No-Bull Book Review: One More Skein, by Leigh Radford

I am horrendously overdue on book reviews, and now that the fall season is really underway, new books are being released at a furious pace. I'm going to try to catch up a bit, so let's get started with one of the new releases from Stewart Tabori & Chang: One More Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit by Leigh Radford (MSRP $19.95; available for $13.57 by clicking on the link).


Leigh Radford has already written some must-have books for knitters. I really enjoyed Alterknits (STC 2005) and the sequel, AlterKnits Felt (STC 2008); both were stylish, creative and beautifully presented. Radford's previous small-project book, One Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit or Crochet (STC 2006) was extremely popular for its quick-knitting yet fashionable projects that, as the title suggests, only require a single skein of yarn to complete. So it's not a big surprise that Radford chose to write a sequel.

Nash's Garter-Stitch Baby Sweater

One More Skein has a lot in common with its predecessor: thirty projects, all knitting, nearly all for small (meaning no adult sweaters) projects.* But Radford discusses in the introduction how enrollment at art school has changed her design sensibility somewhat:

Early on in my classes I began exploring how I might incorporate knitting into my paintings, for example, by knitting my own canvas out of laceweight linen. And now when I review the collection of projects that I've put together for this book, I clearly see that what I am learning in art class is seeping into and re-energizing my knitting.

Radford notes that while her first book included only projects that could be completed with one skein of yarn, One More Skein takes a less restrictive approach, allowing projects knit with one or two skeins of yarn (again, the single exception is the afghan, which is made from multiple leftover balls of yarn in many colors).

Radford divides the projects into four chapters; let's take a closer look at them.

"Put It On," as the name implies, contains an assortment of adult wearables: the ubiquitous fingerless gloves, an earflap cap, a lightweight linen cap with ribbon embellishment, a felted wool/alpaca cuff or bracelet, a bulky cowl, a smart-looking men's scarf knit in other-way-around rib;

Horizontal Rib Scarf

two versions of a striking "circle and stripe" scarf (a regular scarf and a shorter "cravat" version), and a jewelry set of necklace, braclet and earrings.

"Dress Up Baby" contains six quick-knitting items for babies: knit pants (thank you from the bottom of my heart for not calling them "soakers"; nothing puts me off my breakfast like the image of urine-soaked wool), a charming garter-stitch baby sweater with a tab closure, a cute (if impractical) "capelet", which is a kind of wrap designed to slip over baby's head, without sleeves or other closures,

Sadie's Capelet

another pair of baby pants, a mohair baby kimono, and a pair of "baby legwarmers."

"Take It With You" contains patterns for simple bags: drawstring gift bags, a sling tote or purse,

Summer Satchel

a small accessory bag with a zipper and lining, a felted bag/purse, a silk ribbon clutch, and a felted handbag (my favorite in this chapter).

Connected Squares Felted Handbag

The last chapter, "Make Your House A Home," contains home dec items: a cute nubby felted cat toy (gorgeous cat in the photo, by the way), a hot water bottle cover, a button-cover pillow designed for filling with dried lavender and rice (Radford microwaves hers for an alternative to a heating pad), a patchwork blanket made from leftover balls and odds and ends of worsted weight yarn, pillow covers, a pleated "vase sleeve" (Radford instructs you to slip it over a plain vase for a new look),

Pleated Vase Sleeve

small felted bowls, linen placemats, and a linen serving tray (fabric stiffener is used to make the tray sturdy enough to hold items).

Basic Pillows

As usual, all the technical aspects of the book are top-notch, including lots of lovely yarnie photos by photographer John Mulligan. The book just teems with color and beautiful images of yarn; even the inside covers include full-color yarn pr0n shots. Most projects are shown in more than one photo, and some are shown in different colors and variations (e.g. long and short versions of the fingerless gloves), which isn't always feasible when a book contains highly complex or labor-intensive projects, but is a terrific bonus when the book contains smaller projects. The layout (by Anna Christian) is elegant and coordinates beautifully with the projects. There are a few schematics and charts where appropriate, but most of the projects are small and simple enough not to need them. The back of the book contains a few special techniques, like how to knit I-cord, and instructions for felting.

Circle & Stripe Scarf

Looking at the tallies, you'll find 30 projects, broken down into 6 baby items; 14 items for adults (mostly women); and 10 home dec items. Baby items are mainly sized for tots one year and under. The adult items (no, not THOSE kind of adult items, you perves) vary; the earflap hat is thoughtfully written in a wide range of sizes from XXX-Small to Large (a size for everyone in the family!), the fingerless gloves come in S/M/L, and so on, with many, like scarves, not requiring sizing. The yarns used in the book tend to worsted weight and thicker, and range from workhorse wools like Cascade 220 to luxury ones like Alchemy Bamboo.

So should you buy this book? If your book budget is limited, I'd suggest considering two things. First is the simple question of whether the patterns, lovely as they are, are to your taste. Second, think about the kind of knitter you are. If you want sweater patterns, well, there aren't any in here. If your stash consists of lots of skinny yarns, these patterns won't work unless you alter size or knit your stash double-, even triple-, stranded. If you like really complex or technically challenging knitting, again, that's not what these projects are designed to provide. On the other hand, if you are looking for some simple but elegant ways to knit up your stash, want some inspiration for holiday gift-knitting, and/or like easy and quick-knitting projects, you'll probably be very pleased with One More Skein.


*There is one large project, an afghan designed to use up leftover balls of worsted-weight yarn.

