More babbling on here today.

Faithful Reader TexAnne noted my mention yesterday of the “print to transparency” cheat for flipping charted patterns and added another that I had forgotten. Some printer drivers and photocopiers allow you to mirror-image their output. This option is most accessible in the Mac world. I remember my late, lamented Macs having a prominent command in the print dialog that allowed mirror-image printing, something that came in handy for printing out driving directions. I’d print them out in a large font in mirror image and lay them on the dashboard of my car. They were just visible as a right-side reflection on the windshield in front of me, and acted as a “heads-up” display.

Since TexAnne’s note I’ve tinkered with the print dialogs of several PC world printers from HP and others, plus some large office photocopiers, and in most of them I’ve found a buried “Print Mirror Image” command. It’s usually on an “Advanced Commands” tab that summarizes the state of all available printer options, but it’s not often displayed as an easy to get to setting. But it’s usually there somewhere. Scan to print or printing mirror image is a matter of finding and setting this hidden command. It’s another useful way to use technology do do a mirror image chart flip.

Long Time Needlework Pal Kathryn reminded me of a story connected with the pattern I’m stitching now.

Back when I was working it voided on the Think sampler (lower band, shown flipped to the same orientation as the current work for comparison) I did lots of stitching (and knitting) in public. I worked in the Washington, D.C. area, and would take my projects outside at lunch and do them on park benches. I wrote to Kathryn that one day an elderly lady and her granddaughter approached me. They were of Hmong ancestry, a Southeast Asian people with a rich heritage of traditional counted cross stitch embroidery. With the granddaughter translating, the lady admired the work and asked if the pattern was traditional to my home village or family. I thanked them for their compliments and said that sadly, Brooklyn, NY did not have its own embroidery tradition, and that I’d found the pattern in a book. Kathryn says she’s thought of this particular design as “the Brooklyn Pattern” ever since.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery