Book Review: Knitting 24/7

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Knitting 24/7

Author: Veronik Avery

Author's web page: http://veronikavery.com/

Date: 2010

Publisher: Stewart Tabori & Chang

ISBN: 978-1-58479-844-6

Length: 128 pages

Illustrations: lots of color photos, graphic schematics showing proportions of knitted garments

Quote: “I always take a project with me wherever I go...I often have many projects going at once, but I make sure they are diverse in size and complexity to suit a variety of circumstances.”

Thus Veronik Avery echoes what knitters were saying at Stitches Fair and similar venues. Dozens of books of beautiful sweater and afghan patterns were on the market...but sometimes a knitter wants an instant gratification project, like a thick winter cap or a thin lacy scarf. And sometimes a knitter wants to use an elaborate oldfashioned pattern, but use it on a project small enough that the knitter can realistically plan to finish it this year. And sometimes a knitter wants a pattern that will use up, in a suitably eye-catching way, the small amount of expensive yarn the knitter could afford or could find at the end of a season, or the scraps from the knitter's last few sweaters or blankets. Avery was neither the first nor the last designer/knitter to devote a whole new book to Everything But More Designer Sweaters—and where's her pattern for a cell phone cover?--but evidently the Knitting Universe had room for all of those collections of hat, scarf, sock, mitten, bag, shawl, and quirky one-off designer garment patterns.

What you get in this book are patterns for:

2 pairs of mittens

4 pairs of socks

1 (frankly dowdy-looking) skirt. (If I want to call attention to my backside, I'd wear short shorts. A skirt should swish and swirl and keep mosquitoes off my ankles...and knitted skirts worthy of the name can be made, but they're not quickie projects.)

1 vest

3 scarves

2 shawls

1 pair wrist warmers

4 hats

1 pillow cover

2 bags

1 bed-jackety sort of thing, not the usual sleeves-plus-back-yoke thing called a “shrug,” but it's called a shrug because it's not a full-sized Sleeved Circular Shawl; it looks pretty on the model and as if it'd be fun to wear on crisp, not cold, mornings.

1 extremely plain, frankly not very flattering pullover sweater

2 pairs slippers

1 tea cozy

1 lace camisole

1 pair fingerless mitts

1 headband

1 bookmark (yes, bookmark)

1 pair gloves

Projects are classified as “A.M.,” “P.M.,” and “Weekend”; if there's any logical basis for these classifications, it eludes me, because there are quickie, short-but-fancy, and long-but-simple projects in each category. You know when you knit and it's up to you to decide which projects need to occupy a goodly amount of space for a goodly amount of time, maybe in a big knitting bag/box/basket beside your bed, and whether you normally have room to dig out those 14” straight needles on the bus, and whether you find it convenient to knit on a set of short double-pointed needles anywhere.

None of these projects calls for frequent reference to an elaborate chart. Several projects do involve charted patterns and/or shaping, but care seems to have been taken to choose projects for which the instructions will seem intuitive and easy to memorize—at least for the experienced knitter who wants to knit a hat on a commuter train. (After starting the decreases with “K 10, K2Tog,” the experienced knitter knows that the next decrease row will be “K 9, K2tog,” followed by “K 8, K2Tog,” and so on.)

Knitting pattern books tend to stay "in print" longer than novels do. You can still buy Knitting 24/7 as a new book, and if you have the money you should, to show due respect. However, Amazon is showing more used than new copies on the market, so yes, you can buy it here for $5 per book plus $5 per package (two, maybe three, copies of this book would fit into one package) plus $1 per online payment, and from this total of $10 (not counting Paypal's processing fee) we'll send $1 to Avery or a charity of her choice. 

A book that seems like an especially good choice to add to a package, along with Knitting 24/7, is Avery's collection of designer sweater patterns: