8 posts tagged “book reviews”

I spent some time at a bookstore tonight, and the evening would have been bland if I hadn't found this book:

 

 

A reviewer on Amazon said that it came out in the UK last year, but it's new in the US. This is a book with features on a bunch of people who run well-known craft blogs and small online shops, but who have not received a lot of book coverage or become the go-to people when craft book writers want to talk about crafters on the web (Jean Railla, Megan Reardon, Leah Kramer, Jenny Hart). I'm pretty sure they are not in the Austin or Portland "Craft Mafias" (Super Crafty, DIY Network's Stylelicious). They're people like Hilary from Wee Wonderfuls and Maitreya from CraftLog, blogs I really enjoy. (Also, the girl who does One Good Bumblebee: I'm so sorry, but I  can't remember her name just now.) 

In the book, the crafters talk about things like their personal histories, what inspires them, and what sort of workspace they have. You will be able to see that there is a wide range of women (and they are almost all women) aged about 25-50. Each person profiled also contributes a pattern: there is a bookcover, a utility tray made of thick felt, a cute tissue cover that looks like a house with eyes, and so on.

I don't actually own this book, and I wasn't able to spend more than a few minutes looking at it tonight, so I can't give it a fair review. All I can say is that I was impressed with what I saw: it looks really promising. The only thing is, it seems like the focus of the book is largely sewing-crafters, so just about all of the patterns are for small things to sew.

Last year, I spent a lot of time looking at this book, but ultimately didn't review it:

 

 

To be honest, I felt that this book should have been called Organizing Your Fantasy Craft Space, because it quickly becomes apparent that the women profiled are not average crafters. These people own companies... and I'm not talking about small online shops, I'm talking about companies that make products that you buy at the craft store. Suze Weinberg is profiled here, for example... this is a woman who's had full page ads in rubber stamping magazines pretty much since there was such a thing, so of course her workroom is a showplace. A lot of suggestions in this book are impractical for actual organization, and a number of popular crafts are given short shrift. Some of the crafters involved in it have workspaces that are pretty, but don't seem extremely functional... more like a decorator's idea of a way to make a room look like it belongs to a person who creates things.

I mention this book here because I think The Crafter's Companion is, in its photos and descriptions of the workspaces of crafters who may have small businesses but are not too far removed from the average crafter, a lot more useful and accessible in this regard. There are some similarities in storage systems between the two books (I really had no idea how many people who work with fabric a lot just stack their fabric on shelves), but The Crafter's Companion probably has more to do with your real life. Or mine, anyway.

 

 

Incidentally, has anyone seen The Crafter Culture Handbook? Given that I haven't been totally in love with the spate of "alternacraft" books in the last year or so (Craftivity, Bazaar Bizarre or vice-versa, AlternaCraft, etc), will I like it or hate it? The library doesn't have it, and I haven't seen it in a bookstore yet. Amazon reviews are few and completely mixed, suggesting that you've probably seen the stuff in the book online already, if you hang out on teh web.

And if you didn't hang out on "teh web," how is it that you are reading my blog right now?

 

 

Big Girl Knits - yes! Helpful, interesting, and beautifully produced. On the other hand, some of the patterns have to be taken on a case-by-case basis, and I occasionally do not agree with the editors' estimation of them. A bigger review at another time. Though I'm on the small side of this book's audience, I definitely consider it a must-own. (Rowan's description of a 40" chest as "XL" really aggravates the heck out of me, but if you read this blog, you have probably already learned that. I am not a particularly large person, but I have a 44" chest. I'm one of those in-between people who are too small for plus sizes and slightly too large for most regular sizes.)

