knitting in the dark

Even if all I’m reading is knitting books, at least I’ve started reading again. I went through a big reading funk and hadn’t finished a book in about six months. While out of town I finished three books I’ve been meaning to read since I received them for Christmas:

Reading Elizabeth Zimmermann always feels very empowering. KNITTING WITHOUT TEARS is not my favorite of her books, but it does have the seamless hybrid sweater (which I want to make for myself) and the Modular Tomten Jacket (which I want to make someday).

I also read her KNITTING WORKSHOP, which has an excellent tip for Long-tail Casting-on - you don’t need the slip knot at the beginning; you just lay the yarn over the top of the right hand needle! Why didn’t I think of that? It has the recipes for the Babies’ Surprise Jacket and the Rorschach Sweater, which I’ve only ever seen here, and it is lovely.

My mother also got me KNITTING FROM THE TOP, as she felt it was a classic accompaniment to the other two. My mother has never ever knit anything without a pattern - not even socks. I think reading these books one after another has definitely convinced me to do a sweater without a pattern, whether or not it follows any of the recipes… but I have a long WIP list to do before I even think of starting something new. I should prioritize those items and attack the list rather than starting new things for this round of Project Spectrum, even though red and black are some of my absolute favorite colors.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 8:37 pm and is filed under knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.