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Want to see what the future has in store for you? Come and meet DEIF at this year's Data Centre World Exhibition at the London Excel Exhibition and be a first mover and step into the future with DEIF – or go down waiting for everyone else to join in!
We'll also be presenting at the technical conference under the subject title: Is N+1 enough?
Did you know that the average cost of a data centre outage has steadily increased from $505,502 in 2010 to $740,357 today? That's an increase of 38%!
Outages have many causes, some of which are very hard to avoid. A surprise to many, however, the root cause of a stunning 22 % of all unplanned outages is human error. Human error today is the second-largest single cause of error, only surpassed by UPS system failures. Go automatic and redundant with DEIF to reduce your risk.
At the show, we'll reveal how you can improve your power efficiency using our innovative and environmentally friendly control technology. Our retrofitting and new build solutions are ideal for mission-critical facilities such as data centres, in particular those looking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions using hybrid-powered solutions. Check out this video to see how we helped secure reliable backup power for the GlobalConnect data centre in Copenhagen.
Reduce CO2 and costs
Expected to consume three times the 416.2 terrawatt hours of electricity globally consumed by data centres in 2015 in the next decade, the world's data centres already now consume more power than the entire UK.
So reducing the environmental impact from backup solutions powered purely by diesel can really mean a difference. It also reduces your fuel costs. With the aim for data centres to be at least 80 % powered by renewable energy sources by 2020, the EU further supports this green transition.
To that end, DEIF power management solutions are capable of handling hybrid stations combining for instance solar, wind and diesel power. Check out our description of hybrid-powered applications that combine off-grid and grid-tied functionality or see how the Rwandanese Sorwathe Tea Factory reduced carbon emissions by 22,000kg CO2 with DEIF technology.
Don't run the risk – go redundant
A fully redundant control system based on hot standby controllers from DEIF elimi
nates blackout risks in combined power plant and parallel to grid systems with up to 16 grids, eight bus tie breakers and 16 generator controllers.
On top of the grid, bus tie and generator controls, the DEIF AGC-4 controllers carry out full power management, reducing or even eliminating the need for PLCs. DEIF's AGC-4-based power management systems also offer the option of having doubled (redundant or Hot Standby) controllers on all positions. In case of failure from a master controller, Hot Standby kicks in immediately, protecting the rest of the system from interference.
See our "Critical Power - Data Center Application Guide".
Looking forward to hopefully seeing you DEIF's stand L1, don't hesitate to contact us for further information or to book a meeting at email@example.com, or see our detailed product presentations and technical documentation.
See the complete list of exhibitions DEIF will be attending in 2017.


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Wine is old, ancient, neolithic. It has been consumed throughout recorded history. Yet wine as we know it today is relatively new. Where it originated, what it tasted like and represented, and how it was transformed over time are explored in Paul Lukacs's fascinating new book, "Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World's Most Ancient Pleasures," published in December by W. W. Norton & Company.
One thing is clear from Mr. Lukacs's work: most wine for much of history was vile, nasty stuff. If an ancient critic had etched a tasting note to describe the wine that most people drank, it might have read, "Wretched, horrible, vinegary, foul." Yet people drank it anyway, because they had no choice. Other beverages like water and milk were disease ridden. Wine might have tasted awful, but alcohol was a built-in disinfectant.
It was not until the Renaissance, writes Mr. Lukacs (who, when not researching wine, is an English professor at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore), that familiar notions of discrimination came to be. Only then did wine connoisseurs, a minute group to be sure, begin to associate particular styles and qualities in wine with specific places, an early idea of terroir. And only then did astute wine drinkers begin to perceive that some wines could be appreciated intellectually and emotionally rather than just physically, and that the best wines conveyed a sense of balance, length and depth.
But it was really with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, when a series of revolutions began that would transform our understanding of grape-growing, wine production and wine storage, that wine began to resemble what we now take for granted.
"We're all children of the Enlightenment, not Plato and Aristotle, but Locke and Rousseau," Mr. Lukacs said over lunch recently in Manhattan. "That's when modern wine emerged."
Other changes occurred as well. As the water supply became safer, it was no longer necessary for people to consume wine. It became a choice. One could savor rather than drink, and so wine had to become more appealing. Nonetheless, through the early 20th century the vast pool of wine could be divided into two groups: a small amount of fine wine, or vin fin, which appealed to discriminating tastes, and most other wines, vin ordinaire, cheap and plentiful but not very good and often pretty bad.
"The gap between top wines and others was phenomenal," he said.
Wine enjoyed a brief golden age in the 19th century with the rapid rise of a middle class with economic resources and cultural aspirations. But it hit a roadblock in the late 19th century as disease assailed European vineyards, to be followed by world wars, economic depression, a fashion for spirits and cocktails, and Prohibition. Yet wine rose again in the second half of the 20th century.
