Library Mama

One of the ways that I know my love loves me is that he brings me knitting books from the library… even though I work at another library and can check out my own knitting books. This was one of those.

Knit Kimono Too by Vicki Square. This is the second book of knit kimonos from designer Vicki Square. I haven’t read the first one, though I did listen to a lovely interview with her on the Knit Picks podcast. In this second volume, Square says that she is focusing on color – not necessarily on colorwork, though there is some, but in traditional Japanese palettes. She’s certainly done her research, with an introduction featuring lots of watercolor sketches of traditional kimono and explanations of what colors were used in what seasons by what rank and how they were combined (often in multiple layers, with the underneath layers intended to show.) Her kimono designs are lovely and quite resistant to changes in the wider fashion world, though I would be unlikely to knit them both because I prefer more fitted garments and because the looser designs mean more knitting and I just don’t have that much time. However, this book includes a number of short-sleeved and sleeveless fitted tops meant to layer under the kimono, but which I think would be perfect for me to wear to work in the summer. (It doesn’t hurt that many of the garments are shown in purple.) I would be happy to knit and wear just about any of them, in fact. This is a whole book of nothing but knit items to put on the top half of women, but if you’re in the market for such garments, this is quite fine knitting and eye candy.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

The Knitter’s Life List by Gwen W. Steege. More than once, I’ve heard that knitting is a hobby you can never get bored with (assuming, of course, that you like it to start with.) But what all is there to do with knitting? Steege sets forth a list of knitting-related things to do that could easily take more than one lifetime to accomplish. It includes things like techniques from beginner to advanced, from making a gauge swatch to learning to knit backwards. It includes lists of all different kinds of things to try – fiber types, sweater and mitten styles, ethnic traditions. There are famous knitting people to meet, like Cat Bordhi or Jared Flood, and places to go – yarn stores, historic mills, conventions, fiber festivals, and cruises. It’s divided into chapters: yarn; know-how; sweaters; socks; scarves & shawls; hats; gloves & mittens; bags; kids; home decor ; fiber lovers. Each one starts off with a checklist, with room for the reader to add a few more items. Each check-list includes people to meet, places to go, things to knit, techniques to learn… and I’m sure more that I forget. I found these lists – basically notes on what’s covered in the following chapter – unfortunately a little tedious, given that the whole notion of the list was what drew me to the book in the first place. I did enjoy that Steege put so much effort into making the lists diverse, not just ways to become a more advanced knitter but also ways to enjoy your knitting more and find more knitting delight in the world around you. And if the list gets long, the chapters expand on everything in it, explaining why you’d want to include that item on your personal life list. I’m currently at a point with the very active, not-sleeping two-year-old and the job that I feel like being less ambitious with my knitting is probably happier for me – but even I can look for knitting in art or for the books, classic and modern, that involve knitting. The appendix includes bibliographies and current websites mentioned in the text for easy reference. If you’re the ambitious knitting type, afraid of getting stuck in a knitting rut, or just want to learn more about the broad world of knitting, this is a book to look for.

How to Knit a Heart Back Home by Rachael Herron. This is the second book in the Cypress Hollow Yarn series of knitting romances, after How to Knit a Love Song. This second entry worked much better for me on the romance level, and it was funny, to boot.

Lucy in her thirties and still not able to find a man able to match up to her memories of Owen, the bad boy she tutored in high school and who kissed her just once. Now, she owns the Book Spire bookstore, which she inherited from her grandmother, in a former chapel in Cypress Hollow. She’s also a member of the volunteer fire department. As the story begins, a car crashes into a pole outside Lucy’s brother’s bar, where she’s knitting and drinking with her best friend. She runs out and rescues the woman from the flaming car with the help of a man who’d just showed up. The woman is Abby from the first book, now pregnant with her second. The man, of course, turns out to be Owen. He’s back from the big city, forcibly retired from being a cop by an injury and come home to take care of his aging mother with Alzheimer’s. Owen comes over to her shop the next day, with boxes of ancient books that he’s hoping to sell her for the used-book side of her business. Once again, there are major sparks – but can they get past the obstacles in their way, including their pasts and Owen’s old bad boy reputation? Their journey towards romance is also a journey towards personal growth for both of them, and not just the accepting the need to love and be loved kind of personal growth. While there’s still a lot of physical attraction, Lucy and Owen seem to care more about each others’ eyes and smell than the shape of their rear ends, which also works better for me.

