Bristol Ivy

Bristol Ivy is a designer you may have encountered (on Ravelry, her most popular pattern has been posted as a project 751 times, and another has been favourited 10,220 times. If you're unused to Ravelry, a project is your own whack at a particular pattern. People can favourite your version of the pattern).

When I started knitting, lo these many years ago, I imagined knitting some wonderful three-dimensional weird angular yet curving Yohji Yamamoto-like garments ... never realising (a) it would take forever, (b) that might not be the designer I meant, maybe Rei Kawakaba?, and (c) isn't crochet better for that anyway? So I turned to more attainable hats and dishcloths, as one does.

And yet, I dreamed. I dreamed of just plunging in and experimenting with weird and unusual construction. What would happen if I did a whole bunch of yarnovers at once and then upon approaching them in the next round knit some together, dropped a few, knit the rest together, etc. What if I knit the next stitch together with some stitch, say, five rows below it? What would happen? And, the perennial question, what do short rows do? And do they get wider or narrower (it's confusing) and if so, why?

Bristol Ivy is a dreamer like me, but unlike me she appears to have found the time to try out all these experiments and more. Her book is approximately 1/4 musings and reports of her discoveries, and 3/4 patterns based on these discoveries. I still want to experiment for myself, but it can be a guided experimentation, based on her examples, rather than me blindly groping to some desired but ill-glimpsed effect.

So, highly recommended, as not-your-usual-book on knitting.

(Cribbed from my blog on knitting: www.unclestashley.com)

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).… (mehr)