Vogue Knitting Early Fall 2014: A Review

Vogue Knitting has released its Early Fall 2014 issue. Let's have a look at it, shall we?

Pattern #1 Cropped Cardigan. This is very pretty and has some interesting detailing. The cropped length won't be for everyone, but it can be lengthened.

Pattern #2, Open Front Cardigan. Another very pretty cardigan with beautiful lacework and careful finishing. I'm not crazy about the way the front edges look so tacked together at the top. I'd be tempted to add three buttons, or button it all the way down.

Pattern #3, Cropped Cardigan. Not too taken with this one. The tri-colour combination (which doesn't work all that well together) and those randomly tacked-on leaves present as gimmicky rather than as integrated design components.

Pattern #4, Herringbone Cardigan. Oooh, love this one, which is elegant and classic. Though I'd ditch the varied length and split hems at the side.

Pattern #5, Waterfall Cardigan. This design looks okay worn fastened shut with a shawl pin in the VK360° video, but as you can see from the photo above, leaving it open is not going to do any woman any favours. Sweaters simply aren't meant to billow around one. I'd pass on this one, because having to wear it pinned shut at all times is too limiting and that back seam does look rather rough.

Pattern #6, Hip-Length Cardigan. Another lovely, classic piece.

Pattern #7, Scoop-Neck Pullover. I like this sweater except for those tacked-on crochet chains. They look too, well, tacked on. I'd knit vertical intarsia chains into this sweater instead.

Pattern #8, Fitted Waistcoat. This item is a beautiful piece of work... but I am having a difficult time imagining too many of the men of my acquaintance wearing it.

Pattern #9 is a tartan bow tie. It's well-designed, but again, not a piece that will appeal to a broad cross-section of men. I'm thinking the hipster or flamboyant types will go for it and carry it off well.

Pattern #10 is another bow tie. I don't like this one as well as the tartan tie — the shape isn't as good.

Pattern #11 is a straight tie. I quite like this item and think many of the men I know would willingly wear it.

Patterns #12-16 are represented in this collection of men's socks. I do like these socks... but for me. I'm not too sure most men would voluntarily wear any of these other than the charcoal and red hound's tooth pair.

Pattern #17, Long-Sleeved Pullover. I was all set to give this one a negative review until I saw the VK360° video, and saw that this sweater hangs very well when it's not being pulled about by its wearer. It must be worn over something else, of course, but this is an effective way to show an underlying pop of colour.

Pattern #18 is a lace vest. It's a solid piece of design with good shaping and an attractive texture.

Pattern #19, Butterfly Lace. This is a good piece too. The lace pattern is something different and the shaping is good. I like that the designer went for a solid sleeve and shoulder. I've yet to see the pair of armpits that cried out for showcasing.

Pattern #20, Graphic Top. Not too taken with this one. It does have a certain appealing sportiness, but it also looks a little shapeless and lumpy.

Pattern #21, Cap Sleeve Top. Oooh, I really like this one, with its clever, fresh use of colour and stripes. It looks like it got where the previous design was trying to go because it has the same sporty appeal as well as some added sophistication and polish.

Pattern #22, Striped Pullover. This is a pretty basic and traditional striped sweater. It's fine, but I would maybe go with a less standard colourway than red, white, and blue to give it a little more interest. And this is quite a beach-y collection of sweaters for an early fall issue.

Pattern #23, Button-Back Sweater. This one is a little different, but in a way that works. Texture and shape are good and the curved pockets and back buttons are an interesting detail. This sweater is comfortable enough to be worn around home and stylish enough to be worn outside the home.

Pattern #24, Dolman Top. This looks... very eighties, both in terms of its mesh and shape. But it's not a bad piece and as long as you don't knit it in some Day-Glo colour, you won't have people asking where you parked your DeLorean.

Pattern #25, Reversible Wrap. Here we have the cover look. I'm not that impressed with it. It looks like it belongs on a couch.

Pattern #26, Cabled V-Neck Pullover. This is a classic piece. The designer has gone a little bolder with the cables than is usual, which was a good call as it gives it a more modern feel.

Pattern #27, Cabled Long Sleeve Turtleneck. Here's the long-sleeved, turtlenecked version of the sweater just above. The designer has added a turtleneck and sleeve cabling that work well with the proportions of the design.

Pattern #28, Garter Stitch Tank. Not liking this one. It has a crude and unfinished look to it.

Pattern #29, Drop Shoulder Pullover. This pullover version of the tank above is a slight improvement. The sleeves seem to balance it out a little and the yarn choice adds a little interest.

Pattern #30, Crew-Neck Pullover. Very much like this one. That centre panel is distinctive and carrying out the panel theme on the sleeves was a sound idea. For a solid tone pullover that can be worn anywhere, this piece has a lot of subtle visual interest.

