We all know how it is with knitting books – you don’t always love all of the patterns enough to make it worth getting the whole book. There’s no shortage of hype and expectation. It’s getting all that to collide with what we want to make that’s the challenge. Which is why the bumper crop of 6 that have come out in the last few weeks, has put us (and our stock on the shelves) into such a spin. And also why we think they deserve more than a glance at the cover in our highlights list…
This fruit sorbet-shaded collection from Laine has arrived like a chilled glass of proper homemade lemonade to our parched crochet shelves. Niftily swerving around the granny-square elephant, and avoiding the call to mimic knitting, these are stylish and clever designs that embrace and celebrate the structure and texture possibilities of the crocheted stitch – all with an original and groovy retro-futurist summer vibe. If this is what happens when you take crochet seriously, please can we have more!
Although Laine’s 52 Weeks series tends to out-class the rest with its would-knit to won’t-knit ratio, there is a bit of me that has missed the va-va-voom they came out with at the beginning with the first Socks volume. But I’m happy to say that it’s back in spades with this latest Scrap Yarn book. Inspired by the reader survey that showed how concerned their audience was with sustainability, the Scrap Yarn issue seems to have tickled a spot for the designers that’s really freed their spirits, with stashed scraps being used imaginatively and more importantly, inspiringly, for intarsia, tassles and fairisle yokes. The best part is that these feel like designs that really make you want to raid your left overs instead of shopping for the yarns in the list. It was a brave shout by Laine, and they’ve more than pulled it off. Bravo!
It’s no mean feat to come out with a collection this original in a knitting pattern landscape as busy as ours has become. We had a different version of this when Alice Hoyle’s Knit landed last year with a blast that reminded us that knitting still has new and inviting places to explore beyond the comfy zone of sensibly constructed Scandi neutrals. In Knit Pop, Miki Teragaki takes this baton on with gusto. The rule here seems to be that there are no rules. A scarf with an edge that brings a child’s felt tip drawing to life. A kind-of poncho from the shawl and tank family, but more in the region of the renegade child that broke loose. Adventurous knitters can feast on beatifully conceived i-cord cables, intricate textured stitches and new directions for ribbed ridges. But there are easy-knit crowd pleasers too with a hilariously unfrilly frill on a skimpy waistcoat, and a one-armed sweater which ingeniously takes up a stylish residence on sleeve island instead of leaving you there marooned and defeated.
They had me as soon as they got to the bit which explained that this exploration of colour was going to encourage us to think beyond, around and differently to theories and charts which have strangulated so much colour thinking over the last decades. From KD’s dive into complexities within grey, the construction of rainbows, FF’s bold and timely challenge to the idea of the pop, Max Alexander’s discoveries about colour in her extraordinary moth knitting odyssey, this brilliant book is one mind (and eye!) opening essay after another. For all knitters who’ve ever been perplexed by colour, don’t walk, run to get this one!
Adventurous, experimental and bold is all very well, but I know better than to neglect an old favourite in a list like this. Summer Knits is a dependably consistent collection with plenty of fine-tuned classics to choose from. It’s also a timely reminder from a designer we already had good reason to trust, that Summer Knitting is NOT an oxymoron. Best known for beautiful cables and lacey stitch work which cleverly wend into thoughtful sweater constructions, in Summer Knits, SN shows us her designs can work just as well with skinny straps, short sleeves and planty fabrics. Generously balancing plain and fancy, curvy and not, she’s also managed to steer a something-for-everyone path here without it feeling heavy-handed or clunky.
Jean Oberlander thinks about knitting. A lot. In this beautifully produced pamphlet, she shares her thoughts in a series of not-quite-anecdotal almost-stories. There’s a sense of direction to her writing which steers it just clear of being a stream-of-consciousness, but there’s a free spiritedness to her observations which somehow skips along those dream-sequences a knitter’s mind can wander to: Unloved scraggly jumpers, feminist theory and memory somehow work their way into the twist like fibres getting caught in yarn. Enchantingly illustrated with interleaved pictures by Rosie Wainwright, and thread-sewn, this almost certainly the one for that knitter you’re afraid to choose yarn for.