There are some great supporting characters here, too, mostly on Lucy’s side – her best friend, Molly, a daring Chinese medical interpreter and conquest-a-week type; her mother, Toots, an artist and free spirit just starting up a sex toys business to Lucy’s extreme embarrassment; the too-beautiful high school classmate who owns the nearby bakery; and the trio of old folks who nearly live in the book store. These side characters make the story both funnier and a spicier than it would be on its own, and might keep it from being appreciated it by more conservative readers. Lucy is of course a dedicated knitter. The yarny love in this book comes from her quest to recreate the worn-out hand knit yellow sweater her grandmother made that she always wears at the bookstore (pattern included) and (spoiler alert!) the cache of unpublished papers from (fictional) knitting guru Eliza Carpenter that Lucy finds in the boxes Owen gives her. This was an entirely satisfying romance on both the relationship and the knitting sides. Keep it up, Ms. Herron!

The Knitter’s Almanac by Elizabeth Zimmerman Just in case there is a knitter reading my blog who hasn’t heard of Elizabeth Zimmerman… well, this seems pretty darn unlikely. But just in case. Elizabeth Zimmerman’s books take homey, personality-filled writing applied to quite revolutionary ideas about making knitting just challenging enough but as easy as possible. Of course you can design your own sweater. Of course you’ll enjoy making a shawl, and you’ll naturally come up with some embellishments to make it pretty along the way… that kind of thing. The Knitter’s Almanac features her thoughts and activities for each month of the year, with a selection of projects. Each is talked through in detail in the main body of the chapter, and followed with “pithy” short directions at the end of the chapter. There are some famous patterns in this book, including the Pi shawl and February’s baby sweater. I read the new commemorative edition, which features a lovely introduction by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and an adult-sized version of the famous baby sweater, February Lady. Never mind that at my current rate of knitting it would take me twelve years rather than twelve months to get through all the projects here – this is a book that every self-respecting knitter should own.

Originally posted at http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .

Brave New Knits by Julie TurjomanBrave New Knits is profiles of and patterns by knit bloggers, and in particular those whom the internet helped to knitting-designer success. Many of these are knitters I’ve heard of before, like Grumperina and Ysolda Teague, although I hadn’t read any of their blogs. The book is roughly divided into sections by pattern type – sweaters and accessories – but what makes this book really unique is the in-depth profiles of each of the bloggers. Where most books will give a paragraph at most to each designer, Turjoman includes a lengthy three to four page profile for each designer before the pattern. These invariably made me wish I were reading next to a computer, so I could look at their blog and Ravelry profiles. It also made for a disconnect the couple of times when the profile said that the designer was known for making garments top-down, say, and then the pattern included was knit flat in pieces. There were a lot of sweaters – quite lovely – ranging from quite complicated to simple – and socks, and non-sock projects with sock yarn. The patterns looked quite nice, though I read on Amazon that there are a lot of errata. All in all, I found the patterns nice, but what really interested me about this book was the designer-bloggers and their paths to making a life out of knitting.

Crossposted to http://sapphireone.livejournal.com and http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .

Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini Martini’s last book, Hillbilly Gothic was a memoir of severe postpartum psychosis. Grim subject, that one, saved by Martini’s delightful sense of humor. This book brings the same thoughtful approach and humor to a more cheerful topic, one also dear to my heart (did you know that the sanity and well-being of new mothers was a cause dear to my heart? It is.) Martini took up knitting as part of her sanity-maintaining efforts – hooray! And in this book she tracks her quest to knit one exquisitely beautiful, terrifically difficult sweater, after a knitting diet of mostly hats. She starts by going over the tangled history of the gifted yet prickly knitting designer Alice Starmore, as well as a little bit of the Tudors, the inspiration for Starmore’s pattern book in which is contained Martini’s dream pattern. The supplies are hard to come by; the technique takes some work to master. But this isn’t just about this one project. Over the course of the year, Martini visits various knitting luminaries to discuss deep knitting questions with them: why do we knit? If she is knitting a Starmore sweater designed it to be knit with Starmore’s brand of yarn, no longer available, is it still a Starmore? How much of the sweater is Starmore and how much Martini, and does it matter? Many of the knitting folks are ones whose blogs and books I read myself – Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner of http://www.mason-dixonknitting.com, and Stephanie Pearl McPhee, aka http://www.yarnharlot.ca, as well as Clara Parkes, whose The Knitter’s Book of Wool I read not so long ago. Martini is still both funny and insightful; this was another book where I found myself reading bits aloud to my love every other page or so, and even that was restraining myself. Thank you for sharing, Martini. The sweater is beautiful.

My reading of knitting books increases as the amount of time I have to knit decreases; with Christmas and a new baby, I had very powerful and unmet knitting urges. True devotees of knitting books can find reviews of many books at http://www.knitty.com , but here are a few of the books that have been inspiring me on this latest knitting-reading binge.

Men’s Knits by Erica Knight Knight, so she tells us, is a renowned clothing designer as well as a knitter. This book features a number of classically designed sweaters and some accessories, all photographed on multiple models of different ages and body shapes. That kind of thoughtfulness in design is exceedingly rare, and the really good quality yarn called for will also help make sweaters that will be loved and worn for decades. The designs were attractive enough that I wanted to rush out and start knitting my love sweaters, even though I know that he is not generally a sweater wearer. Perhaps I should knit him the giant (both in length and cable size) cabled scarf instead, at least in my imagination.

Fairy Tale Knits by Alison Stewart-Guinee My loyal readers might guess that fairy tales and knitting are a perfect combination for me. Oh, yes. These are mostly clothes inspired by fairy tales, clothes that will work when your child just is a mermaid or a fairy or a knight or a pirate for weeks on end and will only wear appropriate clothes. Often, in knitting books, there will be a handful of patterns that I would really want to knit and most of them I wouldn’t. This book was for me the opposite – and those that I wouldn’t knit were mostly because I don’t feel a need to knit another baby blanket for the foreseeable future, and I don’t like color work. Those patterns were still attractive, though. Not only do the patterns look good, but they are thoughtfully made out of soft and washable yarn, mostly knit in one piece to reduce finishing and get the finished product on the child “before the next growth spurt”. LB wants me to knit him the chainmail of soft grey wool; my mother wants to knit Baby Godzilla the Snow Queen coat and muff; garrity and I would both be happy to have a Robin Hood sweater for ourselves. I really hope that Baby Godzilla likes fairies when she’s a bit older, so I can knit her a flower fairy dress. And I think I should stop now.

Soft + Simple Knits for Little Ones by Heidi Boyd Here’s a slightly older book of quick-to-knit items for little ones (though most of the sweaters here are seamed). There are a lot of good-looking items in this book, too. A few use simple intarsia – I liked the giraffe sweater, but LB wants the fleece yarn sweater with sharks chasing each other around – one on the front, one on the back. I’m planning to start a dress for BG as soon as I finish my current project; my mother kindly supplied me with the wonderful Debbie Bliss Cashmerino as a Christmas present. It’s a darling dress, and the yarn is wonderful to work with. But this book has lots of fun and soft sweaters and hats, and a portable castle filled with king, queen, knight, jester and dragon finger puppets.

