Design

Review: Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design

by --Deb 03.04.2011

The only thing wrong with this book is that its title sounds like a book that’s going to teach you how to do professional design, and it’s not that at all. It’s a book that teaches a designer how to be professional.

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Review: Knitwear Design Workshop

by --Deb 03.12.2010
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If you’re interested sweater design, and want to understand everything, you need to look at this book. It’s amazing. I have other design books in my library, GOOD ones written by Maggie Righetti, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, Ann Budd, Cheryl Brunette, Debbie Bliss, just to name a few … but this one stands on its own.

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Review: Heirloom Knitting

by --Deb 02.28.2010
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Do you like knitted lace? Does knitting lace make your heart beat faster? Do you drool over Wedding ring shawls?

This may well be the book for you.

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Review: Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting

by --Deb 09.02.2009
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If you’ve wondered about this book, if you’ve tried to find a copy any time in the last fifteen years or so, now is your chance to see what all the fuss about. Because thanks to Dover Publications, a reprint of this masterpiece is now available to the public for less than $25.

Did I say masterpiece? Why, yes, I did! This woman’s eye for color is amazing. Her color combinations for the sweaters and even just for the color sample swatches is unerring, but that alone is not why this is such a great book.

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Review: Design It Knit It

by --Deb 08.30.2009
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I love books that give me a look into what an author or designer is thinking. How they working things out. How they get inspired. How they made decisions.

Well, here you go–a look into the mind of Debbie Bliss as she makes design decisions.

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Review: New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One

by --Deb 07.28.2009
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Suppose you wanted to take a fresh look at sock knitting, and come up with a new approach to a basic shape that has been around for centuries. The human foot hasn’t changed all that much, and knitting itself has been more or less consistent for a couple centuries now. So, barring new techniques like Magic Loop and short-row heels … how much “new” can there be?

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Review: The Art of Fair Isle Knitting

by --Deb 06.28.2009
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“There’s something so richly luminous about Fair Isle knitting. Why does it glow the way it does? Aside from the choice of colors, its radiant effect comes from the qualities of its surface and from the way one color meets another.”

Luminous. Now there’s a word for you.

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Review: Knitting in the Old Way

by --Deb 05.10.2009
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Really, it’s a great book. I mean, why else would the publishing gods have granted it a new life with a new edition? It’s a classic.

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Review: Ethnic Knitting Exploration: Lithuania, Iceland, and Ireland

by --Deb 05.03.2009
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This isn’t one of those history-intensive books on ethnic knits. There is brief discussion on the knitting ethos in each of the three highlighted countries (Lithuania, Iceland, Ireland), but the book really focuses on how to knit a sweater–not about what they were doing with yarn in 1857.

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Review: Sock Innovation

by --Deb 03.29.2009
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Have you ever wondered what you really needed to know to be able to design really fantastic socks? How to work in a stitch pattern, how to coordinate the placement of the heel, or the elasticity of the cuff? Maybe you’ve been looking for a nice, thorough guide to explain everything you need to know?

Or, maybe you’re not at all interested in designing socks, and you just want beautiful socks to knit. You want all the hard, thinking parts taken care of and just work off the sheer inspiration of meticulously crafted patterns.

Where, oh where, can you go to find all that?

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Review: The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook

by --Deb 02.23.2009
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This is one of those kinds of books that almost makes you rethink everything you know about knitting.

It was written in 2002, at just about the time that sock knitting started becoming popular, and spinning hadn’t taken off. Seven years ago, most people who knit automatically headed to their local yarn shop or craft store to buy yarn–the concept of making their own was still new. (New to our generation, that is. Obviously, people have been spinning their own yarn for quite some time.)

Enter Lynne Vogel.

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Review: Knitting in Plain English (1986)

by --Deb 02.15.2009
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It’s a 20-year old book, and times have changed … but, I beg you, don’t let its lack of hipness keep you from at least taking a look at this book. The current crop of learn-to-knit books are edgier, hipper, trendier, and there’s nothing wrong with that or with them, but this book was miles ahead of the dry, textbook-like books I’d seen before. And if it weren’t for this book, I would never have become hooked on knitting. That should tell you a lot, right there.

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Review: Knitter’s Guide to Combining Yarns

by --Deb 01.10.2009
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The best, most fun part of this book is the “Yarn Pairings.” Swatch after swatch after swatch of two different yarns knit together–just so you can see what the possibilities look like. There are two swatches for every combination. One, with both strands held together and knitted in stockinette stitch, and Two, knit in alternating garter stitch ridges. The yarns used vary in size, fiber, and texture, so there’s a lot of variety in the samples you’re looking at–boucle, ribbon yarns, cotton, silk, wool, smooth, rough … they’re all in there.

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Review: Sweater 101

by --Deb 12.08.2008
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When you can’t find what you need, you make it yourself, right? As knitters, we all understand that impulse–a chance to get exactly what we want in the color, size, shape, fiber that we want. Sometimes, you just have to do it yourself.

Well, that’s more or less what happened to Cheryl Brunette.

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