Book Review: Knitter's Magazine #90

Title: Knitter’s Magazine #90, Spring 2008

Date: 2008

Publisher: XRX

Length: 104 pages

Illustrations: full-color photos mostly by Alexis Xenakis

Quote: “And in my night dreams, I cover the world in stripes...”

Each of the first hundred issues of Knitter’s had a theme. In this one the theme is color, from preposterous multicolor mixes to simple stripes.

Some people rate the effectiveness of craft magazines by the number of people a magazine inspires to rush out and buy things. On that criterion, knitting magazines that feature multicolor patterns aren’t likely to reach the top. Pattern designers are paid to design around the “novelty” yarns manufacturers offer to only a few specialty shops for only one season. Pattern magazine usually contain a few papers advertising the shops, often just one per State, where Americans can get the novelty yarns shown. The rest of the world may or may not be able to buy anything similar, although Greek-born Alexis Xenakis and British-born Elizabeth Zimmermann worked hard to make Knitter’s international. By the time readers notice a pattern and decide they want the novelty yarn, often the novelty yarn is gone forever.

Nevertheless, experienced knitters have fun with magazines like this one, because we know that we don’t have to have the original novelty yarn to knit a similar effect. We knit from our yarn stashes. In fact, stash knitting may offer more “creative” fun than shopping does.

Consider the garment shown on the cover of this magazine. Basically it’s a camisole with an awkward half-scarf top that won’t fit under a jacket. The model is wearing it as a summertime shirt, presumably next to her skin although real models seldom wear anything next to their actual skin. It’s knitted at 4 stitches to the inch, in a scratchy metallic-blend yarn. Do you know anybody who’d want to wear that kind of heavy, scratchy yarn next to their skin? I don’t. But aha! I happen to have some lightweight yarns in each of the colors that form the stripes in that cover sweater. Knitted together, with one strand of bright jellybean green and one strand of yellow, orange, purple, blue, teal, gold, or brown, and even bits of metallic glitter, the lightweight yarns will form similar shimmering stripes in a blanket that looks as much a treat as that cover sweater. Arguably it’ll be more of a treat for my eyes, since Xenakis photographed a pretty professional model, but I can admire my blanket in the back of their mother’s van, graced by the faces of some of The Nephews!

Does stash knitting offer anything to the knitter without a stash? Of course it does. Go to your local yarn shop and identify yourself. Stash knitters will probably be happy to share. For knitters living in cramped quarters, some yarn shops have been known to organize “stash parties,” where people with overflowing stash bins bring in bags of leftover yarn to share with people who want to try playing with colors and textures...

Need I mention that, although knitting magazines tend to present designs in the form of sweaters, you don’t have to knit them that way? Multicolor designs can be more fun to look at on a simple geometric shape, like a square cushion or rectangular blanket, rather than on a human body. Stripes that go around and around the waist are among the presents nieces least want to receive from aunts; stripes that go around a bag won’t make anyone look fat. A purple sweater with see-through stripes may seem like a bad joke (few human skin tones really harmonize with purple), but a purple scarf with see-through stripes would be fun to wear. You can have tons of fun with the multicolor designs in this magazine even if your family want to wear the sweater shapes knitted in solid black.

I’ve had fun with this magazine over the ten years since a customer bought it for me to make her version of the “Sand Bars” T-shirt sweater on page 72. Since then, this web site has displayed a gorgeous stash-knitted variation on the “Faded Ribbons” sweater, made as a more practical jacket. (The same selection from the same stash also went into the Monet Blanket, now sold.) I’ve also gathered up stash yarns to knit the “Sea Grass” T-shirt sweater, and used the “crown stitch” from the skirt of Rick Mondragon’s preposterous “Royal Cadet” sweater pattern as a band of texture in a blanket. I’ve not found a man who wants to model Ginger Luters’ “Zigzag Bricks” sweater, but the design has been begging me to knit it as a “boyfriend sweater look” for a woman for all these years. If and when I find a good price on yarns that knit up to 6.25 stitches per inch, I plan one day to knit the classic “Nordic Stars” modernization, too.

Some knitting magazines try to survive as mere accessories to the marketing of New York “fashions.” Outside of New York those magazines tend to look silly even while they’re “in” the look that usually does not become “fashion” anywhere else, and who wants the magazines after the “fashion” craze dies? Knitter’s was different. Founded by people who appreciated knitting and knitted things as sources of pleasure in their own right with no connection to the silliness of “fashion,” based in South Dakota not New York, Knitter’s gave the world over 100 collections of designs that will continue to inspire knitters for another 100 years. The novelty yarns the sponsors paid the designers to use, each season, are gone forever. Knitters can continue reusing the designs that appeal to them with the yarn we have now. So, while the “fashion” knitting magazines have mostly been recycled, copies of Knitter’s are gaining resale value.

This relatively recent issue is still available at reasonable prices on Amazon. To buy a copy in support of this web site, send $5 per copy, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, to the appropriate address below...I know you can get it directly from Amazon for a little less (not much less when you figure shipping charges), but you need to support this web site too. Also, that $5 per package will cover shipping costs for ten or twelve more books/magazines of this size; it adds up!

The blanket's sold, but it's still possible to buy the sweater. Yes, the sweater and the magazine would fit into one $5 package.