 

Wendy Knits - What happened? This book is text-heavy and may be worth reading, especially if you like Wendy's blog, but the production is terrible. I've only had a few minutes to look at it. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single color photo. Many of the patterns have either appeared on her blog before and/or are not that exciting (there seem to be a lot of tees and tanks with simple lace borders on them, and some of these garments don't fit their models particularly well). There are a few shawls and sweaters that look more interesting, mostly towards the back of the book. Bad Penguin! Bad! There are other books selling at the same price point that DO have color photos in them. I saw a proof of Edith Eig's book last summer that looked like this, but it was only a proof. So, I don't know... it seems unforgivable to not show us a colorwork sweater in, you know, color.

 

Inspired Cable Knits by Fiona Ellis is just lovely, though: beautiful, well-photographed designs.

 

Also - what's with all the t-shirt customization books? A spate of them has come out lately. I have Generation T to review, I just saw Tease at the bookstore last night, and there is a third, smaller book called something like 99 Ways To Customize a T-shirt.

 

 

Generation T is more about cutting and tying and repiecing tees, where Tease seems to be more about embellishment, though each dips a toe in the others' pond. Tease has a weird "craft celebrity" angle (look, I don't care if someone has a column in Paper or a show on the DIY Network, I care if their project is worth the time and materials it takes to make it), but in this case the projects seem generally worthwhile. The third book I mentioned is all line drawings with brief instructions, while the first two have full-color photos and detailed instructions.

 

There's also a spate of general "alternative crafts" books. Bazaar Bizarre looked pretty bad to me - for one thing, not a single item in it was something you couldn't figure out how to do online, and some of the crafts were fairly poor examples of their genre (the hairpieces! I've made those, and the ones in the book are bad), and IIRC some of the instructions were just incorrect. Way to cash in! It's been a while since I looked at it, though, so take the above with a grain of salt, except that my impression was negative.

 

 

I thought AlternaCrafts was better, better design, better projects, but still a book full of things that mostly have perfectly respectable free tutorials available online. The only thing I haven't seen before, at least not in this craft renaissance, was the cutting board customized with a wood-burner-inscribed design. The book seems to present a wide range of projects.

All might be fun for beginning crafters, but if you are reading this blog, the two books are probably not for you. Good for 14-year-old siblings and children of siblings. Good if you work with teens. Etc. You can still get the information online for free.

 

 

Higher on the scale is Super Crafty, which has finally arrived in my area... that one, I can recommend. Good instructions, good photos, good ideas, though some aren't as special as others.

 

I know I'll take a closer look at some of these in the near future. Right now another book I'm looking at, and plan to review soonish (after the, like, 20 other books I've been considering) is Art de la Soul by Kathy Cano-Murillo, aka Crafty Chica. It's pretty good.

On the other hand, you know better (or should know better) than to think that I'd go anywhere near Elissa Meyrich's Rip It!. Not recommended, on principle.

(All these links! Pardon me if one or another doesn't go where it's supposed to. I'm late for a party. A friend is moving to the West Coast. I made a bracelet for her last night, the first I've made in a long time, as I have not had any workspace for beading since moving to Ohio in late 2003. It came out pretty well, though it was not until after the knots were tied and the glue all dry that I noticed that it's asymmetrical in the length of each side and the number of beads on it... however, if I had added another bead, it would have been too long anyway. Just trying to get back in the swing of things. For my wedding this fall, I will either be dyeing silk shawls or making sets of fire-polished Czech glass bead jewelry. I'll post pictures of the bracelet I made last night, if they came out.)

Edited to add (5/2007): This is a post transferred over from the ashes of my old blog. Oh, I totally didn't get married last year; my fiance had to spend the entire wedding fund on emergency dental surgery & we're still working on saving up more money again....

 

 

I could review this book. I could. I could totally write a real review like I normally do. But I think that most knitters who have looked at more than one or two knitting books probably have an idea by now of whether or not they like Debbie Bliss, and that's going to determine whether or not they like this book. I think Bliss's "simplicity" is overrated. It may not be great design sense so much as pedestrian design sense.

