Great, Beautiful Book for Knitting Cables!

I went to the library a couple of days ago. Honestly, I was going to get a particular book which shall remain nameless because I’ll blog about it later. I always try to go online and reserve books at the library; that way, I don’t “waste” my time looking all over the place and leaving with an armload of books that I won’t have time to read (or even look at.) BUT … my online sign-in wasn’t working so I went in without a hold list! Scary!

I didn’t find the book that I thought I wanted (and I’ve since asked a lovely librarian to fix my sign-on problem) but instead found two wonderful books on cables and Aran knitting.

I’ve blogged before about my love of cables. You’ve likely seen a couple of my projects with cables. I won’t talk about the sweater that I knit for my sweetie that came out too large … I’m talking waaaaay too large … and I did swatch it. I guess I just thought he was bigger than he really is. Anyway…

Cables Untangled by Melissa Leapman is a great book; especially so for those of you who may be afraid of cables. She provides some great tips and good illustrations for making the basic cables and increasing and decreasing, etc. I love some of the patterns in the book, most of which are sweaters but she provides patterns for different weights of yarn – bulky knitting is so much faster and if you’re new at cables, it’s a great place to start! In the back, she has a bunch of great color photographs of different cable panels, too. They’re so pretty, it makes me want to just sit down and knit each one … like I have time for that! 🙂

I swatched a new project, a sweater for my little boy (dog, that is) and will start on that this afternoon. He’s getting a simple sweater made from yarn that I bought at the Farmer’s Market in Ithaca, New York at least 7 years ago (and maybe longer). It’s a lovely double-stranded wool with one strand a light blue and one strand a natural brownish-grey (or greyish-brown). I’m knitting it on size 8 (US) needles and it will have cables down the back. When designing and knitting for male dogs, you have got to take their “parts” into consideration. These adorable sweaters that I knit for my two dogs last summer are cute as can be. However, my little boy (in the green) tends to get his wet when he goes outside. Not a good thing! I’ll be posting pictures of the “Boogie Sweater” as I progress! I know he’ll love it – he likes to wear clothes. His sister … not so much!

More books and knitting stories tomorrow!

I’ve gone knitting!