(The Countryman Press) by the Green Mountain Spinnery Cooperative.
Green Mountain Spinnery, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, was founded in 1981, in Putney, Vermont. Its founders wanted to create a business that, yes, produced beautiful yarn, but did so in a way that was environmentally conscious and supported small-scale wool producers. It's probably safe to say that GMS succeeded beyond its expectations. In its first years, GMS offered only one basic wool yarn in five colors. GMS currently offers 99 different yarns* (hence the book's title), using fibers such as wool, cotton, alpaca and mohair, and including organic lines; they produced a very successful and beautiful book
, published in 2003; and more recently, after the majority of the founders reached readiness for retirement, transitioned to become a co-op -- a business enterprise owned and run by its workers.
Retro Ribbed Turtleneck
My experience with GMS yarns has been uniformly positive. I like that they consist of mainly natural fibers -- wool, cotton, kid mohair, alpaca, (I'm not intending to start a debate about whether tencel is considered a "natural" fiber or not; it is derived from wood pulp, but requires extruding; decide for yourself what you want to call it). They have beautiful palettes and their patterns incorporate interesting techniques like stranded knitting and cabling. I like that they strive to have a minimal effect on the environment, and I like that they support small sheep and other fiber producers in the U.S.
Turkish Rose Mittens
So with all that background out of the way, let's take a look at 99 Yarns And Counting to see what's inside.
Meadow Lark Lace Scarf
The basics: the book is paperback, but oversized (a little bit larger than a typical magazine, oriented landscape instead of portrait). It's got lots of color photographs and the page quality is nice. MSRP is $24.95 (purchase it via the link above for $16.37 at the time of this writing). You'll find about 120 pages and a whopping 36 patterns inside.
The book begins with an introduction to Green Mountain Spinnery. With understandable pride, the book describes a bit about the history of GMS, then tells about its transformation to a worker's co-operative. Next, the reader is taken on a "tour" of the shop and mill, going through the processes of scouring fleece, spinning it, skeining and dyeing and plying it. The introduction section finishes with a two-page description of GMS patterns, then two more pages listing some definitions and techniques used in them. There are lots of sheep and wool photos, as well as more casual photos of the garments (and I do like the fact that the models are real people, with real bodies rather than model ones -- and I also like the way that doggies were included in some of the shots).
East Putney Aran
The patterns are written by Maureen Clark, Eric Robinson and Margaret Atkinson, who are all members of the GMS co-op, as well as Melissa Johnson and Cap Sease, who are staff members. If you are a GMS aficionado, the book notes that some of the patterns have been published previously in individual form (though if you're a GMS fan, that might not bother you, since this is such a pretty book).
Melissa's Hat
For those of you keeping track, rough tallies are here (note that some of the patterns are flexible in size or are designed so that a size small will fit a child while a large will fit an adult; the overlap means that the tallies will add up to more than the 36 patterns advertised on the cover):
- Patterns designed for kids: 15
- Patterns designed for adults: 26
- Home: 1
Juliet Shell
Breaking it down by type of item:
- Sweaters for babies & kids = 8
- Hats for babies & kids = 7 (but some adult hats may fit bigger kids, too)
- Sweaters for adults = 9 (includes cardigans and pullovers)
- Hats for adults = 8, plus the bag can also be worn as a hat
- Vests/shells = 3
- Socks = 2
- One each of shawl, scarf, afghan and bag
- Mittens = 2
Leafy Lace Shawl
If you are interested in the guy vs. gal vs. unisex ratio, I would say about 10 of the patterns, mainly sweaters, are pretty clearly women's garments, while about 16 or so could be considered unisex. (Again, it's hard to quantify these because to some extent, it depends on your taste and color choices; also, a pickier guy might want some simple modifications, like making the neckline higher on the potentially-unisex Istanbul Aran.)
Istanbul Aran
While there are some simpler, mainly-stockinette patterns included (like a basic pullover sweater, sized from child through adult), many of the patterns feature stranded colorwork or cabling. None of them appear incredibly difficult, but inexperienced knitters or those who want simpler, plainer patterns should take note. You'll find a mix of drop shoulder, raglan and set-in sleeves, even a yoke or two.
Size ranges are generous. Sweater patterns start at around 34 to 38 inches finished chest measurement (sorry, uber-petite ones, although at least one sweater has a 30-inch finished chest) and extend to 44, 48, sometimes even 52 inches finished chest measurement. Children's sweaters include some smaller sizes (for the 6- to 12-month age range) and in several cases, go right up to size 10 or 12. Some items, like hats, include a small/medium/large that should accomodate larger kids as well as adults.
Evening Shadows Afghan
Yarn weight tends to hover around the DK to worsted weight range, since the majority of GMS yarns knit in this range. The sock yarn is a regular sock (fingering) weight, but only the scarf (which can be expanded to shawl size) and the two sock patterns use the GMS sock yarn. Given that most of the items are knit in very commonly-found gauges (e.g. 4.5 sts to the inch, or 5.5 sts to the inch), it would be very easy to subtitute yarns from your stash for the vast majority of these projects -- although GMS yarns are very lovely.
Great Meadows Hat
To sum up, then, I give 99 Yarns and Counting two thumbs up for a collection of classically-styled patterns, using pretty, natural yarns in interesting ways, with a generous number of patterns, and options for just about everyone in the family. GMS is scheduled to have a booth at Rhinebeck next week, and also has on-line shopping at its website here.
* In reaching the 99 tally, GMS counts each color of each yarn base as one individual yarn, i.e., there are not 99 different yarn bases.
Photos by Marti Stone, reprinted courtesy of the Countryman Press, a division of W.W. Norton & Co.
by Leigh Radford (MSRP $19.95; available for $13.57 by clicking on the link).
(STC 2005) and the sequel, 
(STC 2008); both were stylish, creative and beautifully presented. Radford's previous small-project book, 
(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.
by Matthew Hall. This book was recommended by a commenter during one of my last book reports -- and I did enjoy it. The main characters are Sharon, a psych-ward nurse who is recovering from the death of her husband and son in a car accident, and Bill, a patient in her ward who strikes Sharon as unusually intelligent, albeit seriously disturbed. The relationship between Bill and Sharon is complex; as it turns out, Bill is a brilliant guy who uses a sort of Robin-Hood-inspired terrorism to make New York better for everyday people, and has pretended to be schizophrenic to avoid being arrested for breaking and entering. Sharon feels a connection to Bill, although she is bothered by the violent means he uses to accomplish his ends, and doesn't know where his sanity ends and his underlying madness begins. When Bill hatches a complex but well-meaning scheme to finance a large-scale community development center, at the expense of a Donald-Trump-like real estate mogul, Sharon decides to use her instinctive rapport with Bill to help the FBI stop him. It's a fairly quick read, with a fast-moving plot, and an unusual spin on the typical thriller.
by Karin Fossum. Scandinavian police inspectors, part II: This one's set in Norway, and thoroughly creeped me out, not because it was graphic or salacious, but because it was thoughtful and nuanced. The crime to be solved is the murder and molestation of a young boy. Fossum shows how the crime has a ripple effect in the small community where the boy lived -- the effect on the victim's teacher and classmates, his mother's attempts to cope, even the way that discovering the body alters the status quo for the married couple who happened across the corpse while hiking. Inspector Sejer must also contend with the disappearance of a second boy, while examining his own ideas about ped0philia. (Believe me, this book does not defend or glamorize ped0philia, I'd have no patience for that, but it does talk about how difficult it is to discover what "makes" someone into a ped0phile and how hard it is for convicted offenders to avoid recidivism.)
by Valerie Laken. I read a review of this book in the NY Times Book Review, and I was a bit intrigued since it was set in Ann Arbor, where I went to school for a few years. It's the story of a couple, Kate and Stuart, who buy a somewhat dilapidated old house. Kate becomes fascinated -- obsessed? -- with renovating the house and plunges into the intense work of gutting the house. Stuart is ambivalent about the house, and as it turns out, ambivalent about being an adult. When Stuart is laid off, their marriage fractures. At the same time, Kate starts to learn more about the history of the house; it turns out that twenty years ago, someone was killed there. I thought that Laken did a great job of making the house itself a kind of character in the book, winding Kate and Stuart's story -- and the story of Walker, who lived in the house at the time of the killing -- around it. Some of the reviews describe this as a ghost story, but I think it's more a story about how houses can develop a kind of atmosphere and character of their own that seems to transcend the people living in them.