What you generally get from Debbie Bliss: slightly weird (but modern!) color combos, miles and miles of nigh-mindless basic stitches, usually very simple shapes, everything shown in DB's signature yarns, which used to be known for being slightly overpriced. (They are good quality, but you could get similar quality for less money, without trying hard. I know of several yarn shop owners who have declined to stock DB's line because of the premium prices. I also vaguely recall hearing something to the effect that her line had been discounted at some point, due to a mill change or something, but I'm not sure about that. US$6 for a 50g ball seems to be the going rate for her Merino Aran, which is not a horrible price.)

These are "creative designs" for people who really cannot be bothered to chart out a giant circe-in-a-square intarsia pattern for themselves, or who cannot do basic arithmetic, or who do not own a calculator, or do not understand how they can use stitch gauge and basic math to easily develop any pattern that has no increasing or decreasing.

There is a seed stitch blanket pattern here, people, that seems to mostly be included so that you don't have to figure out how much yarn you'd be using on a 28x36" square of knitting. There are similar patterns for washcloths and potholders, and a seed stitch wrap that is literally only different from the blanket in the yarn/needle details and in the dimensions. There is a ribbed scarf. There is a seed stitch clothespin bag which seems superfluous - since it's fabric-lined anyway and done in white cotton, surely it would have been easier to sew all around. The majority of items here are squares. Some of the pillows don't even require that you knit backs. If the more obvious items had been taken out, perhaps released as free patterns on the web (as patterns that amount to "knit a rectangle in a basic stitch" should be), the book would be half its current length.

Since I do not intend to be the Dale Peck of knitting book reviews, I might add that most of the projects are attractive, a few stand out, and a few are even actually clever. The triangular "Humbug" cushion is, for example, pretty interesting; I think I might like one of my own. There's a cute felted teapot cozy, a chunky cabled bag, a lovely and complex throw that uses cables and lace. There are two patterns for oversized sweaters which are meant to be comfortable rather than flattering. And those floor pillows that don't have knitted backs do have gansey-style raised/purl stitch designs on them. The backs are made of woven cloth, and the overall effect is charming.

On the other hand, there's a blanket that uses 37 balls of merino aran. In stockinette stitch. With the aforementioned "large dot in a square" motif that runs through this book. It's right there in the cover illustration. That's approximately 3145 yds of yarn to knit. Almost two miles of yarn. In stockinette stitch. Stockinette, people. Stockinette. You'll fall asleep every time you try to work on this. The red and fuchsia colorway is required to keep you awake.

I wouldn't knit most of this stuff, but if you don't mind very simple (yet often labor-intensive) patterns with a LOT of stockinette, basic ribbing, or seed stitch, or if you're a huge fan of DB, it's all yours. You could do worse.

 

 

I checked The Art and Flair of Mary Blair out of the library a few months ago, though I've been aware of it for some time. I don't have the book in front of me, and I'm not going to review it... rather, I'm just going to explain what it's about and who I think might like it.

Mary Blair was an artist who, among other things, worked for Disney in the mid-20th-century. She is at least partly responsible for the look of several of their films: Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, and Peter Pan. She is just about fully responsible for the look of the "It's A Small World" ride, and a monumental mosaic mural in the main concourse of Disney's Contemporary Resort in Orlando.

Tim Biskup and Seonna Hong both like her and have been influenced by her. The people at BoingBoing have mentioned her more than once, not only in the Biskup/Hong context. Many people who like Jim Flora's work, which is vaguely similar but generally spikier and more surreal, also like her stuff. I can imagine you might also like her aesthetic if you are interested in Josh "SHAG" Agle or Margaret Keane.

I find Mary Blair's use of color, shape, and pattern to be charming and inspirational; if you think you might, too, definitely check this book out.

 

 

Over the last few years, the television show Trading Spaces has grown in popularity and then faded. Not everyone who sees it realizes that it was based on a slightly different (and, to my mind, better) British show called Changing Rooms. Everything on Changing Rooms was a little more avant-garde and modern-European than the rooms and projects on its American counterpart; a typical Trading Spaces episode is also twice the length of most Changing Rooms episodes. Both shows share a concept: two people do a thematic total makeover on a neighbor's room with a fairly small budget under the guidance of an interior designer, while the neighbor is doing the same thing at their place. A carpenter and the show's host pitch in where they can. At some point in most episodes of either show, the designer will assign a craft to one or two people, which will almost always wind up being something mildly epic and vaguely pointless (motivated mostly by budget) which neither of the people has ever done before, and which needs to be completed QUICKLY. The Changing Rooms crafts usually have a different, artier feel when compared to the Trading Spaces crafts.

This, then, is basically a book of Changing Rooms crafts.

Oh, I don't mean they're actual crafts that have been done on the show, although a few of them have been in some way or another. Nor do I mean that A Comfortable Home: 100 Cozy Projects for Easy Living is an official tie-in to the show. No, what I mean is that they have the look-and-feel of the sort of projects often featured on the show, and that some of the projects are about as bewildering. Furthermore, many of them are not things that most people would want to attempt if they didn't have most of the materials on hand, and need a way to use them up. Some use techniques that are unnecessarily complicated, where the same results could have been achieved through easier means.

The book is organized categorically, and actually has six project designers aside from Moss, all of whom have published books of their own in the past. The categories are

Window Dressing - curtains, blinds, screens
Furniture - mostly recommendations for decorating existing furniture with paint or tile
Linens - a hodgepodge, some things made from scratch and some just decorated, table linens and bed linens and sofa cushions
Storage - potentially the most irritating section, in my opinion, full of corrugated cardboard and an unnecessary amount of cutting, painting, and glueing, given the results
Lighting - lampshades, lamps, and candle holders
Display - another hodgepodge: more candle holders, as well as photo albums, vases, photo frames, soaps, wire baskets, and so on
Entertaining - a section wherein almost everything could have been sorted into other sections: placemats, decorated bowls and utensils, beaded fruit, a raffia table runner made of crocheted leaves
Christmas - ornaments and things to do with ornaments, window decorations, stockings, gift boxes, etc
Outdoor Living - things for the garden, many of which could have been put in other categories and are not specially adapted for the outdoors; however, a few of these items genuinely involve plants.

There are several major problems in the book. First of all, some of the items are things that, yes, you CAN make by hand... but why would you WANT to, especially by the methods displayed here? A perfect example of this is a cardboard "laundry box" in the storage section. It's made from 24 long (almost 5-foot) strips of corrugated cardboard that have been colored with six different colors of wood stain before being woven together; three colors of thread are stitched, each separately, around the rim. I suspect that by the time you've collected all the supplies and managed to do hundreds of feet of clean-edged and precise cardboard cutting, all to make a small box that isn't even two feet tall, you'll have been better off in terms of time and finance by just picking up a hamper at the store. In another sense, at least one project designer is very keen on the idea of you cutting and mounting your own rubber stamps, but the stamps are used in such a way that the same work could easily have been done with a stencil, or even (for the brave) freehand.

A second, larger problem is the fact that most of the designers assume prior knowledge of a technique. Thus, there are several crocheted projects in the book, but none have basic crochet instructions. Mosaic designs abound, without any real tips or tricks beyond the barest instructions of how to do that particular design. Instructions for a blanket decorated with ribbon embroidery basically come down to "Do ribbon embroidery on a blanket. No, we're not teaching you any stitches, but we recommend Lazy Daisy." I don't sew or crochet, and I'm a little afraid of anything involving tin snips, so it's possible that I just find those projects intimidating.

One thing I look for when I review a book here is the clarity of the instructions: the best books have an illustration for every step. This book has illustrations for every second or third step, which is certainly helpful (you'd be almost completely unable to complete several of the projects without them), but which is not enough for some of the more complicated projects. To their credit, the authors have included an extensive appendix of templates for various designs used in the projects. However, it seems odd that some projects, which do not seem easy, are made from scratch, and others, which seem easier (especially with a slightly different choice of materials) begin, "Go to a carpenter/welder/electrician and have them...." Another issue is that the book was initially produced in the UK, and it doesn't seem like too much effort was made to translate certain terminology for an American audience. (This is fine if you are, in fact, in the UK.)