Pattern #31, Sleeveless Shell. Not as pleased with this one, but I think it's the yarn choice. The stitchwork is getting lost in that slubbed texture yarn. A smooth yarn would have been a better choice.

Knitty First Fall 2014: A Review

This year, out of all the knitting magazines I review, Knitty was first out of the gate with a autumnal issue. Let's have a look at Knitty Issue 48, First Fall 2014.

This is the Indigo Cones design. It's attractive and wearable and should whip up quite quickly and easily.

The Arlen cowl has good texture and would be a good way to showcase a beautiful hand-dyed yarn.

The Bloc Party cardigan. Oh, I very much like this one. This cardigan is sharp and professionally finished and yet so simple and wearable and not all that difficult to knit. This is one of those designs in which colour blocking has been done right, which is more rarely found than you might expect.

The Dreaming of Ankhesenamun cowl. Not so pleased with this one. The colourway and the design both look a little on the crude side.

The Vermilion Cliffs cardigan is a lovely piece of work. The shape is good, the texture is excellent. One minor quibble, though, is that I would have placed the top button at the top of the front ribbon band. That little open part looks more like a mistake than a design decision.

The Katie cowl. I'm not too enthusiastic about this one. It's just too basic a piece to even seem like a design.

The Briar mittens. These aren't bad at all. It's the colourwork that gives this very basic mittens design a bit of sophistication.

The Carry on Solefully socks. I like these. They've got a very original look and an inventive construction.

The Double Take Shrug. I'm divided on this design. It looks good from the back and the side, but so unflattering from the front. I'd make the front somewhat longer and the sleeves shorter.

The Snowfence Scarf and Cowl. Love this one — the texture is awesome.

The Hidden Gussets Mitts. Not all that taken with these. They're pretty basic. I think using a really beautiful yarn, such as a hand-dyed mohair, would turn them into something special.

The Planorbis Corneus socks. Quite a cute pair of cabled ankle socks.

The Jasseron pullover. Hmm. I like the concept and shaping, but not in this colourway, which is too flat and looks too much like baseball t-shirt styling to work with this pretty design. That's so easily changed, though.

The I Can Knit a Rainbow toy. I would want to size this up and make it into a cushion, because I can't imagine what a child would do with a rainbow toy. Rainbows don't have interesting adventures. It's not like a rainbow ever held a tea party or saved the world from an arch villain.

The Pat Hat, named for Julia Sweeney's Saturday Night Live sketch character, the puzzlingly androgynous Pat, is a witty solution to the old "what do I take to a baby shower when the parents haven't revealed the gender yet" dilemma. Also, it's very cute.

The Reverso socks can be worn inside out or in. Very clever and should save the wearer laundry turning time.

The Rhaeadr Shawl is a very attractive piece. Love the texture and the edging.

The Grantangle shawl employs the crochet stitch used for the ubiquitous granny square. I can't say I care for it. This stitch is just so intrinsically dated.

Delaware is for Cables hat. Standard cabled hat. I think it needs the pom pom or a tassel to give it a little more interest.

Franklin Habit restyles an 1847 pattern for a knitted flower into the Heart's Ease Boutonnière and muses about the frustrations entailed in writing about knitting history in the article that accompanies the pattern.

Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie and other knitting fables

Sometimes Stevie felt she needed to recapture that "string bikini at the beach" feeling in mid-winter.

Dakota's mother was so thrilled by her purchase of All You Can Knit and Crochet for Babies, because she now had a way to use up her scrap yarns and the resulting outfits would mean blackmail photo ops that could be used to keep Dakota in line as a teenager. And all for 50 pence!

Kaila thought her new line of "Couch Wear" fashions had turned out rather well.

After all, Kaila reasoned, what could protect women from street harassment better than camouflaging themselves as couches? Men love and respect couches!

Model Victoria's contract had a strict "no face showing in crocheted trousers shots" clause, for which she could never be thankful enough.

"No, hon, I can't see anything."
"Thanks loads for checking! You know a girl likes to be clean-scrubbed and demure and to be careful not to show too much boobage when she wears hot pants and go-go boots."

Ophelia felt that the combination of her new "Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie" sweater and just the right amount of poutiness and broodiness was bound to drive her boyfriend Rex absolutely wild.

"Oh hell no, you weren't interrupting anything! Freddy and I were just getting into the spirit of the photo shoot, weren't we, Freddy?"

Megan planned to be squatting just so on her rug and throw pillows when her party guests arrived so that they'd be duly impressed with the way she'd coordinated her hostess outfit with her décor.

Chet was confident that the devastating combination of his silk scarf and his thousand yard stare was bound to start bringing all the chicks running once he had it perfected.

Ingrid's pixie hat and sweater set scored her free drinks so reliably often that she had decided to make more pixie hat and sweater sets in different colourways.