Perhaps a bit smugly, as Mr. Lukacs and I shared a bottle of Il Frappato, a delightfully fresh red from the Sicilian producer Arianna Occhipinti, we agreed that we were lucky to be living in the present, perhaps the greatest time in history to be a wine lover. Sitting in a New York City restaurant, we had access to a greater diversity of wines, from more places and in more styles, than at any time in history.
Il Frappato was a perfect illustration of how much the world had changed not just over 2,000 years, but in the last 25. In the 1980s, few people had even heard of the frappato grape, and most wines from Sicily were regarded as heavy, oxidized or just plain bad. Sicily might have been one of the last bastions of vin ordinaire. Yet today, it is a fount of thoroughly exciting wines.
Mr. Lukacs, 56, who grew up outside Philadelphia, said he had always been inclined toward wine. His father, who is Hungarian, drank wine regularly. But Mr. Lukacs said he really became interested during his graduate years at Johns Hopkins, when he joined a book study group that quickly transformed into a wine group.
"What interested me about wine is that it's intellectually very, very rich," he said. "You don't need to know, but you want to know."
Along with his academic pursuits, he went on to write a wine column for The Washington Times for 19 years and to publish two other wine books, "American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine" in 2000 and "The Great Wines of America: The Top Forty Vintners, Vineyards, and Vintages" in 2005.
Among the most interesting points Mr. Lukacs makes in "Inventing Wine" is that the idea of "tradition" in wine has been thoroughly mutable. The notion of Bordeaux's illustrious past, for example, was very much a 19th-century creation by owners who built chateaus in older architectural styles in an effort to convey a sense of legacy. Current wine marketing, with its emphasis on heritage and continuity, draws from the same source.
Why did wine taste so bad for so long? As anyone who's ever tried to make wine knows, exposure to air, to dirt and to myriad other substances can cause wine to spoil. Not so it becomes unhealthy, just repellent. And so, for ancient and not-so-ancient winemakers, the challenge was, after fermenting grape juice into wine, to prevent the wine from spoiling.
Up until the 19th century, when glass bottles could be mass-produced, Mr. Lukacs writes, this was nearly impossible. Vessels of old, made of clay or wood, could hold large quantities of wine. But once you began to draw down the contents, air entered the picture with all its microbial companions. In an effort to compensate for sour, vinegary flavors, ancient vintners added all sorts of flavorings. Spices, yes, but also pitch and ash, and even lead and lye. Wealthier clients might afford a better brand of additives, like spices and herbs.
Eventually, ancient vintners discovered techniques for making longer-lasting wines, like drying grapes before fermenting them, which is somewhat reminiscent of modern wines like Amarone. These dried grape wines became highly sought after and came to be emblems of social privilege, foreshadowing, Mr. Lukacs writes, wine's future role as a status symbol.
"It was a way of distinguishing one's tastes from somebody else's," Mr. Lukacs said over lunch. "Even in the ancient world, there were real distinctions between what the patrician drinks and what the plebeian drinks."
Some things never change.

subset: commoncrawl


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This Little Life of Mine Plus 2
Saturday, 8 December 2012
And The Winner Is....
Time to announce the winner for my addition to the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway. I've had a ton of fun visiting other blogs and poking around through the giveaways. Can't wait until next year.
The winner will be contacted by e-mail, and the lucky winner is:
Chez Roo
4 December 2012 14:03
Lovely fabrics, I am a huge Mendocino fan! Thanks for the great giveaway!
Congrats, I hope you enjoy the package!
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Since I'll be working the next several days, I needed to take care of some errands and grocery shopping today. Considering that I slept in this morning, and didn't get up at the crack of dawn, it was 10:00 by the time Emma and I headed out for a drive on the refuge. I figured I'd take her on a little outing before I headed into Nags Head. If I had been a little more ambitious and left a little earlier, we might have been able to see some bears along the way. As it was, we only saw one bear and it was way out in the middle of a corn field.
Turkey vultures don't get up very early in the morning either. There was some little dead animal in the road that it was brunching on.
Soon afterwards, it took flight to look for something more substantial to eat. At this point I decided to take a drive to one of my favorite places on the refuge… Milltail Creek.
Near the end of the road is a parking area and kayak launch along the bank of the creek. It's right after you pass over a short bridge. Emma and I took a walk around this peaceful area, and we were in for a couple of surprises. As you can see, it's not a very fast moving creek, but I found the patterns of the green algae floating on top to be entrancing as my eyes followed their undulations.
Then on the other side of the bridge, a couple of swallowtail butterflies were chasing each other around through the creek side vegetation. First one would be in front, and then the other. It was a hoot trying to hang on to Emma and get some pictures of their antics at the same time.
Eventually, one butterfly flew off, and the other stopped for some nectar. Since I was up on the bridge looking down, I was able to get a different perspective on this little beauty.
As we got to the other end of the bridge I spotted one brilliant flower blooming off at the edge of the creek. That blossom was about six inches across, and was the only one around.
Then this colorful dragonfly landed on one of the bridge pilings. Isn't that an interesting little face? As I moved around to try to get the best view, another creature came into my peripheral vision.
I was not as thrilled to see this guy, but he sure was keeping an eye on me. As Emma and I stepped back, he slithered away off of the bridge guard rail. We may not have gotten any good looks at bears this morning, but we sure did see plenty of other interesting things on our little outing.
Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later, Judy


text: Thomas Bordeaux is a true SCA Bard (referring to the historical re-enactment organization, the Society for Creative Anachronism). Not only does he write and perform all of his own songs, but many of his songs are about SCA events and culture. His latest CD is Prodigal Bard, containing such SCA hits as Ban The Fencers, I'm a Duke and You're Not, and My Queen.


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Exploring OpenFlow scalability in cloud provider data centers
OpenFlow scalability questions remain as cloud providers consider the technology for their data centers.
Many cloud providers challenged by network operations are curious about OpenFlow scalability.
The software-defined networking (SDN) protocol OpenFlow provides an interface that allows a central control plane to directly program the forwarding state of switches.
But the migration to OpenFlow represents a big paradigm shift for most cloud providers. "We tend to think of networking as little pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to assemble any way we want," said Brad McConnell, principal architect at Rackspace. "It takes time to adjust to big changes."
Whether OpenFlow will trigger a fundamental shift in networking remains to be seen, but "it can definitely help in areas such as mobility of virtual machines (VMs) and, by default, solves some orchestration problems customers have on their network today," McConnell said.
OpenFlow scalability: The protocol
Scalability isn't really an issue for OpenFlow because it's so simple, according to Nick McKeown, OpenFlow and SDN icon, and professor in Stanford University's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments.
"Once the control plane decides how it wants packets to be forwarded by each switch, it just uses OpenFlow to program the switches," McKeown explained. "The task of programming the switches is quite scalable, and many protocol choices would be just fine. Programming the switches isn't the challenging part. The control plane has a much more difficult job of calculating and deciding what forwarding state to put into the switches."
The SDN consistency model has yet to be proven, according to Brent Salisbury, lead network engineer at the University of Kentucky. "You can either run OpenFlow reactively, proactively or a combination of both. That's the crux -- how much state do you distribute, how much do you centralize? It's an exciting problem to have."
OpenFlow scalability at the controller layer
OpenFlow controllers at the scale that larger cloud providers will need in their data centers will require careful engineering.
"It's challenging to build any control plane for a large multi-tenant data center, regardless of the technology," McKeown said. "The amount of state, the number of VMs, the number of tenant policies, the number of service-level agreements, the number of flows … will create a challenge for the control plane -- SDN or not, virtualization or not -- particularly when VMs and workloads are moving around."
Rackspace has worked with OpenFlow for a few years and had it in production for nearly a year, and McConnell views controller scalability as an area with "room for improvements across the board."
"With controllers, it's a matter of choosing how much of your data center you want to put at risk at one time," explained McConnell. "For us, the question is: should a controller scale forever, or should there be a cutoff to the number of endpoints below that it manages, where we say that's as large as we're willing to make a domain?"
Federation of controller clusters also need to work seamlessly. "If we put X number of servers beneath this one domain, then another cluster will automatically be set up once we reach that number. But the services we deliver don't work that way; they don't think along those boundaries, so we need true federation where a virtual service can stitch endpoints together that are controlled by different controller clusters," McConnell explained.
OpenFlow or not, cloud providers will need "federation between controllers for scale, because central controllers can run out of horsepower sooner or later -- depending on how state is being determined. At some point, we'll need some sort of federation between east-west controllers to distribute state for use-case-specific consistency," Salisbury said.
OpenFlow scalability: Switch hardware challenges remain
Network switch manufacturers are still reacting to the emergence of OpenFlow, leaving many hardware challenges unresolved. Switch silicon and software need to be redesigned, and TCAM utilization needs to be improved. Some vendors still haven't even offered commercial support of a robust OpenFlow agent.
Switch silicon
"Current switch chips -- from folks like Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, Mellanox -- are all pretty good. They have high capacity and ample features for most data centers," McKeown said. "Really, all they need is the ability to do line-rate forwarding at 10 Gbps, which they all do, with reasonable forwarding tables that are mostly okay in this generation, but will be much better in the next. They also need features like equal-cost multipath routing, which is well-supported these days. Newer chips do things like VXLAN as well."
But because network virtualization is "much easier using an overlay, you don't need hardware support for virtualization," McKeown added.
Even last year, if you wanted to use overlays and some kind of network virtualization in hardware because of the performance it provides, according to Rackspace's McConnell, there wasn't a merchant silicon ASIC available that natively supported the tunneling protocols used by leading overlay vendors.
"But now that merchant silicon is on the way that actually does NVGRE and VXLAN in hardware, it gives us more options to figure out how they can actually integrate into an SDN domain comprised of software switches already doing that encapsulation," McConnell said. "Today, it all comes down to, what do I buy if I want to deploy these tomorrow? That's a question that didn't have good answers until new silicon started shipping."
Switch software
Many switch manufacturers will continue to maintain complex software on their switches, with features that aren't necessary in an OpenFlow environment.
"For a while the vendors will continue to sell boxes that are mostly far too complex, with far too much old software inside," McKeown said. "But this is ultimately a losing proposition -- the writing is on the wall for the boxes that simply add an OpenFlow interface and declare they have SDN."
Vendors need to consider "reducing the complexity and moving all the control functionality up and out of the box into the control plane," he said.
Another OpenFlow hardware challenge is ternary content addressable memory (TCAM), which is a form of memory that can do rapid lookups for line-rate switch forwarding. Most commercial OpenFlow switches use TCAM to manage flow tables, but TCAM is expensive and power-hungry, which limits the number of OpenFlow flows a switch can handle.
"If you consider the typical amount of TCAM on a top-of-rack switch, the old standard answer was that with OpenFlow, you could get about 2,000 flows on a switch," McConnell said. "But if that switch is managing complex policies on, say, 48 downstream servers -- and if they're virtualized it's even worse -- you'll run out of TCAM space long before you populate all of the ports on the switch."
Another area McConnell sees room for improvements is the rate that flows can be calculated and loaded into the data plane. "If failover paths aren't preloaded, the time necessary to automatically repair around a fault might not be as consistent as some traditional protocols," he said.
"Startups addressing this from a greenfield perspective -- not trying to keep all the old protocols working the way they were -- might be able to give us some big gains in both flow space and the rate at which they can be programmed," McConnell noted.
OpenFlow agent support
One of the fundamental challenges, according to Salisbury, is getting OpenFlow agent support from a manufacturer today. "For some of us wanting to take early advantage of OpenFlow-driven services on the edges of our networks, it's difficult if the kit doesn't support OpenFlow," he said.
The lack of hybrid OpenFlow and native forwarding support is also problematic. "To enable incremental pathways to deployment of SDN integration, we need hybrid functions built into the switch," Salisbury explained. "For example, either pipeline hybrid interactions that vendors bake into their firmware or OpenFlow Normal, which can redirect packets from the OpenFlow pipeline back into the normal L2-L3 forwarding pipeline."
For more about lessons learned with early OpenFlow implementations...


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Ever since Microsoft debuted their Office 365 Groups, focusing initially on the conversational capability within Outlook rather than the underlying architectural changes – which is what Groups is really all about – there have been questions from the community asking if and how Groups impacts how we manage the various workloads in Office 365. The concept of groups presents a new direction for the platform (and Microsoft has corrected the messaging that separates the Outlook features from the Groups platform
capabilities). While some may feel like this has been a backwards move for administration and governance, Groups presents clear insight into the future path of Office 365 – and they will undoubtedly have an impact on each of our organizations as office 365 continues to expand and grow.
Join this month's #CollabTalk tweetjam on Tuesday, February 28th at 9am PST as we discuss "The Organizational Impacts of Groups" with experts, MVPs, and community members from around the world as we tackle this topic and share our thoughts and experiences. Sponsored by tyGraph.
Read more about the tweetjam and our panelists on buckleyPLANET.com


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Remember last summer when I talked about us deciding to let nature take it's course reproduction wise?
Well, we did. Whether to have another child or not has often come up in conversation and we've mostly been on the path of whatever happens, happens.
Well Mother Nature is an interesting mistress and she and God got together and decided we weren't done…
I'm due March 10, 2011.
No drugs. No crazy charts. Just wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned or linked to in this post.


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Jewelry can be a perfect gift for both men and women. It symbolizes a variety of significance, from gratitude to love and respect. Before you buy jewelry, it is important to do some research first and find established jewelry stores. This is important whether you plan to buy jewelry online or offline.
Finding the perfect jewelry pieces is important. You should consider the recipient's favorite gem, shape or color. Giving jewelry as a gift makes a personal moment between you and your recipient. However, there are other reasons these pieces make perfect gifts.
Jewelry is Valuable
Things of high value such as jewelry make anyone feel extra special. This is because jewelry is not something people would normally purchase for themselves.
It is Sentimental
Anyone who gets jewelry as a gift item will automatically feel valued and that the giver will always have a special place in their heart and thoughts. The piece just has the power to capture somebody's heart. Also, it can be something that those who have it can pass on as an heirloom in the years to come.
As you present a piece of jewelry specially selected for him or her, it sends a message that the individual is important to you. Whether it is a beautifully-crafted birthstone ring or a cultured black pearl bracelet, giving jewelry to somebody shows that you took the time to look for something which represents your feelings toward the person. Think about options from Pandora Summer 2018 or something designed by your recipient's favorite designer. Also, consider giving a piece of custom jewelry or one crafted specifically for the person.
It can be Customized
In terms of jewelry, you can cater to color, preferences, personality, and style. If you need a gift for a stylish loved one, you can't go wrong with a vintage-inspired cocktail ring. For your aunt, you can get her a piece such as four locket pendant. You have endless possibilities.
