Prints

by

In which the post arrives

The prints are here, I’m pretty pleased with them. The internet pixie is working on revamping the shop in nearly every spare minute that he has and it is getting there, I’ll tell you once it goes live and you can see what you think.

IMG_9995

He keeps nagging me to set up all the postage prices and write the waffle about the things but I’m not really sure what I want to say and just keep knitting hats instead… Maybe I should sell hats as well, then I would have an excuse for knitting all the time.

The pattern for the green hat is almost done, I just need to get a decent photo of it outside when it is not dark and raining (you can’t call a hat ‘The Gamekeeper’s Hat’ and then take a photo of it indoors, can you?) so I’m hoping to get the pattern on here at the weekend, photographer and daylight permitting.

by

In which slow progress is made of one sort or another

I have ordered some prints, it is very slightly terrifying and I have spent the best part of a day trying to do what should have been a half hour job. I found out from my friend exactly which pictures and in which size she wants and went to upload the images to the printers only to realise that they wanted the files to have a CMYK colour profile instead of an RGB one. I don’t completely understand this but it’s something to do with the debate which crops up in our house from time to time where the one with the photographer’s head who thinks in light colours insists that red plus green makes yellow whereas the one with the painter’s head who thinks in paint colours is adamant that red plus green makes a brown sludgy mess.

Anyway, it took me most of yesterday afternoon and all of this morning trying to work out how to make my computer do this without buying Photoshop, there’s a utility thing that almost does it but I couldn’t get it to do quite what I wanted. It should be really simple – it’s just what each colour is called in numbers and there is more than one list to choose your numbers from, a bit like having a cross stitch chart with DMC numbers in the instructions but using anchor threads, the colours are almost the same so you just find the one that is closest and it will probably look ok. I eventually gave up and found some different printers who can cope with the files as they are. About five minutes later I was e-mailed back by the original ones to say actually an RGB file would most likely be fine but being the stubborn creature that I am I have ordered them from the second lot because they had better instructions and I didn’t spend a day trying to follow them unnecessarily. So now I am waiting nervously for the prints to arrive next week and hoping they will be the right colour and the right size and generally ok.

Also the jumper is gradually progressing, I am down from 288 stitches to just 78 which means it is taking me a lot less than five minutes to finish a row and the end is in sight…

by

In which we begin

Somebody asked me today if they could have some of my prints and I don’t have any which got me to look up printers again and this time I did find some that would do good quality prints for a reasonable price and for very small print runs, i.e. one. I haven’t ordered any yet but it has made me think that I really should get off my bum in between knitting and clearing up toddler poo and do something with Martell Designs (which has been pretty much dormant since birth apart from rabbit’s friends and relations buying stuff to be encouraging) so I am going to properly investigate some different printers, maybe do some more card designs (or redo some of the ceramic stuff onto paper to generate some new card designs without actually having to have a new idea) and I thought I would see if I could work out how a blog works. I have also been wondering for a little while whether I could design any knitting rather than just knit other people’s ideas so I am planning to have a go at that some time this year (either before or after I finish the three jumpers that are either in progress or have been promised to people nearly a year ago and are now in a queue of jumpers) if I manage to design anything sensible then I will probably put it on Ravelry and maybe on here too (if you haven’t seen Ravelry then go and look at it, it has all the knitting). I’m going to try to update the Martell Designs website which is really dull and whilst putting off doing that (I really hate HTML and I don’t even understand PHP) I won’t be able to justify doing any knitting (except maybe the three jumpers that need finishing) so I thought I would start off by doing some posts about stuff that we made last year because it did seem to be a pretty good year for making things and I thought maybe someone might find it interesting (my mother, at least, will read it to be polite although she probably has seen most of it before). It goes against the grain to even think about starting a blog because I’m a fairly private kind of person so it will probably mostly end up being about knitting and making stuff but I thought I would give it a try anyway and see how it goes. Hmm, I’ve said it now, I’ll have to get on and do it, won’t I?

The other thing is, I have called it Martell Designs at the moment because once I remember how the menu bar on my website works, I’m going to put a link on there but really that is an incredibly dull name for a blog and I mostly just make things other people have designed anyway so I would like a better name. Silly is good. Any ideas?