Today’s Treat

Look what came to my house by courier! Advance copies of one of my new books, 150 Scandinavian Knitting Designs, the UK version and 150 Scandinavian Motifs: The Knitter’s Directory, the American version. You can pre-order your copy here or here! The reason for the different titles is because Americans would think that they get 150 garment designs if the book had the UK title. All my beautiful swatches came back too.

They’re saying the release date is August 15.

Sometimes you can get the book sooner if you order directly from the publisher,  Search Press in the UK and Interweave Press in the US. Interweave doesn’t seem to offer pre-ordering at the moment, so you might need super ESP skills to figure that one out. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.

In a way this book was a little harder to make than the last one ( 200 Fair Isle Motifs: A Knitter’s Directory  (US) and  200 Fair Isle Designs (UK) and many others, Latvia, Estonia, Netherlands, etc). With Fair Isle knitting the gauge is fairly consistent because of the fact that there are almost never more than 8 or 9 stitches between color changes, never more than 2 colors in a single round and the pattern designs are symmetrical. There is also a sensible and orderly progression based on row count and stitch count. For this new book, the number of stitches between color changes varies tremendously with each motif and the patterns are often not symmetrical, reindeer are a good example. Plus – many patterns have more than two colors in a round. So the gauge varied, especially the row count. We decided to “design each page” because there wasn’t a simple progression of row count and stitch count that made sense with the various designs from so many different countries and traditions. That meant that I had to plan a composed swatch, aiming for  the 22cm x 22 cm size of the page. Some of the allover patterns were fairly easy to memorize, but others were not. The patterns that are not symmetrical were especially challenging, just when my poor brain figured them out it was time to do an entirely new and different one. Now I know why knitters often choose to make the same reindeer mittens over and over again, by the second one you’ve got the pattern down and you’re ready to whip up another pair in a different color.

I love love love these pattern motifs though! Some are sooooooo cute it hurts! Others are simply elegant. The art direction is amazing – each page more beautiful than the last – such a joy and relief for me. Another thing about this book, there are 4 projects included in the book to get you started, mittens, a hat, a cowl and a darling pin cushion. And a secret….there are actually more than 150 designs, once you get the hang of analyzing the patterns -I show you how- you’ll discover patterns within the patterns – endless enjoyment!