Category Archives: book reviews

I finally succumbed and bought a copy of Rebecca Danger’s Big Book of Knitted Monsters. I had pre-ordered it last year, changed my mind and then re-ordered it again. Fortunately, Amazon is good for indecisive book buying.

A few weeks back I joined a Monster Swap in the Danger Crafts Ravelry group because I figured it would be a good way to get started knitting one of the many individual patterns I already had. (I posted my parcel today, so photos once it has arrived at its destination.) And now I want to knit more, so the book is finally in my hot little hands.

And I’m glad I bought it. The monsters are all very much of a similar style, but have their own personalities and stories and I’m a sucker for cuteness of that ilk. Each monster is shown in two sizes and all you have to worry about is the needle size on the yarn ball band – go down two or three needle sizes and knit. No need to swatch (woo hoo!) unless you want your monster to be a precise size. Minimal seaming, too, as most pieces are magic looped, which I greatly approve of as sewing dozens of fiddly little bits together is what put me off toy knitting for a long time.

So because it’s quicker, cheaper and possibly more satisfying knitting two monsters than two sweaters for two boys who are rapidly extending upwards (Henry is but a whisker off being the same height as me which is unfair as well as being scary as he’s not yet 13), I asked them to browse through the book and pick a monster each that they liked and the colours they wanted. Rose will get her own monster at some point, too, but isn’t really picky about what she cuddles. The other evening she selected a double decker bus to take to bed.

Henry chose Toothy Joe the Mailbox Monster who will be blue and red:

Oscar went for Gabby the Garden Monster who will be green:

Time to start buying shares in toy stuffing manufacturers.

This issue marks the sixth anniversary of the first issue of Interweave Knits that I ever bought. It immediately became my favourite knitting magazine and I savoured each issue as it arrived. This one was immediately put to one side until I had a cup of tea and a biscuit ready and I was free to have a good read.

There are a couple of designs that I like very much in this issue:

The Heliotropic Pullover by Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark and the Rose Lace Stole by Susanna IC. However, any enthusiasm I have for the patterns is tempered by the fact that I know I won’t ever get around to knitting them..! I have always been bad at knitting for myself. It’s a combination of the cost of the amount of yarn I need, the investment of time and then the fear that it won’t work out (see here) at the end. St Brigid might be a turning point.

On my semi-regular trawl of upcoming knitting books on Amazon I came across this: a special commemorative edition of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitters Almanac. In case you weren’t aware (and there’s no reason why you should be if you’re not an obsessive EZ fan!), August will mark the centenary of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s birth.

Unfortunately, there is little information about how it differs from the original, other than it is now hardback. There is nothing about it on the publisher’s website yet, so I shall just give free reign to my hope that maybe the garments have been re-photographed in colour, as the original pictures are very dark as well as being black and white.

Knitters Almanac was the first EZ book I bought and it bumps spines with Knitting Around in the jostle to be my favourite of her books. It’s a little peek into a year of her life; the everyday things she does always accompanied by a bit of knitting. She doesn’t do anything spectacular or exciting but still every page is engrossing. I sometimes just read it like I would a novel. It feels comforting and safe and as if I’m sharing the secrets of knitting with the wisest knitter of all.

And of course every month has a pattern or two. There are classics in there, like the February Baby Sweater and the Pi Shawl, all tucked into the pages of this unassuming little paperback book with its gloomy photography that would never scream “buy me” on the shelf in a bookshop.

So I’ve pre-ordered my copy of the special edition, even if it’s no different at all. My little paperback is getting worn out and I want this book to be the one that I can share with my own little future knitter when she grows up.

EDIT: The Fall 2010 issue of Interweave Knits mentions this book (as well as a completely new EZ book which makes my heart skip a beat!). The special edition of Knitter’s Almanac will contain contemporary colour photographs of all of the garments. So I get my wish.

Over the years I’ve bought far too many a few knitting and craft books as soon as they are published, because there has been much pre-order buzz or I’ve seen reviews on other blogs and the books look rather splendid. But while some of these books get used and abused, others just sit on the shelf looking pretty but not earning their keep.

So, I have a plan to start writing reviews of books that have been in print for a while. And, for my benefit as much as anyone, say whether they were a good purchase. I don’t know whether it will stop my impulsive book buying, but it might help anyone who takes a more considered approach to make up their mind.

To start with, I’ve chosen Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush. I bought this back in November 2005, a couple of months after publication.

The sock patterns in the book are all adapted from Weldon’s Practical Needlework, a series of publications from the late 18th/early 19th centuries; probably the Simply Knitting of its day, though with less use of the words fun and funky. Nancy Bush starts with a brief history of the publication and the historical context of handknitting at this time.

Now for a brief digression. She writes that up until even the 1930s, knitting wasn’t considered appropriate on a Sunday in parts of England for religious reasons (the idea being that no work should be done on a Sunday at all). However, my grandma has told me of when she was a fairly newly-married woman (so around 1945/46) and living with her in-laws (my grandad’s family) and they still observed the “no work on Sundays” rule. But on one interminably long Sunday, my grandma dared to pick up her knitting. Her MIL mentioned that they didn’t do that sort of thing and she replied that it was a pity as it was a pair of socks for my grandad. A brief discussion followed between her MIL and an aunt and it was agreed that she could continue knitting the sock as it was for my grandad, after all.