It Can Speak Unspoken Words
A piece of jewelry can express what you feel towards the person you are giving it to. For instance, a diamond says "forever" while a journey pendant says you will be there. Jewelry makes it easier to say what you cannot say.
It is a Good Investment
Over time, jewelry value can increase. A piece of designer jewelry can become a collectible in the future. Therefore, you want to select significant pieces if you are buying them as an investment for a loved one.


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Friday, 31 October 2014
Mother and Urnie Knitting Things
This video from It's Alive, a late night horror show webcast based in Pittsburgh, PA, Mother has some unwelcome news for Urnie. She's late. Fifty-six years late, to be precise.
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
The Knitwear of Oscar de la Renta
As those of you who read my knitting magazine reviews may have noticed, I won't generally include the names of the knitwear designers whose patterns appear in them. My main reason for not doing so is that I think it would make my negative reviews too much like a personal attack on the designer. It would also mean my snark about their work would come up on Google searches for their names. So I keep the reviews focused on the merits of the specific item in question, and only name the designer when I think she or he is especially deserving of praise. But although my practice of not naming designers has become a policy with a carefully considered rationale, it wasn't originally so. No, when I first began writing reviews nearly two years ago, I didn't name the designers in them because I never thought of doing so. I'm not one to care much about name designers and labels. For me, it's all about the design, about looking at patterns on a case by case basis. And it seems like a reasonable approach to me because while there are exceptionally talented designers out there who turn out a very consistent body of work, many are hit or miss, and all of them are capable of laying an egg sometimes. I also don't think the famous designers are necessarily the best designers, because much of the most stunning work I've seen in the course of research and writing for this site was by some relatively unknown designers I stumbled across on Ravelry. This agnosticism regarding prestige designer names is an integral part of my entire approach to crafting. As I wrote in this March 2013 post, "The Mount Everest of Knitting Patterns", my belief is that when one makes one's own clothes one needs to be one's own designer, to make patterns one's servant and not one's master. It's so important when crafting anything to make an effort to maintain a certain critical distance from all outside design influences in order to make sound decisions about what will work and to guard against being overcome by slavish adherence to someone else's design and rules because as good as those may be, they weren't, after all, tailor made for you.
All of the above preamble is intended as an aside to explain why, when Óscar Arístides Renta Fiallo, known professionally as the designer Oscar de la Renta, died of cancer on October 20th, 2014 at the age of 82, it didn't make much of an impression on me. I certainly knew who he was and realized that he was considered legendary, but I wasn't that familiar with his work. And it was only after seeing all the Oscar de la Renta tributes on the websites and webpages I follow to keep myself somewhat informed about what's going on in the knitting and fashion scene that it occurred to me that I perhaps ought to do an Oscar de la Renta post myself. It took one image Google of the words "Oscar de la Renta" to make me decide that perhaps I also ought to reconsider my indifference towards name designers; that I ought to at least take the time to occasionally look at their work as a whole in order to gauge its general calibre and character. As I scrolled through images of Oscar de la Renta designs, dozens of beautiful confections were followed by dozens more. There is a reason why de la Renta dressed so many movie stars, royal and political figures including many American first ladies that he became a living legend: he was past master of elegantly and distinctively simple design. He is probably best known for his evening gowns, though as his long career progressed he diversified into bridal wear, home furnishings, and fragrances, but he also designed knitwear. And this post will feature a selection of his knitwear design. I've opted not to include any of the Vogue Knitting-published de la Renta patterns that are on Ravelry. They're all nice, but none of them really stands out to me. Instead I have included a selection of photos of the knitwear design that bears his name for your inspiration and replication.
Navy sweater and skirt set offering us an updated take on the polka dot fabric. I think those circles have been created by stitching beads in circles, and possibly cutting out the centre of the circle. The skirt seems to be self-lined while the sweater shows us glimpses of the blouse beneath it.
Beautifully shaped and detailed knitted dress. I love the kick pleats in the front and back, which are a great way to add interest and movement without making the silhouette too full.
This design is one of those that I could never wear but that gets my creative juices flowing, because the idea of those silver rose outlines against pale pink is one I would love to see translated into various handknit patterns.
I love this use of gradient colourwork, which is fresh and spring-like.
Many Oscar de la Renta designs have such a timeless quality. This sweater evokes the forties and probably could have been worn back then without looking at all out of place, but at the same time it looks very current.
Another good use of gradient colour, combined with great shaping.
Love this piece, which looks comfortable and casual enough to wear with jeans but has such incredible style at the same time.
I can't even quite tell what's going on with this design of this little cardigan, and how it is made. It seems to be knitted of some chiffon fibre and decorated with chiffon roses. I find the concept of a sheer cardigan with a textured decorative overlay around the neck to be an intriguing one that I would love to see interpreted by other skilled designers and knitters.
Something that I noticed about Oscar de la Renta's designs when I was researching this post is that wonderful sweater and dress pairings were very common among his offerings. Everything about this pairing is perfect, from its lines to its colour combination.
A beautiful lace cardigan over a coordinating dress.
Ever thought of embroidering a sweater to go with a favourite dress?
Tuesday, 28 October 2014
Pom Pom Quarterly Winter 2014: A Review
Pom Pom Quarterly has released a preview of its Winter 2014 issue. Let's have a look at it.
The Fairchild design. Not impressed with this one. That pouch on the front makes the overall shape so unflattering.
The Falling Snow Mitts. I rather like these crocheted mittens. The texture's great and that's an interesting yarn. I would correct the pointy tips though.
The Cidre design. I think this model was styled this way in an attempt to give this item a certain hipster chic, but this model looks for all the world like a university student in the midst of exams, who has thrown on the only relatively clean items she could find on the floor of her dorm room and put her hair any old how before running out to her local coffee shop to fuel up on caffeine, where she promptly ran into that cute boy from her economics class she's had a huge crush on since the first week of term. That's always the way of it, isn't it? Anyway, about the sweater. It has its good points, such as its texture and the way the shaping has become part of the design, but it's too big for this model and that is one depressing colour. Neaten up the fit and knit it in a colour you love, and put it with things that actually go with it, and the wearer won't wind up dying inside when she finds herself standing next to her secret crush at the local coffee shop.
The Into Trees hat pattern. The stitchwork is good, and I admire the way the designer has integrated the earflaps into the design. If this style of hat is not for you, you could omit the ear flaps and the pom poms and have a nice slouchy style cap.
The Sorrel hat. This is the expression the university student had on her face when she ran into the local coffee shop the week after exams wearing a coordinated outfit and a very cute hat and found herself standing next in line to the cute boy from Economics again.
The Aubrietia sweater. Not thrilled with this design, which has a rough, amateurish look to it. A polished, accomplished design needs better shaping, a design concept that is carried steps farther, and a more sophisticated, interesting colourway.
The Brynja cardigan. I think I might make a few tweaks to this one, such as not going with a raglan sleeve, as it cuts into the cabled detail on the front to poor effect, and I think I'd create a cuff that employed some of that cabling instead of going with those ribbed cuffs that don't seem to belong on this sweater.
The Curio Mitts. These are nicely detailed and fit well.
The Trienne Shawl. Now our friend the young university student is trying to attract the boy from Economics class by being all Manic Pixie Dream Girl in the shawl she crocheted back in her gap year, when she was backpacking in the Netherlands and got into doing mushrooms. Honey. One of the cardinal rules of dating is "Don't try too hard," and one of the cardinal rules of crafting is "Anything you craft while high will look terrible, and you won't even know it."
Wednesday, 22 October 2014
Knit in 80 Seconds
The children's storybook, Phoebe's Sweater, written by Joanna Johnson and illustrated by her husband Eric Johnson, tells the story of Phoebe Mouse and how she becomes a big sister. The book also includes knitting patterns: one for a child-size hooded sweater, one for a toy Phoebe Mouse, and one for a doll-size sweater that will fit the toy Phoebe Mouse as well as a 16-18 doll. The video above shows a Phoebe sweater being knitting in 80 seconds. Or more accurately, shows us 80 seconds out of of a day-long process of knitting the Phoebe sweater, but the 80 second stop motion video is quite well done and offers cute background effects, such as a last ball of yarn being delivered by a little vehicle made out of Lego. If you'd like to knit Phoebe's sweater for the little girl in your life, the pattern is available on Ravelry for $6(USD).
Monday, 20 October 2014
Tales from the Midknit Hour
Rosamund loved Halloween, but often found it a let down because all the little trick or treaters who came to her house tended to run away screaming when she opened the door. So she decided to throw a "Midknit Hour" Halloween party for her knitting club.
Rosamund's best friend Caitlin came early to the party to lend a hand with the preparations, but wasn't much help as she got distracted by Rosamund's stash.
Rosamund's friend Mira had also offered to help but instead spent the entire party stretching, rolling over on her back, and rubbing up against people's legs. Rosamund, who was a bunny person herself, reflected that cat people were too much like cats to be much help at throwing parties.
Jena, a member of Rosamund's knitting group, appeared at the party in post-apocalyptic crochet and with dirt on her face and spent the entire time talking to everyone about the coming climate change holocaust. Rosamund decided that she and Jena were just going to be coffee buddies from now on. After all, Jena might be right about climate change's catastrophic threat to human existence, but she was a real buzz kill at parties.
No one could figure out who the guy in the clown mask was, but no one at the party quite had the nerve to ask him.
Knitting club member Lucian insisted his seventies "man around town" knitwear look was supposed to be ironic, but the irony wore thin after he got really drunk and asked each woman present if she'd like to come back to his place and help him unwind.
Rosamund was grateful for knitting club member Irwin's presence, as he and his macarenas really got her party started.
Everyone agreed that Enid had the best costume of anyone present.
Unfortunately Enid had brought Cyrus the Bumbledog with her, and he showed his disapproval of both his costume and everyone present by peeing on everything. After everyone had gone and Rosamund was occupied with trying to scrub the dog urine out of her carpets, she decided that next year she'd stick to scaring off trick or treaters and eating all the candy herself.
Friday, 17 October 2014
Bergère de France Magazine 175: A Review
Bergère de France has released Magazine 175, in which they've not only aimed to appeal to young people but to try to teach them to knit by offering them patterns of progressive and calculated difficulty, which I must admit is ambitious all around. Let's have a look at it, shall we?
Pattern 01, Beanie. Simple, easy garter stitch hat. It's not bad. The knob on top is a little odd but it's in proportion and integrated with the rest of the design so I think it works fairly well.
Pattern 02, Short-Sleeved Sweater, Pattern 03A, Grey Mug Cosy, Pattern 03B, Pink Mug Cosy & Pattern 04, Turn Cuff Slipper Socks. Not liking anything here much. The sweater is way too, well, square. It does look better than I would have expected on the model, and I appreciate that Bergère de France is trying to provide dead easy beginner projects here, but garments need shaping and I'd advise beginners to stick to smaller items until they feel they can handle doing at least some shaping. As for the other items, those mug cosies are going to get soggy and stained the first time they're used, and the booties are clumsy and unattractive. I know they're probably on trend, but I'd argue ugly trends should be ignored. There are no Ugg boots in my closet, is what I'm saying.
Pattern 05, Bobble Hat & Pattern 06, Scarf. This is a serviceable enough hat and scarf, though I'd omit the pom pom if it were for a young man, and make both items in better-looking yarn. As I often say in my reviews, one way to make a simple project look like something special is to use a beautiful yarn.
Pattern 07, Blanket & Pattern 08, Slipper Socks with Cuff. Quite like the blanket, which has a crisp, sporty look to it, but the slippers are quite dreadful. I can't imagine any young man of my acquaintance voluntarily wearing them.
Pattern 09, Arm Warmers. These arm warmers aren't bad. They fit well and, thanks to the colourway, are kind of fun.
Pattern 10, Hooded Poncho, Pattern 11, Slipper Socks & Pattern 12, Pouch. Again, with respect to the hooded poncho, Bergère de France has managed to make a square garment look fairly good on this professional model, but this shapeless item is not going to play as well on the average girl or woman in real life. There are better beginner projects than this one. I'm actually not hating the slipper socks, which could mean that Bergère de France is wearing me down dangerously and I'll find myself with Uggs on my feet by the end of this review. The pouch isn't bad though I'd use it for a cell phone case rather than makeup brushes, partly because my makeup brushes are bigger than that, but for the most part because it would promptly become filthy.
Pattern 13, Rectangular Cushion & Pattern 14, Cardigan Look Sweater. The cushion is really basic but okay. I can see it looking pretty good in the right setting. The faux cardigan (it doesn't open in front at all) with its askew-looking collar just looks strange and rather dorky, like something one of the geeky guys in an eighties John Hughes movie would wear.
Pattern 15, Slipper Socks & Pattern 16, Snood. More clumsily constructed slipper socks and a cowl that is kind of cute but is styled as menswear. I don't think too many young guys would be willing to wear this cowl.
Pattern 17, Perfecto Jacket. This is actually a pretty smart-looking jacket.
Pattern 18, Studded Hat, Pattern 19, Tablet Cover & Pattern 20, Studded Slipper Socks. These are all pretty basic, but they'll do. This pair of slipper socks is better constructed than the previous pairs.
Pattern 21, Boat-Neck Sweater. This sweater has nice texture but is so very shapeless. I'd add waist shaping and raise the dropped shoulders.
Pattern 22, Hat, Pattern 23, Travel Blanket & Pattern 24, Boot-Style Slipper Socks. I haven't a fault to pick with any of these. They're very solid basic patterns.
Pattern 25, Large Snood & Pattern 26, Cable-Stitch Arm Warmers. Quite an attractive cowl and fingerless glove set.
Pattern 27, Shawl Collar Sweater, Pattern 28, Slipper Socks & Pattern 29, Messenger Bag. The sweater is actually quite nice, and as we've seen in the previous picture, looks very well when on. I question whether anyone will want to wear shin-high slipper socks, but if they are too high for your liking, you can always shorten them. The messenger bag looks tacked together and cheesy.
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
Jane Austen Knits 2014: A Review
Interweave has released the 2014 issue for Jane Austen Knits. Let's have a look at the Georgian-inspired styles therein, shall we?
Highbury Top. A henley with a lace border would have been considered underwear in the Georgian period. A piece like this makes for wearable outerwear these days.
Wheatsheaf Carpetbag. Oooh, love this one, with its unusual and beautiful pattern and detailing. An aluminum frame is used to give the bag shape. It can be knitted as a tote if you can't find or don't care to use such a frame.
Mrs. Jennings's Country Stockings. This is my favourite kind of sock: a basically plain pattern with a bit of lovely or interesting detailing added. Very patterned socks always look a little on the goofy side to me, no matter how beautifully designed.
Men's Driving Gloves. These are nice, although I'm a little unsure about their appeal to men on the whole. They might look a little gimmicky and foppish to most men.
Eliza's Hat. This one is really eye-catching. It's the particular needle-felted floral trimming that makes it because it's really something unique, but the hat does have a pretty good shape and could be trimmed in lots of different ways.
Harriet's Little Shoulder Shawl. This shawl is a little on the too little and too simple side for me. I think I'd want to make it a little larger and add a fringe or lace edging.
Jane's Barathea Mitts. Very nice fingerless gloves. They've got great texture and are so well-shaped.
Fine Stockings. Another mostly plain pair of stockings with some lovely detailing.
A Second Chance for Mr. Rushworth Socks. Classic pair of cabled socks.
Kitty's Chemise. This top needs some detailing (any detailing, for that matter) to make it work. It's just too plain as is to be worth making.
Socks for Mr. Bennet's Leisure. Love the horizontal herringbone pattern in these socks.
Cassandra's Tea Cozy. Can't say I care for this one. It just looks kind of lumpy and cheesy.
Col. Fitzwilliam's Huswife. In the nineteenth century, a huswife, or housewife as it was also called, was a little kit of sewing supplies. I'm trying to figure out what purpose this could be put to in the twenty-first century. Interweave suggests it could hold knitting notions, but I don't think I'd care to use it for that. Maybe it could work as a vanity case or cell phone case. As to the aesthetics of it, I do like the tartan pattern but the crooked embroidered lettering is really detracting.
Kellynch Cardigan. Beautiful classic cardigan. The yarn used here, Madelinetosh Tosh merino light in "Tannenbaum", is really fabulous.
Dashwood Lace Stole. This looks much more like an afghan than a stole to me because of its size and rectangular shape, although I must say it is a beautiful afghan. Love the lace pattern. If you want to wear this, I'd recommend sizing it down and shaping it.
Strawberry Picking Shrug. Very pretty little shrug.
Sweet Hearts Reticule. This is kind of cute, but it could have done with a little more shaping at the bottom. This purse will not sit upright on its own.
Regency Blouse. Very pretty top. The shaping is good and the ballet neckline, cap sleeves, and lacework add a lot of grace to it.
Accomplished Ladies' Reticule. Pretty little purse, though I'm mentally playing with the colourway in order to make it less "tea in a country garden" style, because that style is a little too precious for most women.
Susan's Bonnet. This isn't a bad-looking bonnet, but it is a bonnet. I can't imagine any woman wearing it other than as part of a costume.
A Shawl for Emma. Lovely, delicately lacy shawl.
Abbey Mill Farm Vest. Beautiful, classic fair isle vest.
Fitzwilliam's Gift. What a gorgeous piece. The lacework, the beading and that luscious yarn all combine to make something really luxurious and extravagantly beautiful.
Almost Pretty Stockings. Creative use of lacework here. That diagonal lace stripe make these socks look simultaneously quaint and contemporary.
Brighton Shawl. Lovely and gracefully shaped shawl.
Catherine's Bonnet. The shape of this little girl's hat is ever so cute. I'm having a lot of fun mentally playing with it and figuring out different things to do with it with intarsia and Swiss darning.
Little Man Waistcoat. Not crazy about this one. I find the shaping of the neck a little on the rough and ready side, and the colourway isn't doing anything for it. Fixing the neckline and going with a different colourway should make it work though.
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For Bob Marley's birthday today: Rare and totally wonderful version of "Like a Rolling Stone" by Marley and the Wailers in 1966. Wailers re-work lyrics but totally cool.
Greg Mitchell on media, politics, film, music, TV, comedy and more. "Not here, not here the darkness, in this twittering world." -- T.S. Eliot
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Like a Rolling Stone, Mon
Posted by Greg Mitchell at 11:00:00 AM
is author of a dozen books (click on covers at right), including the new "THE TUNNELS: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill." He was the longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com. Twitter: @GregMitch
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Handmade doily with embroidery of shades of blue. Hand-fringed borders. White base material (Hungarian, Matyo style).
Colors: shades of blue
Size: 16 cm / 6.3"
100% HAND-MADE Hungarian embroidery!
This item is NEW, not used in any way!
Every order will be shipped from Budapest, Hungary.
ALL ORDERS are shipped by priority mail within 48 hours after we have received your order.
In addition, shipping process will take around 5-15 days to reach the destination address (5-10 days inside Europe, 12-20 days to overseas).
We will do our best to ship the products as soon as possible.
We pack the ordered items in a jiffy bag (padded envelope), which ensures that you will receive your order without damages.
Hand-embroidered blue Hungarian, Matyo doily, table topper (MKDOI-BLU-180920-1)
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- Brand: FolkArtHungary
- Product Code: MKDOI-BLU-180920-1
- Availability: 2
- $8.80
Tags: MATYO, HUNGARIAN DOILY, BLUE EMBROIDERY


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