Wednesday 25 February 2009

Pratghan square for Mort

So it's only 25 days late but I finally finished the afghan square that I am doing for the Terry Pratchett book 'Mort'. Here's the passage from the book that inspired the piece:

"Light on the Discworld moves slowly because of the vast magical field. Light on the Discworld isn't like light elsewhere. It's grown up a bit, it's been around, it doesn't feel the need to rush everywhere. It knows that however fast it goes darkness always gets there first, so it takes it easy.
Midnight glided across the landscape like a velvet bat. And faster than midnight, a tiny spark against the dark world of the Disc, Binky pounded after it...They moved in silence. Ysabell took one arm from around Mort's waist and watched sparks glitter around her fingers in all eight colours of the rainbow"

And here is the finished square (excuse the squiffy edges but it was bit crumpled after being in my work bag). I have to admit that Mort isn't one of my favourite books. Shocking I know. It seems to be one that loads of people love but it just doesn't do it for me. That's not to say that I dislike it in any way, it's just that I find it easier to get more excited about other books in the series. Even after re-reading the book there wasn't anything that really stood out for me so I sat down and had a look at the list of books and the list of characters that I want to make sure I include and it suddenly came to me that really this square HAD to have Binky on it (Deaths horse). Once I'd worked out that much the rest was kind of easy as the scene that immediately sprung into my mind was the one where they try to outride the dawn. So I sat down and tried to intarsia a horse.
It was an exceedingly steep learning curve it has to be said. Not much else to recommend on that front.
After creating the most hideous lumpy looking not-a-horse-at-all thing I gave up and decided to cheat a bit and cut Binky out of some sparkly felt that I had. This then presented the next problem which was finding a picture of a horse I could copy. Luckily my illustrated copy of 'The Hobbit' was on hand so I stared at that for a bit and freestyled it from there. Binky came out a little bit lumpy but at least he was recognisable as a horse so I rolled with that.
I then knitted the dress and arm for Ysabell from some nice squooshy alpaca and Mort's cape from some black wool. The rest of the detail was added on by hand and stitched in. I added in the scythe and life-timer as an afterthought as I had some free room in the bottom corner.
All in all I'm pretty pleased with the way this square turned out considering I am impartial to the book. Next one to tackle is 'Sorcery'. And I only have three days in which to do it... (eek).

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