Back to the book. I bought this at a time when I was still relatively new to sock knitting and, honestly, was getting a bit fed up of it. I started knitting socks at the time when self-patterning yarns were very much in vogue and for the first few pairs when I was finding my feet (ha ha ha), they were perfect. But I started craving more exciting socks and this book pretty much kept me interested in sock knitting.

So yes, the patterns all need pretty solid or semi-solid yarns. They are very textured, either with lace or other patterns. There are tiny wee baby socks and big manly socks. My favourites are probably the Child’s French Sock (top left, below), which I think are the only socks I’ve ever knitted from the exact yarn used in the book (Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4ply in Strawberry).

Clockwise, from top left: Child’s French Sock, Heelless Sleep Socks,
Fancy Silk Sock for a Child of 5 or 6 years and Infant’s Silk Sock

I’ve knitted four pairs of socks from this book, which averages out at £2.50-ish per pattern, which is easily what I’d pay for an individual pattern, so I think its earned its keep. The historical information is fascinating, the patterns are beautiful and I’ve barely scratched the surface!

After finding this book mentioned on Ravelry and seeing as I’m on a bit of a Starmore-fest at the moment, I figured it would be a nice change to read something that didn’t involve lifting flaps or squeaking for a change.

Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously by Adrienne Martini covers the year in her life when she decided to tackle one of Alice Starmore’s harder patterns (“hard” is probably subjective when it comes to our Alice), Mary Tudor. Add in the fact that the pattern is in the out-of-print Tudor Roses and the original yarns are no longer available and it’s a task that many of us would just not even attempt and go and cast on a garter stitch scarf instead.

Adrienne Martini starts the book with a brief explanation of the difference in intarsia and fair isle knitting for the uninitiated, her trials in learning to knit with the yarn in her left hand and includes a potted geography lesson, after solemnly assuring her readers that “there is an actual Fair Isle”. (I appreciate this is for readers who probably aren’t in the UK and don’t know every single tiny island in the British Isles, but it tickled me.)

However, she makes up for it with a nicely condensed explanation of why Alice Starmore is known in some parts as the Litigious Scottish Designer – more of which can be found in thegirlfromauntie’s Alice Chronicles (can only find part one at the moment) which I read myself a while back and if it’s all you ever knew of a person, might make you just look over your shoulder for daring to type her name.

So as she has neither book nor yarn for her Mary Tudor, she then has to take a deep breath and part with silly money on an eBay auction for the book and then hunt down substitute yarn for the pattern. The geek in me liked seeing her table of yarn colours in AS’s old yarn, the new colours she had to buy and the amounts needed, given that the yarns had different yardages. I also liked reading about the efforts to find one particular colour and I really wanted more minute detail like this because it’s the sort of thing I love. But then I’m the sort of person who collects shade cards.

She does also give us a little history lesson about the Tudors and berates the BBC for The Tudors drama series not being historically accurate (which in my mind is a bit like complaining that Star Trek doesn’t accurately represent alien life forms) but it’s all good fun.

What really bothers me is that it ends up not so much a book about the trials of knitting a difficult pattern – that ends up becoming pretty much a sub plot – and concentrates more on her travelling around Canada and North America to meet the great and good of the online knitting community. She attempts to tie this to the sweater by asking everyone the same question about whether they feel her sweater is an actual Starmore, being as she isn’t using AS’s yarn. But more time is spent talking about the people she meets, finding out their “how I started knitting” stories and visiting yarn shops and detailing the different yarns she buys. Occasionally she mentions how far she has progressed, but it’s mentioned as an aside, and only when she is cutting the sleeve steeks does the sweater get centre stage again.

I suspect what I expected/wanted was a book version of a knitting blog. There are times, when she talks about casting on 300+ stitches for example, that you know on a knit blog there would be a photo of the cast-on row. Or when she cuts the sleeve steeks, there would be a triumphant photo of her wielding the scissors with a hole in her knitting. But THERE ARE NO PHOTOS, save for one black-and-white author photo in the inside of the back cover which shows the sweater to bust-height. And this is a tragedy. I don’t need to see her standing smiling with Amy from Knitty or Stephanie Pearl McPhee or any other knitblogger she has met. I DO need sweater porn. I need stripy steeks and neckbands and close-ups of the stitch pattern. She describes how the colours in her swatch blend together so apparently effortlessly apart from the one dud colour (which is replaced). Why can’t I see this?

I won’t say how the book ends, though you may easily guess. But it left me feeling it had been rushed in order to meet her publishing deadline and though it was an entertaining and quick read, I felt unsatisfied, as if something key was missing from the story. I can’t help but think that the perfect ending would have been for Adrienne to put her question about whether the sweater was an actual Starmore to the woman herself.