Tuesday 6 March 2007

Fixin' Stuff.



This is a new and scary obsession causing me to spend too much time and money on Ebay hunting down slightly soiled vintage knitting patterns and trying to make them better. Vogue Knitting books from the 40's and 50's are especially dangerous. I was inspired by the wonderful Iva Rose website. www.ivarose.com where out of copyright patterns and books are restored and sold to adoring fans. Well worth a browse but get someone you trust to hold onto your credit card please.

Here is a before and after of a Marriners mitten pattern. Its a bit crude as I don't know how to sample colour and then use it with the paintbrush thingy so I just had to go with the limited Photoshop colour for the background. Also I have a feeling that you can over fix pictures and that spoils them. Just like any other creative process, knowing when to stop is as important as knowing what to start in the first place. I'm not designed to be finicky. If anyone can let me know the copyright issues of sharing old patterns, let me know and I'll happily pass this on for free. I'm having too much fun to want to do this for a living.


I'm hosting the village knitting bee tomorrow night and there is much cake making to be done not to mention Archie's jumper that is still languishing in the form of yarn rather than a knitted object. Soon, Archie, soon!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I followed you over from the flickr Project Spectrum group. Hello! :)

I don't know where that booklet was published, but you can find more about US copyright law here:
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm
and UK copyright law (which is so much simpler, btw) here:
http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/faq/copyright/how_long.htm
In either event, you're probably safe to share that pattern if you like... very few print pattern copyrights ever get renewed.

:)

Anonymous said...

Erm... it cut off my UK url: here 'tis. That'll teach me to not HTML myself!