This week I am going to blog about knitting books that made me smile this year. The posts are coming in the order in which I found the books. Each is a mini-review with a list of what made me smile as I read the book.
4. Knit the Sky: Cultivate Your Creativity with a Playful Way of Knitting by Lea Redmond, illustrated by Lauren Nassef.
What’s it about?
This is probably the most unique and creative knitting book I have ever read. It’s full of pictures, but not photos. It’s almost a graphic novel, but it’s not. It’s almost a picture book, but it’s not. It’s almost a knitting pattern book, but it’s not.
The introduction explains the basic premise of the book and is an invitation for you to join in and “expand the territory of what we consider to be a pattern.” We are encouraged to look around and incorporate what we see in the world into our knitting, making each piece of knitting a memory of a day, a month, a year, a mood, a neighborhood, or a special person. As a lover of no-pattern knitting and “making shit up” (that’s my job description on my official business org chart), this is right up my alley.
Each of the 32 short main chapters is a miniature memoir, a meditation on creativity, and an idea for a knitting project. An idea, not a pattern. The title project, the “Knit the Sky Scarf,” can be made in any pattern stitch using a collection of yarns in whites, grays, and blues. The idea is that at the end of the year, you have a striped scarf that is a type of diary of life, row by row, day by day.
Each day, you will knit a stripe in colors that match that particular day’s sky, slowly creating your own wearable weather report.
The concept seems overly simple, but the creative suggestions will make you want to gather up a basket of yarn cast on for January 1st. Each chapter is just as much fun. Here’s a list of the rest of the main chapters with a few notes about the ones that made me smile most.
- Bundle of Joy
- Sweet Possibilities
- Twin-Stick Treat
- Mood Ring
- Make a cowl using the color of your mood for a month. Choose from the color suggestions listed in the book, or make up your own mood-color palette.
- Nectar Collector
- Patchwork Postcards
- Doodle Daydream
- Knit a sampler skirt in graphite colored yarn using pencils as needles!
- Monster under Your Bed
- Play-by-Play
- Navigating by Heart
- Inching Up
- Heirloom Time Traveler
- Knit half a scarf and make a time capsule with the project for your great grandchild to complete.
- You Are as Beautiful as the Moon
- Hummingbird Heartbeat
- Let the heart rate of your favorite animal inspire a pattern of stripes for a scarf.
- Sun Salutation
- Butterfly Birthday
- String of Pearls
- Quantum Entanglement
- K1, B1 (Knit One, Breathe One)
- Grandmother’s Basket of Berries
- Mind the Gap
- If you commute by subway, “knit with yarns that color-coordinate with the subway line you’re riding on.”
- Brave Stitches
- Walk around the Block
- Use the colors of the houses around your neighborhood to inspire a cowl that represents home. If you’re feeling brave, meet your neighbors and tell them about your project.
- A Fine Pair
- Pins and Needles
- Wabi Sabi
- Don’t be a perfectionist! “Choose a knitting project that is on the edge of your technical comfort zone. Whenever you make a mistake, instead of hiding your imperfect knitting skills, embellish them.”
- Out on a Limb
- Dormitory Hop
- Party Popper
- With Hands Just So
- How to Invent Your Own Project
- An excellent step-by-step guide to letting your inner knitter-child-artist out of the box!
The conclusion is an RSVP–a second invitation–encouraging you to join the adventure and let the world inspire your knitting.
The appendices include a stitch library, techniques, and patterns for newer knitters and for those who are not quite ready to just dive in, cast on, and make it up. You still don’t get photos. Remember, you have to make up at least part of the project–the color choices and sometimes the pattern stitches–yourself. But you don’t have to completely wing it if that’s not your thing.
What makes me smile?
- Making things up!
- Being inspired by nature and life.
- Ink & watercolor illustrations.
- Pretty end papers.
- Creative inspiration.
- Knitting the sky!
The rest of my 2015 “Joyous Knitting” reading list!
- Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook: A knitting books hat shows you how to turn everyday inspirations into gorgeous stranded colourwork by Felicity Ford.
- Knitting Stories: Personal Essays and Seven Coast Salish-Inspired Knitting Patterns by Sylvia Olsen.
- Sequence Knitting: Simple Methods for Creating Complex Patterns by Cecelia Compochiaro.
- In the Footsteps of Sheep: Tales of a Journey through Scotland, Walking, Spinning, and Knitting Socks by Debbie Zawinski
- Penguin: A Knit Collection by Amy Maltz