Walkie Talkie Knitty Man

In this 2003 music video for New Zealand punk band Steriogram's song "Walkie Talkie Man", the band steps into a knitted, crocheted, felted, and string art world, and when disaster strikes, they break out their crafting skills to save the day.

Miss T.M. James and the Intangible Benefits of Knitting

Knitting class, Henry Street Settlement, NYC by Lewis W. Hine, 1910

Late last summer my cousin gave me an antique copy of Longmans' Complete Course of Needlework, Knitting and Cutting Out, which was written by a Miss T.M. James and published in 1906. The course is complete, all right. Its 452 pages contain instructions for every kind of hand sewing. From basic stitches (i.e., tucking, pleating, and herring-boning), to ornamental stitches (i.e., hem stitching and scallops), to lesser-used techniques (i.e., french seams, smocking, and "gathering for shirtwaists"), to mending (i.e., patching in flannel and calico-patching), to darning (i.e., fixing stocking ladders and setting a "breakfast-cut darn"), instructions on how to cut out a garment (such as chemises, drawers or knickerbockers, nightgowns, pinafores, flannel petticoats and combinations), to drills in basic skills such as how to wear a thimble (no less than seven illustrations are provided to enlighten the reader on this crucial maneuver), this book can tell the reader everything she or he ever wanted to know about hand sewing and more.

The knitting section of this book contains absurdly detailed instructions on how to hold a knitting needle, a dissertation on "the parts of a stocking", some lace stitch patterns, and patterns for a man's stocking and a boy's stocking, mittens, cuffs or wristlets, mufflers, babies' boots, babies's gloves, babies's shirt, a hug-me-tight, a school cap, "knee-caps", "washing gloves", knitted cord (which the book assures the reader is suitable for use as a stay lace), a "kilt pattern for petticoat", a woolen comforter or three-cornered shawl, and a raised leaf pattern for a quilt. There are no illustrations of finished items given for these patterns, so how they'll look when done is anyone's guess.

Then, too, Miss T.M. James offers us her cast-iron opinions on the importance of needlework skills. She states in the introduction that "one of the essentials of good wifehood and motherhood is to know how to use the needle, and apply it in everyday use, for the benefit of others as well as themselves, and in this way to cultivate the Christian grace of unselfishness", that "by following and perfecting themselves in womanly and home accomplishments, they will be doing their part in life's great problem as effectually as any heroine of whom they may have read or heard", and that when teaching needlework to the young, "not only lessons in the subject itself will be given, but a deep and lasting moral training in habits of thrift, observation, comparison, exactness, construction, and economy".

Even though I don't expect I'll ever need to cut out a flannel petticoat or patch any calico, there is quite a lot of useful information in this book and so it has its place in the bookcase that holds all my knitting and sewing patterns and crafting reference books. Hand sewing techniques haven't changed much at all in the past century, though of course we now use them to add details to machine-sewn garments that don't much resemble those worn in 1906. I am glad, however, that I don't have to rely on this book for knitting instructions and patterns. I have not only The Ultimate Knitting Book published by Vogue Knitting and other knitting instruction books that offer much clearer instructions and photos in my bookcase, but also a host of online resources that include YouTube videos and the incredible resource that is Ravelry. Knitting and crafting instruction has gone high-tech and easy access in the last century.

A class of boys knit for the war effort during World War II.

The way we think and talk about the intangible benefits of needlework has changed as radically as our access to technical information on how to knit. No one needs to know how to sew or knit these days, and understanding needlework isn't at all essential to being a good wife and mother. I wouldn't go any further than to say that it's a good idea for everyone, male or female, married or not, child-rearing or not, to learn how to sew on a button and change a hem and stitch a seam that's coming apart back together. Thankfully, we've stopped trying to convince women that being a good homemaker is her sole or highest possible purpose in life, and though there's still a huge gender divide in terms of who is most likely to take up needlework, we've at least stopped referring to it as a "womanly accomplishment".

I have fewer bones to pick when it comes to Miss James's argument that teaching needlework provides "a deep and lasting moral training in habits of thrift, observation, comparison, exactness, construction, and economy". I find parallels to this statement in modern discourse about knitting and other types of needlework. No one considers needlework "moral training" now, but it's fair to say learning needlework skills can give us money-saving options and can teach us to be more observant and detail-oriented.

These days anyone who writes about the benefits of knitting tends to point to peer-reviewed research studies rather than making such high-sounding sweeping statements. The Washington Post reports that scientific literature shows that hobbies such as "arts and crafts, music, meditation, home repairs and reading stimulates the mind, reduces the effects of stress-related diseases and slows cognitive decline". According to this CNN.com article, crafting is also unique among leisure-type activities for its ability to involve many different areas of the brain. Crafting not only employs memory and attention span but also visuospatial processing, creativity, and problem-solving abilities.

