Photocopy Confessions

I hate that books go out of print.

Especially books on traditional arts, which makes finding opportunities to do research even more difficult.  These books can sometimes disappear from libraries and the persons who check them out claim to "lose" them and pay the small fine, which doesn't come close to the replacement value, thus making it much cheaper to do that than try to buy even a used copy online or anywhere.

Such is the case with a book called Fancy Feet:  Traditional Knitting Patterns of Turkey, by Anna Zilboorg.

I had started knitting medieval socks--Coptic and plain old women's knee socks (I found it listed somewhere as English Commoner's socks, but I think it's commoner's socks from just about anywhere in Europe), and was approached by Mistress Anastasia with a copy of this book (which I had never heard of before) and she said, "I don't knit, but I saw this and figured some day I would find someone who knits who could make me a pair of these."  She asked if I could make a pair of socks from this book.  "Sure," I said, and took the book home to drool over it, covet it, and wonder how I could get a copy.  After a little research, I found that a used copy of the book was going to cost me over $50, and that is really poor condition; $100 for decent condition.  I wanted to be sure I could look at it later and return the book to Mistress Stasi while it was still in good condition, so I confess.  I scanned it.  The whole thing.  Cover to cover, complete with the index and the title page.

Now, I have no intention of posting the book in its entirety, nor do I intend to publish or sell copies--it's not my place.  But do I feel bad for copying an out-of-print book?  No.  Not in the least.  If the book were still in print and were easy to find, I'd rather buy a copy.

So I spent a big part of today looking for the scanned images on my hard drive, and with the help of my devoted Lord Husband, I found it!  I printed it out and will be putting it in a binder for my own personal use, but if someone wants a copy of a particular page, let me know.  I'm pretty sure that falls into the realm of acceptable use, just as if I had found the book at a garage sale for a nickel and then copied a page for you.  Or even five.  I think five is OK.  I should probably look into the copyright laws.


So here's what I wanted to do:  knit a new pair of socks!  Turkish socks!  The same thing as last year at this time; while the kids were in soccer camp last year, I was sitting in the car knitting Turkish socks.  Must be a seasonal thing--the weather gets warmer and suddenly knitting smaller items seems like a great idea.  Small, portable items.  This is the pattern I want to try this time.  It's a two-color sock design (three, if you count the cuff, which is a two-color design, too), but I think I'll use a better contrast than blue-on-blue.  Maybe red and yellow?  I have some alpaca yarn that's been festering in my yarn stash for some time that I've been wanting to try.

The pattern is fairly simple, as you can see.  They call this pattern "Cranes".  I don't see cranes, but OK.  It's pattern number 8, which is my favorite number.  Funny how these things sometimes work out.

I guess this would be part of my depth of research for knitting in my 50 for AS 50 challenge.  Maybe I should just call this my 50/50 challenge...sure would take less typing.

Now...where did I put those size one needles?

Elewys