Knitting Lingerie Style by Joan McGown-Michael Though the cover shows actual lingerie, most of the patterns in this book are inspired by lingerie but intended to be worn on the outside. There are lovely fitted tanks, corset-inspired vests, slinky skirts, sexy stockings, sweet cardigans. There were several things I could see myself wearing, as well as more I wish I had a place to wear. Her history of lingerie seemed off to me – crinolines were a product of the 19th century, not the 14th – but she is an actual lingerie designer, so her bras will work and fit like real purchased bras, which was impressive. More things for me to knit for myself, something that seems to happen much less than me knitting gifts for other people.

There's more, of course, but that's good for a start, I think.

This one has been on the bestseller list for a while. I resisted reading it. Probably because the ladies were going to be dealing with depressing stuff and because it was a bestseller? So much for knowing my own tastes. Once again, my colleague S. put it on hold for me. And once I opened it, I had a really hard time putting it down.

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs Georgia Walker was young, single and pregnant when an older lady suggested that she use her knitting to make a living for herself. Now, her daughter Dakota is 12 and Georgia is the proprietress of a thriving New York City knitting store, Walker and Daughter, which is also staffed by the elderly and widowed Anita. As our story opens, a group of women wanting companionship and help with their knitting coalesces into the Friday Night Knitting Club. Our cast includes Georgia’s old friend from publishing, K.C., who is always starting but never finishing big projects; Lucie, a single and out of work television producer; Georgia’s daughter Dakota, who provides baked goodies; and Darwin, a women’s studies grad student bent on proving that knitters are submitting themselves to the patriarchy. The plot thickens further for Georgia as Dakota’s father James, missing since the pregnancy was discovered, turns up. Her old best friend from high school, now a rich society lady, also comes in to commission a hand-knit ball gown. The story switches between all of the major characters, as they all work through their own struggles and learn to rely on each other. It’s classic strong female friendship stuff, with some Wisdom from the Grandmothers (and a random priest) thrown in. It’s all about the characters and the relationships, and is already being promoted for book clubs. Did I mention that I read during rare knitting opportunities?

Yes, I am a little obsessed with knitting. No, I haven't made a sweater yet myself. Not even a little one for Mr. FP.



The Yarn Girls’ Guide to Beyond the Basics by Julie Carles and Jordana Jacobs If you’re a knitter wanting to branch out a little from basic rectangles, but still wanting to keep things fairly simple, this is a good place to start. Well, depending one how much you’ve done, you might want to start with the first one, which has slightly simpler patterns. Both focus on basic sweaters knit in fairly large gauge, though there are a few hats, scarves and blankets as well. In this book, they include stripes, simple intarsia, cables and other stitch patterns, where in the first book, they are a bit simpler. They are mostly nice-looking patterns, ranging from the simple and basic to more modern in style. I say mostly, because while I liked many of them (and am really thinking about knitting the cabled “not your standard-issue sweatshirt, take two”), I personally would not want to wear a pea green sweater with an orange stripe up the middle. The Yarn Girls run New York City’s Yarn Company, and design patterns for a more fashion-conscious population. Anyway, the book is fun and the patterns nice enough to tempt a scarf knitter into the broader world of sweater knitting.

Chicks with Sticks (Knit Two Together) by Elizabeth Lenhard Once again, I accidentally picked up the sequel first. Scottie, Tay, Amanda and Bella are four girls from different backgrounds who bonded over knitting in the first novel. Now they are the Chicks with Sticks, and have become trendsetters in their school. The book focuses mostly on Scottie, the Jewish girl, as she goes from fruitless crushes on almost any boy to her first kiss and the beginnings of a real relationship, and gets angsty about her favorite pastime becoming trendy rather than different. Tay, the tomboy, worries about becoming too entangled with her boyfriend. Bella, a biracial hippie girl, has decided to give up boys until college. Amanda worries that her boyfriends is in love with the idea of a rich and beautiful girlfriends (she’s both) rather than her. Through it all, the girls are sustained by knitting and their friendships. This teen novel is on the formulaic side, and hampered by the use of way too many internet abbreviations, even when they’re not on-line. I found myself guiltily enjoying it. If you like relationships and knitting, you probably will, too.