Those of us who knit have always known how enjoyable it is and how happy it makes us, but now scientists are investigating just how beneficial enjoying knitting can be. As mentioned in the Washington Post article, in a study of 38 anorexic women who were taught to knit, "74 percent of them reported less fear and preoccupation with their eating disorder, the same percentage reported that knitting had a calming effect, and just over half said knitting gave them a sense of pride, satisfaction and accomplishment". In another study, mentioned in this article by the Craft Yarn Council, that involved oncology nurses suffering from work-related burnout or "compassion fatigue", all the nurses studied showed improvement in terms of their "burnout scores".

Thinking back over my own 32 years of knitting, I can't say that knitting has improved my morals or made me a better wife or mother (probably because I never did get around to taking on either of those roles), but I will say it's given me a sense of accomplishment and confidence. I have long been very quick to tackle a new project in a medium I've never worked in before and am always bemused by those who think they can't learn to knit or do minor hands-on projects. At the age of ten I never doubted that I could learn to crochet because I'd already learned to knit at eight and how different or much harder could crocheting be? As time went on, I reasoned similarly about needlepoint, rug hooking, counted cross-stitch, embroidery, dressmaking, drawing, painting and other fine art mediums, stained glass, and then home renovation skills. Each new skill learned was another brick in the wall of my confidence, at least when it came to skills involving my working with my hands. (More holistic physical skills such as downhill skiing can still scare the crap out of me.)

Some people have said to me that knitting must teach self-discipline. I don't think it does, but then self-discipline is such a nebulous concept. Yes, I once kept doggedly (if intermittently) at a fingering weight fair isle sweater until I eventually finished it two years after I started it, but that was because I really wanted the finished sweater and I had the skills to get there eventually. There have been many times in my life when I've spent time knitting when that time should have been used attend to other things that were more important and pressing, such as my schoolwork, and while I suppose I exercise discipline in some areas of my life, such as finishing nearly every project I start, in other arenas I am quite disastrously the reverse. In my late twenties I had to make a rule that I would only let myself knit during time that would otherwise be non-productive: while watching TV or movies, during lunch break at work, while commuting or travelling, and while talking on the telephone, and I've kept that rule quite consistently for a dozen years or so, but I have yet to rein in my habit of aimless internet surfing.

Self-discipline is more a matter of strategy and planning and working with your own character's needs and motivations than it is about strength of character. The military is known for their discipline, and they don't hand their new recruits a list of tasks to be accomplished and expect them to use their inherent sterling worth to get everything done. Rather, the military organizes and regulates their soldiers' lives in nearly every respect, trains and drills them until whatever specific things they are required to do are nearly second nature, and expects everything to be done according to very specific rules and regulation and on a strict schedule. Knitting will teach knitting skills, is productive, eases stress, gives one a creative outlet, and instills a certain confidence and sense of achievement that makes a knitter generally more ready to tackle other things, but it won't help knitters to keep their houses clean, meet deadlines at work, write a novel, or be better parents, as those tasks require strategies and skills of their own.

And I hope by analyzing the personal development benefits of knitting I haven't take all the fun out of it for you, or come across as some sort of modern-day Miss T.M. James, who sounds to me like the type to rap knuckles if she sees someone isn't demonstrating proper thimble-wearing form. In the last analysis, we knitters don't need all these research studies to tell us what we've always known: that knitting is enormously pleasurable and a way for us to make beautiful, useful items for ourselves and for those we love.

Supersized Knitting

I've previously written about a knitter who made her own needles out of PVC pipes and duct tape, but another knitter has taken super-sized knitting to a level beyond even that. When Kait Brink, whose grandmother taught her to knit as a child and who organized a knitting club in her high school, was told to make a large scale version of an ordinary object for a woodworking class in university, she chose to make a large pair of hand laminated knitting needles out of pine planks. And then, of course, she wanted to use them. Even the bulkiest of commercially made yarn won't knit to a gauge large enough for size US228 knitting needles, so Brink makes her own yarn:

I like to take objects that are discarded or unwanted and make them into something desirable again. The blankets are all from The Salvation Army; in good condition but still less than perfect. I wanted to make a yarn that would match the scale of the pine needles I hand carved a few years ago. The blanket yarn is stuffed with all things pliable: newspaper, old or unusable bits of yarn, unused curtains, blankets, old dresses, craft scraps, plastic packaging, etc. Now all these materials are fused together to make a new object come to life.

This video shows Brink and an assistant (because her knitting needles are too heavy for one person to manage alone) knitting. Nine stitches and nine rows of garter stitch and about an hour of knitting that's more like gator wrestling than conventional knitting makes one very heavy blanket.

To learn more about Brink and her work (she also works in other mediums, such as watercolours), you can check out this article on GazetteNet.com, or visit Kait Brink's own web site.