by Johan Theorin. Yes, another brooding Scandinavian mystery.... am I in a brooding Scandinavian mystery rut? But they're just so good -- and this one is no exception. The main character is Julia Davidsson, whose young son Jens went missing in 1972. Twenty years of grief and uncertainty have taken their toll on Julia. One day she gets a call from her elderly father, who has just received a small sandal in the mail. The sandal looks just like the ones Jens was wearing when he disappeared. Julia heads north, to a rural Swedish island to see the shoe; her father tells her that together, they'll ask around and see if they can learn anything about Jens' fate. The book slowly but inexorably leads to an exciting finish (I thought I knew where it was going but I was wrong), and Theorem mixes flashbacks from the past -- the post-war years through 1972 -- with the action to keep things interesting.
by Rennie Airth. Airth based this post-World-War-I era novel on his late uncle's wartime scrapbook. If you like the Charles Todd books about Ian Rutledge, you'll want to give this one a try. Like the Todd books, the main character is a WWI vet who is haunted by what he experienced during the war. But John Madden is a bit more down-to-earth and less emotionally traumatized than Todd's hero. Madden is sent to figure out who is behind the gruesome murder of a family in the Surrey countryside, and comes to the conclusion that the murderer has done this before. The way that Madden analyzes and tracks a serial killer before the development of modern forensics and even forensic psychology is fascinating.
by Deanna Raybourn, is the third book in the Lady Julia Grey series, and was definitely a lighter -- though still suspenseful -- read. Set in Victorian England, we see Lady Julia off on a trip to wild and remote Yorkshire, ostensibly to help Nicholas Brisbane, the mysterious man she loves, settle into an old manor home. Her wacky sister accompanies her, as chaperone -- and comic relief. The story features suitably wild moors, the mysterious family whose ancestors built the manor house, a gypsy fortuneteller, and all sorts of romantic drama. Thoroughly enjoyable and perfect for the beach.
by Rhys Bowen. Another in the frothy, beach-reading vein, not as well-written as the Raybourne series, but still enjoyable. The protagonist is Georgie, an English lady 38th in line to the British throne. She's got no money and no job, and her dopey brother, who owns the family estate in Scotland, doesn't have any cash to spare. Georgie doesn't want to get married for convenience's sake, so she heads off to London to try to make her fortune. She stays in the shuttered family home in a posh neighborhood, but has no way to support herself. So she starts a maid service for noblewomen who need their city homes aired out when they return to the city from their country estates. When Georgie returns home one day, she is horrified to find a dead body in the bathtub, and her brother is the prime suspect. Hijinks ensue as George tries to solve the murder and clear her brother's name... and will she hook up with the dashing but impoverished Irish lord she keeps running into?
by Peter Abrahams, was a thriller in which a cop-turned-private-investigator finds himself in the hospital with brain cancer. The cancer surgery has caused him to loses pieces of his memory -- including any recall of the weekend before he was admitted to the hospital. He tries to reconstruct the missing portion of his memory, and solve the missing persons case he was working on, although he isn't quite sure what memories are real or what they mean. This was a quick and fairly easy read, and although I didn't think it was terribly hard to figure out where the plot was going, it was a decent read -- if a bit Lifetime-tv-movie-ish.
by Steig Larsson was the follow-up in a trilogy of thrillers by the late Swedish journalist Steig Larsson. I liked this installment even better than the first (which I thought took a long time to get going). This book focuses more on Lizbeth Salander, the troubled but kick-ass character who played such an important role in the previous book. Salander -- an anti-establishment computer hacker -- is suspected of several murders and needs to clear her name, by conventional or unconventional methods. Suspenseful and exciting.
by John Harvey. I stumbled across a list of the best detective novels of all time, and the series of Charlie Resnick novels by John Harvey, were mentioned in it. This is a book featuring a different detective, Frank Elder, who has retired from the police force and moved to an isolated cottage on the Cornish coast. Elder is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a girl fourteen years ago, and when the prime suspect in her death is released from prison (after being convicted of a similar crime), Elder finds himself again obsessed with solving the 14-year-old crime. A solid detective story with a suspenseful ending.
, which will be released by Interweave Press any day now.
