Look What I Found

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.
-Harriet Martineau

It's a lovely spring day in San Diego, the lucky star I was born under held up last night for a very manageable call. The palm trees are palmy, the flowers are blooming, and the birds are even singing. Spring is definitely here. It was then a perfect day to go explore my public library. I will confess that I had an ulterior motive; a book I requested had come in.

Let's give three cheers to the San Diego Public Library! Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting is now in my hot little hands. After following a discussion on Ravelry about this particular rare book and how often it's "disappeared" from libraries only to show up on eBay for $400, I decided to look around and get my fair use copy of St. Brigid before someone took this one.

My only familiarity with this book has been in seeing the gorgeous sweaters, St. Brigid and Na Craga in particular, that people have made. Now that I'm seeing it in person, I'm both more and less impressed. There are only 9 patterns, but they're all gorgeous. What I hadn't realized is that the first half of the book is all history and a discussion of creating cables. Interesting, but hardly worth the ridiculous prices it's been commandering.

Speaking of ridiculous, let's have a brief chat about the holier-than-thou self-appointed copyright police in the online knitting community. A number of people discussing this book on Ravelry are doing things like checking out the book for three weeks at a time, and then they find the book missing before they can finish their knitting. I'm all about not taking the bread out of the mouths of designers, but that's an overly cautious interpretation of copyright law. If you can get a library copy, you can make a fair use copy of whatever you need for your own personal use. . . . Not to mention that I have no qualms about copying material from out-of-print books. The designer makes no money off that $400 eBay purchase, so I hardly find it a better solution. And I'm very happy I'll be able to make St. Brigid. . . . As soon as I make some progress on those other three sweaters . . .