A third issue is one of safety and permanance. There is a lovely "Japanese Lamp" that has some of the worst instructions in the book: have a wire frame welded together for you (well, that's basically the whole lamp, isn't it?), cover it with shoji paper that you've decorated, glue a panel of MDF on the base to support the light fitting. Problems? You're never instructed to drill a hole in the MDF for the light cord, you're never instructed to purchase a light fitting, and the shoji paper is merely stuck to the frame with - wait for it - double-stick tape! I like this particular project, but I can think of five better ways to design and make it. The idea that you can make and/or decorate your own lampshades is a valuable one, but the majority of the designs here are duds.

There are several candle holder designs that basically involve taking ordinary glassware and repurposing it as a candle holder, maybe with some wirework: must be careful with this. Most glass will be fine, some will shatter under the heat. Some of the materials recommended, mostly certain adhesives and paints, should not be used indoors without a lot of ventilation, and this is not mentioned in the instructions, though there is a quick word about safety in the introduction. Anyone who chooses to do any of these projects should use common sense and think about any safety issues that might come up.

When a book has one hundred projects in it, it's difficult to sort them into a binary, yes-or-no list; even if I did, people with different tastes might disagree with me. So I'm just going to mention some representative projects that I liked and disliked. I think many of the storage projects are pointless (the aforementioned "laundry box", or the cardboard shoeboxes that have been lovingly carved with a cutwork design and painted; they defeat the purpose of keeping off dust). I don't like many of the furniture projects. Most just involve stenciling or stamping, and you have to like the stencils or stamps being used. The denim tab-top curtain would most likely be cheaper and easier to buy than to make; it's a common style, at least in the US. Small wire baskets - the book has patterns for several - are also common and inexpensive in craft stores. In general I like many of the window coverings and some of the display items. I like the stencil-frosted windowpanes for Christmas, and most of the mosaic projects. I like the idea of the Japanese paper lamp (execution leaves something to be desired), and the momigami lamp - which will teach you how to make a real Japanese lantern. The woven cane lamp is also lovely, but a little difficult for the average crafter, as are many of these projects.

A Comfortable Home is apparently out-of-print, but it isn't hard to get, either from used book sources or from libraries. It was released in 2003 and retailed for $22.95, which I suppose is a fair price for a book of its size. It may be available as a remainder in the bargain section of major chain bookstores. Nonetheless, it's very difficult to decide whether to recommend that you hunt it down. It came to my attention when one of its projects, a magazine rack made of stacked cuts of corrugated cardboard, was recently featured in an issue of ReadyMade, and certainly, some of its projects are worth attempting. If you have a chance to flip through it and something you see or something you heard described here appeals to you, by all means check it out, but be aware that you may need supplementary materials to figure out how to do a project correctly. The editor states up front that part of the point of the book is to promote creativity, that perhaps you won't want to make the items as shown in the book, but they may inspire you to a new use of a technique you've already mastered. In that respect I can see the book being valuable. Otherwise, you will probably have to approach any project with supplementary beginner's instructions that you've found on your own.

I don't really know if I've managed to explain why this seems like it could be a sourcebook of vaguely punishing household crafts for the designers on Changing Rooms - maybe it's only a concept that other viewers of the show will really understand. If you like the projects they've done over the years, you might like this. But don't expect it to be any less bewildering than having Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen standing over you and trying to explain while simultaneously trying to hang a chandelier. My final conclusion is that A Comfortable Home would have been better if Moss had been more selective about the projects she chose to include in it, and taken slightly more care to eliminate vagueness in the instructions. The result would have been a shorter book, but possibly also a more useful one.

 

 

Another book that isn't strictly a craft book; I'm talking about it here because "thrift books" often involve a good amount of DIY. However, while this book has several good features, I can't recommend it.

Why not? Well, first of all, the quality of the book is very low. It comes from a small publisher. Illustrations are generally either the women's family photos or ghastly drawings like the one on the cover. The general quality of the writing itself isn't good; the book could have used an editorial polish.

I found much of the book's contents incredibly grating. The Foxes never miss a chance to talk about what their parents did Back In The Day, and in doing so it's always "Mama" and "Daddy." ALWAYS. There are religious overtones here; the book isn't exactly Christian, but there are constant references to God and bible stories. (Some people may think this is a plus: I disagree; I'm not religious and I prefer editorial neutrality on the topic, wherein Jesus is neither invoked nor dissed.) There's a ton of wasted space in the form of "pithy" observations, which are mostly sanctimonious or sentimental groaners of the "children and husbands are lazy" variety. This kind of cornpone sentimentality and faux-folksy tone is a real turnoff, for me. 

But that's just the writing - what about the advice? Well, a lot of it is terrible.
- Many of the money-and-time-saving recipes in the food section are based on things like canned potatos and canned macaroni and cheese, nutritionally suspect processed foods where using the "real thing" isn't that difficult or time-consuming. It's not going to save money or time when you and your kids need medical care as a result of your poor diet.
- The word "expensive" is thrown around with abandon. Believe me: if you shop for groceries at a deep discount retailer, buying fruit yogurt is NOT more expensive than buying a decent jam and mixing it with plain or vanilla yogurt. A Lexus is expensive; Yoplait is not.
- There's a selection of DIY toys for kids which often, frankly, have safety concerns.
- There's also a short wedding section and checklist, which, if followed, will help you waste a ton of money (two words: Unity Candles).
- There's a suggestion to go door to door, selling plastic bags of potpourri to make extra money. (If anyone you approach has an iota of sense, they will realize that dollar-store potpourri in plastic sandwich bags is not something worth wasting money on.)

For me the kicker came when the twins started suggesting that you partition your house and rent part of it out. To me this is a last-ditch effort to keep a house you can't afford... I have a ton of opinions on this topic, because this was something my mom did when I was a child (and we just lived in apartments!), and I do not recommend it to anyone. I also currently have friends who are in the situation of being the renters, who cannot get the homeowner to fix anything in the place, who have become aware that the owners are using them as their primary income, etc. Renting is an investment for extra income, but should never be something you count on to make your mortgage payment. Furthermore, the whole point of owning your own home is not having to share it; if you rent an apartment out of your home, there are also lots of legal issues to pay attention to (the renters have rights that you need to be aware of), as well as a huge loss of control in terms of what your family will be exposed to. My personal concern is fire. You can control your family's habits, but you can't control those of a renter. In my experience this whole scheme works best if the renter is a relative.

There are a handful of good tips here, if you can sort them out. There are lots of checklists that may be helpful to some people, anything from an "Eternal Grocery List" to a housecleaning checklist to budgeting to emergency phone lists to a packing checklist for travel. Much of the advice early in the book is sound, things like recipes for DIY household cleaners, or the fact that used dryer sheets can make really good dustrags. There is an area where working mothers in two-income homes are advised to consider their work expenses - daycare, transportation, clothing, etc - to see if they are actually making any money, or just working to be able to afford to work, in which case they can feel better about quitting if they'd rather be stay-at-home moms. (There are problems with the politics around this issue, but for people who would rather not work outside the home or who are running themselves ragged to do so, it's worth saying.) More content like this would have been welcome.

Most books with the word "Tightwad" in the title will offer advice that involves significant aesthetic compromise as well as taking on the feeling of being poor. Your quality of life will suffer and you will spend almost all your time trying to figure out how on earth to make ends meet (if this is the case already, you might find the book helpful). For a lot of people this is fine. For others (especially kids, who have social issues at school to worry about), this may not be. I would recommend Amy Dacyczyn's The Complete Tightwad Gazette before this book, for its better writing and layout, and seemingly more intelligent advice. Neither of these books, however, is for me, because of the aesthetic issues. Yankee magazine has put out a number of books on thrift which feature advice that is much less extreme; all are worth a look to anyone interested in the topic.

No Amazon link; I don't like this book. If it interests you, try the library first; that's the thrifty way, anyway.

 

 

This book's cuteness will probably suck you right in.

I don't have a lot to say about Knitted Toys beyond describing it... its appeal is very visual. It's a collection of 21 designs ranging from finger puppets to stuffed animals; there are also dolls, a ball, and a knitted draftstopper for the bottom of a door. The latter piece is in the form of a long, cuddly dog, so I doubt it will ever make it to the floor.

In my opinion, the animal designs are generally more attractive than the humanoid. There is a fairy, a princess, girl and boy ragdolls, and a clown (which I think is the sweetest of the people bunch, even making allowance for the cliche that clowns are scary). There are several finger puppet designs: farm animals - including miniatures of several of the book's other projects - and "caterpillars", little characters bearing only passing resemblance to their namesake. Also a design for a ladybug or bee that is around the same size as a finger puppet, but is meant to be stuffed, and could make a hilarious cat toy.

Aside from that, it's mostly animals in huggable sizes. Standard measurements for the larger animals are 13 to 15 inches, but many, like the pig and the penguin, come in quite a bit smaller. My favorites are the dog draft cheater and the affable zebra, but there are lots of others to choose from, including a teddy bear and a bunny both in two sizes, a panda, and a colorful turtle and tropical fish. The style of all these designs is modern but folksy, and everything that can smile is smiling.

In technical terms, the book seems fine. There's an intro section at the front that shows the techniques and stitches you will need, but not enough for a beginner to finish anything without some basic knowledge. Since this book was originally published in the UK, many of the designs call for DK-weight yarn, mostly Rowan or Jaeger but also some Patons. It will be up to the knitter to find suitable substitutions, since most of these yarns are pretty pricey; however, not much yarn is required for most of the projects. The zebra requires two balls of Merino DK. The finger puppet designs will help use up scrap from other projects. The book does include a translation chart for UK to US terms, a list of knitting abbreviations, descriptions of the basic stitches used (nothing complicated), demonstration of the handful of embroidery stitches needed, and finishing instructions. Projects are graded in difficulty from 1 to 3, with level 1 being projects mostly in stockinette with some basic shaping, and level 3 being larger projects that may include intarsia. Even the level 3 projects are not terribly difficult.

I really like this book; I would buy it. The dolls might have driven me off, but the animals more than make up for it. It's somewhat similar to Kath Dalmeny's World of Knitted Toys, but the designs are different, bolder and with less attempt at accuracy. It's reasonably priced at around $19 for a hardcover book full of pictures: I especially recommend it for knitters who have kids or who just love cute things (blah blah blah young at heart blah blah blah).

Amazon Link.

(Note 31 August 05 - The Amazon reviewers mention some errata: poor math in some places, for example. If you are going to make projects from this book, you might want to check out what everyone over there has said, too.)

 

 

This book caught my eye at the library, and I thought it might be a good choice to kick off the new direction of this blog. I am not a cross-stitcher now, but I went through a phase as a teenager. As the years have gone by, I found that, first of all, I don't much care for the pixilated-grid look of cross stitch (needlepoint and petit-point designs are usually much more subtle). Secondly, I don't care for the look of Aida cloth (something that can be corrected by using linen).

I suspect that this particular book will be of value to two groups of people. The first is, of course, cross-stitchers. More specialized are historical recreationists. As it happens, I have long been interested in the history of fashion, and I have also been researching the "Jacobethan" period for a few years (a few decades either side of the year 1600). That will be the basis for most of my comments.

From the back cover of the book:

Enter a world of elaborate trelliswork, coiling stems, and sumptuous fruits and florals. Be inspired by the Elizabethan era through the eyes of talented cross-stitch designer Barbara Hammet.

I think the key word here is "inspired." While many of these designs are attractive, none would pass as a recreation of a historical piece. To her credit, Hammet (who previously did a similar book with Celtic motifs) doesn't make any pretense of historical accuracy. She uses the introduction to explain a little about the period, and it seems like she knows what she's talking about. She discusses her inspiration in detail, but not so much that it's not suitable for laymen, or would be uninteresting to them.

The reason that most of these designs would not pass muster for historical recreationists has much to do with the format of the book itself. Cross-stitch was not the embroidery style of choice c.1550-1600; Hammet herself mentions that many of the originals she studied are done in tent stitch. The dominant embroidery styles of the period are blackwork (black thread on white), crewelwork (freeform embroidery done with a particular type of yarn), and the raised stitching now called stumpwork which reached the height of its popularity in the mid-17th century. Additionally, Aida cloth is not a period fabric. Some of the projects in here will certainly be appropriate for use as, say, accessories worn or used at the Renaissance faire, but probably not for strict reenactors. For comparison, here is a design for a piece that would be closer to accuracy for the same period. Hammet's work here is best described as attractive modern cross-stitch design with the flavor of the English Renaissance.

I think that some of these designs are more successful than others, regardless of how good their historical basis is. To begin with, anything on a light background tends to look skimpy when compared to its neighbors on dark or colorful backgrounds. (This isn't a matter of historical accuracy so much as personal taste.) The most simplistic and geometric of the designs do not, in my opinion, work as well as the more ornate and sophisticated pieces, nor do they have as much of a sense of place, a period flavor. Among these designs are the Heartsease Collection, Renaissance Table Linen, the Carnation Bag, elements of the Knot Garden Collection (pretty, but really more suitable to maps of the grounds than to a pillow or box), the Gillyflower Bag, and some of the Motifs. On the other hand, the Sheldon Tapestry Inspiration set (particularly the cushion), the Four Season Florals cushions, the Coiling Stem Pictures, the Bountiful Tree Firescreen, and the Swete Bagges all have sophisticated designs with a lot of possibilities. A few of these designs feature darling animal motifs, particularly the firescreen.

I would, personally, consider trying some of these designs on fabric colors other than white: the Four Seasons cushions, which are gorgeous, and the Coiling Stem Pictures, which are simple and elegant. They look incomplete on white, as if they would be happier as needlepoint projects with full backgrounds.

The front cover of the book advertises "25 projects," but the back cover says "95 designs." The discrepancy is caused by the Motif Library, a plethora of small charted designs that can be used singly or in combination, in colors that are "just suggestions." It seems like Hammet found these figures (a mermaid, a lion, a unicorn, a huntsman with hounds, and many other animals, insects, fruits, and flowers), and, unable to work them into the book's main projects, didn't want to keep them to herself or let them go to waste. Most are charming and definitely add to the value of the book.

In technical terms, how is the book? Well, like any worth its salt, it includes an appendix of technical information, including the stitches you would need to use to do any of the projects, and instructions for how to make up the embroidered cloths into usable items once you've finished working them. The book favors the UK, but all of the items are available in the US, or easily substituted. The most complicated designs require around 20 colors; several require only two or three. Optional bead embellishments are available for several of the projects. The charts use symbols so that similar colors can be easily distinguished from each other, and are generally quite legible, though some might still need a magnifier. All projects are clearly and attractively photographed.

The verdict? Well, if you're a cross-stitcher, and you're interested in the era, this book has a lot to like, and is probably worth its $25 cover price. I don't think you'll become a convert as a result of seeing it, though, despite the fact that it's easily ten times more attractive than just about any kit you'll see on craft store shelves.

Amazon Link.

Up next: Knitted Toys by Fiona McTague and iPod & iTunes Hacks by Hadley Stern. (Yes, the latter is a craft book, and you'll believe it by the end of the review.)