Holiday knitting report

Well, my feeble attempt at holiday knitting has come to an end. Not wanting to tax myself, I did not assign myself a long list of holiday knitting. I had ideas about things I might want to knit, but not pressure; if I didn't knit them, too bad. Instead, I chose to assign Christmas as the sort-of-arbitrary deadline for a single project, this baby ensemble:



This sweater is a special gift for one of Elvis' former teachers. He had Miss G. for second and third grade, and they got along beautifully. We learned from the school grapevine Miss G. lost her husband to brain cancer at a shockingly young age, and this made us sad. We were delighted for her when she remarried (thus becoming Mrs. C) and even more delighted to learn that she was expecting a baby boy in January. So I knit up the jacket, while newly-minted knitter Elvis knit the hat.



A special gift for a special baby. Specifics are in my Ravelry projects list.

Cavalcade of baby sweaters

We seem to be hitting another phase where people we know are having babies. Lots of babies. Two of Tom's coworkers either just had or are about to have babies, both of them girls, so I have two finished objects to show you.

This one is a little short-sleeved jacket from a Sirdar booklet.


The yarn is Paton's Silk/Bamboo, and while it is lusciously silky and has a great shine, and is a nice luxurious yarn for a baby gift, I'm not sure I'd use it again for a pattern with lots of garter stitch. The pattern was written for a yarn that also prominently contained bamboo, but I think the lack of elasticity in the yarn I used made for every teeny inconsistency in my knitting showing up in the garter stitch edgings. (Yep, I did block it, too.)

Sometimes I get in the mood where I just want to follow directions for a pattern rather than figuring it out myself. Even then, I sometimes find myself second-guessing the way it's written. This pattern was written so that you cast on a bunch of stitches for the front left, and then put some of them on a holder after the first row, and knit up the stockinette portion of the front first. Then you go back and put the 10 or 12 stitches from the holder onto a slightly smaller needle and knit the garter stitch edging separately.

I came really close to bagging this and knitting it all together, just doing the first 10 or 12 stitches in garter stitch and switching to st st for the rest of the row, but then I thought "Hey, don't be a know-it-all. Maybe there's some reason not apparent to you now for why they do it this way."

There wasn't. When it came time for the finishing, I had to seam the garter stitch edging that runs up the front to the front, which irked the shite out of me. I tried to figure out what possessed the designer to do it this way, and the only thing I could think of was that s/he really, really wanted to use a smaller needle size for the garter stitch edging than for the stockinette portion. Feh. If I did this again, I'd knit it all in one piece. And I'd use a yarn with enough wool in it that the elasticity made up for the switch between garter and stockinette.

Lesson learned: It doesn't always pay to be humble.

The second jacket was a much more satisfying knit.


Huge thanks to Liz K. for suggesting this pattern a long time ago as a quick and easy baby gift. It's from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts and has the virtue of being knit in the round. All you do is graft the underarm stitches together -- no seaming required. It's so easy that you don't even have to do buttonholes; you use little beads that will fit between the stitches on the placket as "buttons." (I'm not convinced the beads will really hold the placket closed but it doesn't matter given the style of the sweater.)

This one was knit in the old stand-by, Plymouth Encore, for wash-and-dry ease. A big thumbs-up to this pattern -- although make sure you find the errata for it, as there is a substantially-revised version of it that changes the way the raglan decreases are done.

A scoop: Vintage Baby Knits

One of the extremely fun things about TNNA is getting a sneak preview of some of the wonderful yarns, books, fibers and other knitting/crochet accoutrements that will be introduced this coming fall. I'll be giving you some previews of what's coming for fall in the next few weeks, beginning today, with my first real-live, GKIYH scoop: a preview of a knitting book that is coming next spring.

At TNNA, I happened to run into Kristen Rengren (known to many of you as “Retroknit” on Ravelry). I’ve been corresponding with her a while but this was our first face-to-face meeting. You know how when you have an on-line acquaintance with someone, and you think you’d get along wonderfully in person, but you aren’t 100% positive because, well, sometimes people sound normal on teh Interwebs and then when you meet them in real life, they’re a little cuckoo?

That is NOT what happened with Kristen. She is every bit as charming and funny in real life as she is on-line. (Phew.) I cannot vouch for whether she thought I was a little cuckoo, however.

When I first saw Kristen, she was walking around TNNA with a suitcase. She was at the Mission Falls booth, and she opened up her suitcase and it was filled with some truly gorgeous baby stuff. I knew Kristen was working on a book and I figured it'd be good, since Melanie Falick is her editor, but I had no idea how adorable her designs were until she showed me some of the sample garments. With the permission of her editor, she was able to share a few photographs with me:

I was especially intrigued by the fact that Kristen's designs were inspired by vintage baby patterns from the twenties through the fifties. Here's how Kristen describes them:

The book is 42 all original vintage patterns, retooled to varying degrees for gauge, size, fit - a few I basically just reknit and called it a day, but most required serious re-working in some form or another (and a couple patterns were so bad that we just threw the original pattern out and reverse engineered the garment from scratch.) The book has tons of sweaters, plus booties, caps, soakers, bonnets, toys, etc -- enough to keep any new mom more than occupied for the first year or two. The size range is 0 to 24, although most patterns come in 3 or 4 sizes only - so some garments go 0-12 and others go 6-18 or 12-24.

I love vintage patterns and I love that Kristen has done all the work for us: instead of being instructed to find a skein of “Glossila” or 12 oz. of a fine cotton and some small whalebone knitting pins, you will find yarns that you know, and modern lingo, gauge instruction, etc.


And since Melanie Falick is editing it, you know it’s going to be a gorgeous book.

I don’t think the book is on Amazon for pre-orders yet, but rest assured that as soon as it is, and as soon as I have pre-ordered my own personal copy, I will post the link.

Oh yeah, did you notice that Kristen is putting the ridiculously large number of forty-two (42!) patterns in the book? And fine yarn fans: many of the designs use the skinny yarns that we know and love. This is definitely one to look for next spring.