Knit Knit!

Well, I'm back from NYC, but I'm still obsessing over this book I bought at PS1! It's called Knit Knit: Profiles and Projects from Knitting's New Wave. I absolutely adore it! It has people, groups, patterns, sites. . . and a ton of pictures of innovative knit-things. They also have a website and a magazine. . . I want them T__T

Anyway, the book is devoid of any "You can knit, too, horray!" Slap-happy vibes that many other knitting books have been cursed with. On the contrary, it's much more of a "Look at this person. Don't you wish you were that creative? Envy." Seriously, some of the stuff is amazing:This house!? I bet I could find some way to make that. . . And this knitted room!? How awesome!

There's also patterns, for those of you who CAN'T buy a knitting book without patterns. Some of them might be a little hard to do, like this fiberglass teddy bear:

But some, like knit boxing gloves, a hat insbired by geodesic architecture, and this AMAZING cable cardigan, are definitely within my realm:
All in all, I think this is an amazing book. If not for the designers, for the inspiration. If not for the inspiration, for the patterns. If not for the patterns, for looking over them with your knitting friends and having quite the giggle. Definitely a buy! When's the sequel!?
(P.S.- The picture at the very top is designer Freddie Robbins. All the dolls in the background? KNIT AMIGURUMI.)

How to Knit a Flat Circle

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Downtown DiY: KNITTING.

Well, how nice! I came home yesterday and my mom had bought me a nice little book, on a whim! And a knitting book, on top of that! I have so few knitting books (I plan on changing that in the future) and this one had such a sweet cover. LIES!

First of all, I was really happy with the table of contents page. I love how it was laid out, love the pictures. As soon as I turned to this page, my eye was drawn to the cap in the upper right. Hey, I want to make that! So, I turned right to the page. What do I see?

The same picture on the cover. Okay, first I think: JIP. LAZY. But I forgive it. The instructions are pretty simple enough. They even have a nice instruction section, which explains the basics of knitting. I keep flipping through the book, and I notice a trend. . . NO PHOTOS.

Now, this makes me slightly irked. I really don't like working a pattern when I have nothing to go off of. They could have even used the same tiny pictures they put in the contents section (which I thought were lovely) and just made them bigger. But no. Instead, they do these arty, doodly sketches that look like they took the most of five minutes with a tablet and Corel Painter, with some knit textures paint bucketed in where the "project" is supposed to be. I don't know- maybe this was supposed to be "chic." Maybe their photographer had a mental breakdown and they hired a last-minute illustrator to fill some page space.



Whatever the excuse is, "it sucks and I hate it!" Is the only quote I can think of to describe this book. There's no pictures to go by except the tiny ones in the table of contents, the patterns, while presented in a fresh and clear way, are in no ways breakthrough. In fact, thinking back on the book I can't really even remember what designs there were. I do remember the sketchy little page fillers which, aside from serving no purpose but to distract you from the lack of knitting in the book, seemed to beg to be embroidered on something.

I especially like this one:

In conclusion, buy downtown DiY: Knitting for that tween in your life that thinks knitting and DiY is "cool" "indie" and "chic," but will probably never pick up a pair of needles in her life. Yes, I said her. Please do not buy a young pre-adolescent boy this book. It is obviously aimed for girls (another minus, on my docket.)
If you really liked this book, I apologize if I've offended your bad tastes. If you're the AUTHOR of this book, call me before you make a sequel, I'LL take the photos!

We're just lucky they don't have an equally humiliating crochet version. Or a Sewing version. WAIT. . .

Bugga Boo!

I'm just angry today. No idea why, it's just one of those days. I think I have last-day-of-vacation blues. That, and ANOTHER set of size 5 dpns has gone missing. Well, okay, half a set. I don't know why, but there were only two in my needlecase. . . How does that happen!? I think some sick needle fairy comes and takes them when I'm not using them. . . really. Hopefully, they won't end up in some school official's hands, bent in half.

On a more productive note, I've read Hamlet, Sewn a shirt, and made a few random things on the machine. I've got two patterns in the making, but I have to finish the gloves first. . . (and in order to finish the gloves I NEED MY BLOODY NEEDLES.) Here's a bookmark:

And here's a bucket I made for throwing my flosses into. This was really just practice for the bucket hat sweetie may or may not recieve. . . depending on how competant I am at making it.

I got the sewing pattern from Ric-Rac's Bucket tutorial.

Notice that I appease you all with the spiffy pictures. Hooray! I think I'm going to reorgnize the archives of this blog. THAT should be fun @_@; Heck, maybe I'll rename it and give it a cool look, and move it to typepad as well ;)

Super Exciting Flash Games!

. . . Okay, not really. Not really at all. But, you know, someone out there besides me must have thought: "Hey. . . I'm sure there are knitting-inspired flash games on the internet." No? Um. . .

So I was bored! Anyway. . . I found this monstrosity. It's Korean, but easy enough. Click the red ball of yarn to start, then use the arrow keys to "knit" and use the space bar to switch colors.

So yeah, I'd like to say that obsession with this has been keeping me from posting, but that's not it at all. I'm just hanging out with my boyfriend all the time. . .

KMV (Knitting Music Video)

I just thought it was cute. I can speak French, so I can actually understand the song! :3

Monkeeey!

I haven't posted any patterns up in a while, so here we go! This is a cute sample from Tracy Chapman's Toys To Knit. Soooooo cute! Check it out here.