January 11, 2003
The Book Stash Increases
It was a lovely but cold day here in Chicago today. Perfect for sitting on the futon couch in my upstairs office and enjoying the sunshine filtering into the room. I made progress on a few projects, but mostly I continued to fall in love with a book I picked up last weekend. And it occurred to me that now might be a good time to share my thoughts about the new books I added to my knitting library over the holidays. I took advantage of my vacation time to do a lot of shopping for knitting gear, I have a bunch of great new mags and patterns, but there are definitely two standouts.
Most of you have probably already dug into Maggie Righetti's books, but for me they were a new and accidental find that I just can't put down. If you haven't checked them out, I can definitely recommend:
Lately I've been thinking that I would love to design a special knitted garment for my father. He's the one who got almost everyone in the family inspired to slim down and feel better about ourselves. Now that he looks so good, almost none of his clothes fit -- it seems like an opportunity to create something for him. But since I had some ideas but no idea how to translate them into something wearable, I started looking for books that might help me out.
Sweater Design in Plain English is fabulous to read. I've only read through the first 1/3rd of the book, but almost everything she has to say is helpful and thoughtful. I was thinking that a garter stitch sweater with a striping yarn might be lovely for Dad, but her discussion on garter stitch makes it clear that garter stitch on it's own won't be a good thing. The whole book is full of good things to think about, and it is written in a way that is un-intimidating and inviting. She definitely inspires me to want to go out and design my own sweater!
Knitting in Plain English has the same quality that the design book does: lots of good advice and a sense of humor. I find some of the technique pictures a little hard to follow because they are hand drawn, but I thought her discussion of blocking was excellent -- it was the reason that I decided not to block John's new sweater until after I had assembled it and had a sense of how it fit on him. I think this book will be a great reference book!
