’t a vest, and the collar on the cardigan would need to be updated, but really, there you go.

Another interesting point is that the aran sweater is the bulkiest thing in the magazines, at 3.5 stitches to the inch.

This is my favorite sweater in the issue. I’m not sure why - I think its the crocheted bands, actually. Its knitted carrying two different colored strands of fingering weight, and then it directs you to line the collar, presumably to keep it nice and stiff.

The main problem, with all vintage patterns is that people back then were tiny. Here’s the size chart - the above sweater only has directions for size 12, 14 and 16:

What’s interesting is that the size chart for a Bernat college issue from the 1940s is actually more liberal - a size 16 in that magazine has a 38 inch bust. In the Vogue Knitting, its a 36 inch bust. In contrast, Banana Republic’s size 16 has a bust of 41.5 inches, and that’s a bit on the small size, as modern sizing goes. Speaking of Banana Republic, they have one hell of a sale going on right now.

But, not all was attractive in the 1961 Vogue Knitting. There were the typical knitted bathing suits, but I decided the very worst is this knitted skirt:

Any skirt that makes the tiny 1961 model look hippy is not good. Plus, there’s the risk of leaving bobble impressions on your butt if you sit down.

That just about covers it. Oh, and if you haven’t already, please sign my Frappr Map. I have no one from the south at all! Woe is me!

Wow, look at this awesomely cool sweater! It’s all blocked and complete!

But wait, why is Gail so sad?

Maybe its because she’s wearing the sweater she knit for Aimee the Sis? And Aimee the Sis is like 5′2 and 98 pounds, and Gail is 4′10 and 145? And the sweater is fitting Gail?

I swear to god, I knit the size small, which has a bust of 39 inches. I carefully blocked it to 39 inches. That sweater should not be fitting me.

But, in good news, the sleeves are going to be right, and I think the lace top is not going to hit at nipple level (which it is periously close to doing to me in that picture). Of course, it’ll be a baggy mess, but that’s okay.

In other annoying news, I’m wearing loose sweatpants, and I STILL have a muffin top. What the hell. It’s all my Mom’s fault, I want you to know. Damn body shape.

Wait! You know that those italians are fabulous designers. Maybe its like the traveling pants, which fit everyone no matter what. It’s the traveling sister sweater of LOVE.

Okay, that last post about the css file and all that? Ignore that. With a ton of help from some non-knitter friends, I created a userscript that is amazingly awesome. Mainly, after you install it, you’ll get an option on every knitty pattern page to either print with images, or print text only. In fact, I took a screenshot, so you can see what it’ll look like:

See those two links up top? They’ll show up on every knitty pattern.

So, how do you get the awesomeness?

• You must have Firefox 1.5.
• You must install the greasemonkey extension. greasemonkey lets you write all sorts of userscripts that change how webpages are displayed. It’s amazingly cool. However, you do need to know javascript. Or, you need to have long suffering friends who will write a zillion examples for you until you figure it out. Or, you can just download scripts folks have already written.
• Once you have Firefox and greasemonkey, just click this link:
  http://www.houseofcritters.org/widget/knittycleaner16.user.js
  You’ll get an option to install the script - just click install.
• Then, go to your favorite knitty pattern page.

The main issue is that if you print the page with images, some images may span two pages. There isn’t much I can do about it - it happens in the non-print versions of knitty as well. It’s a browser thing, and I haven’t figured out a way to deal with it. Also, I’ve found that print preview can make it look like the text will overlap the images - when I’ve printed though, that hasn’t been the case.

So, enjoy!

Note: I actually created a better way to do this via a greasemonkey script - I talk about it in this entry. I’d recommend using that method, but the CSS method also works well, if you don’t care about printing with images.

Okay, this is total geekery, and you probably will need to be fairly comfortable with web technology to get this to work.

But, I created a style sheet that will allow you to print out knitty.com patterns without causing extreme pain to yourself and loved ones. Or without killing multiple trees. Mainly, it removes all images and only leaves the text and enough formating to print out reasonably correctly.

In order for my Fabulous Knitty Printing System to work, you must:

• Be a Firefox 1.5 user. It may work with earlier versions of Firefox, but I only tested this with 1.5. As far as I know, this will not work with Internet Explorer. I only tested this on Windows XP.
• Install Chris Pederick’s Web Developer’s Toolbar, which is an extension for Firefox.
• Download the Knitty Print Without Killing Loved Ones stylesheet. Just right click on the link and choose to save the stylesheet to your hard drive.

Once you have Firefox and the Web Developer’s Toolbar installed, navigate to the knitty pattern you wish to print. On your Firefox toolbar, you should see a list of new button, one of which includes CSS with a drop down. Click on it, and select Add User Style Sheet. Browse to where you saved the stylesheet you downloaded, and select it. You’ll see the page change to a basic one. Then print normally. You may end up with an extra page at the end, but its better than 18 pages of unreadable crap, isn’t it?

Please note that you may get unexpected results if you use Print Preview, and then Print. Why? I have no idea. Also, I am not a web developer by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea what I’m doing - this was just me stabbing in the dark until I found something that worked. I mainly picked everything up from this article.

Someone who knew what they were doing could do much better, and knitty.com itself could actually create their own style sheet that did the same thing, but was built into the site. The disadvantage of my system is that if knitty changes how they code their pattern pages, my stylesheet can break. Also, you won’t get any images using my stylesheet, which can be a bad thing if you need a schematic. But, you can always print those out separately by right clicking on an image and choosing view image. Then, print out the image from its own window.

Let me know if you have any problems, but I don’t promise excessive handholding, unless I’m in the mood to be helpful. I handhold all day at work, and sometimes my palms get chapped.