Carefree Clothes for Girls: 20 Patterns for Outdoor Frocks, Playdate Dresses, and More (Make Good: Crafts + Life) By Junko Okawa. Trumpeter; 1 edition (October 13, 2009).

Felting for Baby: 25 Warm and Woolly Projects for the Little Ones in Your Life (Make Good: Crafts + Life) By Saori Yamazaki. Trumpeter; 1 edition (October 13, 2009).

The latest additions in the make good series (Japanese craft books published in English by Trumpeter) are 2 books for parents or those who love to make things for children.

Felting for baby has instructions and patterns to make lovely tiny felted shoes, felted teddy bears, hand puppets and other cute accessories with lots of adorable little details. The best thing really about this book is the exquisite detailed photos of the felting process, and includes both wet and needle felting techniques. A treasure of a book.

Carefree clothes for girls is filled with adorable romantic and rustic clothing for active little girls. Some outfits are more practical than others – depends on how many trees your little girl likes to climb. However these outfits are so gorgeous with some beautiful detailing – such as raw edges, buttons and hand stitching, antique lace and found fabrics, layers of fabric, the use of natural raw unbleached linens and simple cottons. The designs are not difficult, a-line styles, ruffled skirts, square front bodices, and wrap-over tunics. This is such a sweet, sentimental, romantic book of designs for little girls – and mothers who love to dress up their little girls. [You can download full size patterns of the designs from Make Good Crafts Website + download a couple of sample projects.]

Nicky Epstein’s Signature Scarves: Dazzling Designs to Knit by Nicky Epstein published by Nicky Epstein Books (July 1, 2008).

I always thought of scarves as something you used to teach a person new to knitting how to knit, and to achieve a quick result that would encourage them to go on to build up skills. But this book, changed my mind about that limited view of scarves.

The colourful ‘Majestic Fair Isle’ if worn with a coat when commuting or on a cold winter’s morning, would make one feel very smart while wearing it. The ‘Patchwork Floral’ and ‘Winter Roses’ scarves make for fun designs – for a little knitting playtime.

The pattern designs in this book include so many different knitting styles and levels of skills with endless inspiration – including cables, fair isles, applied designs, felting etc – there are many felted designs – which I love but if you are not interested in felting your hand knitting then this book may not be for you.

The illustrations are very clear and detailed. There is a good beginner knit section and a section on making embellishments. Altogether I think it is an extremely interesting knitting book – and I highly recommend it.

About the reviewer: Janette spends her retirement working on all things yarn related. When not knitting, crocheting, felting or spinning she is slowly doing up an old weaving loom and plans to have a go on that as soon as she possibly can.

from resurrection fern

painted fish studio gives us this simple pattern to knit and felt these adorable little bowls [via crafter-holic]

Shibori Knits: The Art of Exquisite Felted Knits by Gina Wilde, published by Potter Craft (August 26, 2008).

What a gorgeous cover, I was really drawn into this book by the hat that is featured on the cover. And indeed there are some really fabulous projects within the book too. But first up, what is shibori knitting? Shibori is basically a shape resist method from Japan used to dye textiles. This shape resist method has been borrowed to work with knitwear to create new possibilities for 3D design.

The fabulous and scary thing about the shibori shape resist method is the process of chance encounters, even when you follow the directions exactly it will not turn out the same – due to all the variables involved – heat, yarn, washing – but it is this process of chance that makes this method exciting and interesting.

Basically shape resist involves using hard objects such as wooden blocks, marbles or golf balls and tying the fabric/wool up around the objects, then washing/fulling and when the material dries and the objects are removed it leaves an interesting texture and 3D shape. All of this and more is explained in the introduction to this book: Types of yarns, understanding the process, how to swatch etc.

There are some really lovely simple experiments in shape resist with marbles and stones and other resist methods such as sewing in pleats leaving some wonderful organic textures. I found that some of the designs are more successful than others, and the term ’shibori’ has been used quite loosely with many of felted knitwear projects. But over all it is a luscious book with lots to inspire.

Link, worth checking out other posts at this blog, a lot of tutorials.

Great idea for all those bits and pieces of left over wool. Link

Link

– If you have any tutorials you’ve created or found please feel free to email them
to whipup.tutorials[@]gmail.com

This is not your normal pattern book (though it does have 20 patterns) the real attraction is the inside view of the ten Fibre Farms and the different fibres they produce. (book website link)

Shear Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, Twenty Patterns, and Miles of Yarn by Joan Tapper (Author), Gale Zucker (Photographer), published by Potter Craft (April 15, 2008).

Each chapter concentrates on a different fibre farm, I found each and every one of them totally enthralling. Anne from Meadowcroft Farm in Maine is working on a degree in Agriculture and Resource Economics while her husband restores the old house on their farm. She says running the farm is “part inspiration and part planning”. She loves to create systems and has essentially taken on the entire production process: growing her feed, selling livestock, selling wool and products like sweaters and blankets that create piecework jobs for home knitters and showcase her hand spun and hand dyed yarn. The images of her hand dyed wool left me wide eyed. She goes into some detail of the dying of the wool in that she carries salt water from the river up to the farm. She does quite a bit of experimenting with some natural dyes and some authentic aniline carbon based dyes, though she still favours indigo which she grows. But even with the detail she has gone into, it has certainly wet my appetite to read more. She offers two patterns which show off her use of dyes. I truly loved reading this chapter and wanted a whole book on each – in fact I wanted to jump on a plane and go visit!

This image is just one of the lovely patterns featured in the book – Montana Tunic –

Each of the ten chapters is about a different farm, different animals, different fibres and different skills and experiences in different areas in the USA. Each chapter, is a sample of the lives each of the people live on their so different properties. These are people living out their dream, something we are
not all able to do.

Each farm offers a couple of patterns from bags to adults and children’s cardigans, shawls and berets and socks all from different animal fibres. I personally liked the Mariposa Cardigan for a child from the Victory Ranch, and simply loved the photo of the child with the alpacas. The Welsh Travelling Socks from Autumn House Farm would be an inspiration for anyone to even learn to knit and possibly dye their own wool as well. For those who like weaving Kai Ranch show some hand dyeing and a photo of one of their lovely natural coloured rugs from mohair fleece.

Its a book I would recommend to anyone who themselves wanted their own little corner of the world and to those who enjoy various crafts and seeing what others have made and possibly make themselves its certainly inspiring.

About the reviewer: Janette lives in suburban Australia living out her own dream in her retirement. She spins, knits, and surrounds herself in all sorts of fibre related crafts.

Shibori Knitted Felt: 20 Plus Designs to Knit, Bead, and Felt by Alison Crowther-Smith published by Interweave Press (April 1, 2008)

This is a beautiful book, Interweave always do such a great job in presenting their books. Beautiful photography and simple styling that show off the classic designs in their full glory.

The shibori aspect comes in by using the same techniques used in traditional shibori dyeing, tying, folding and scrunching and then applying these techniques when fulling a knitted item to create unusual and interesting effects.

The projects in the book are all suitable for intermediate knitters with some also suited to beginners. Projects include a bobble cushion, a pleated scarf, an artist ‘islands scarf’ which can be made as a shibori felted sampler suitable to experiment with different techniques. There are also some lovely bags, placemats and brooches too. Lots here to experiment with.