Review: Great Little Gifts to Knit by Jean Moss
Posted in Knitting, Review on September 13th, 2013
Great Little Gifts to Knit: 30 Quick and Colorful Patterns by Jean Moss. Taunton Press (September 3, 2013). ISBN: 978-1600858475. Photographs by Burcu Avsar. Charts and Schematics by Jean Moss.
Great Little Gifts to Knit has a subtitle, 30 Quick and Colorful Patterns and the photos are enticing and beautifully done, pulling you on to see just how difficult or easy that lovely pair of mittens, hat, shawl, or sweater really is to knit. The patters are arranged in four sections: Baby, Hers, His, and Home. There’s far more patterns in Hers than in any of the other sections.
There are patterns for beginner, intermediate, and advance knitters. There’s a fairly comprehensive tips and techniques section and some of the patterns focus on a technique such as intarsia, shadow knitting, knitting in the round, Fair Isle, chart reading, and twisted stitches. A beginning knitter could learn a lot of new techniques/skills by simply knitting one of everything in the book.
These patterns are, in my opinion, a step up from most books of gift patterns in that there are a lot of items I’d really like to knit in this book. My bias is toward simple classic items with texture, color, or both. Though there’s also a good mix of items you’d have to concentrate on such as the Fair Isle child sweater, and then ones that you could take with you and knit while listening or being sociable because it has lots of easy to remember pattern sections.
All the patterns in the books were done with Rowan yarns which are lovely, beautiful yarns that can be a bit pricey for those on a budget. Moss includes the gauge that should be achieve for a successful result. She also specifies when gauge is not important. So, don’t skip knitting a gauge swatch if you chose to use a different yarn. There’s also a small section in the appendix to help you choose a substitute yarn for your project. There are also a few projects that could probably be done with left-over yarn from your stash such as the bean bags.
At first I thought the major drawback was that the time frames were listed as one day, weekend, or vacation. Since we don’t know the length of time in each of those units devoted to knitting it is difficult to say how long they would take. On reflection, I come to the conclusion that this lets you take as much time as you need without developing a complex about your knitting speed — or lack thereof. My problem is that I usually knit while doing something else like watching a DVD or even reading, so I’m really a slow knitter — at least I never ever get anything done within the time frame given in books.
This is definitely a book worth looking at because it just might surprise you with its variety of projects and the opportunity to try new techniques.