Book Review: Knitter's Stash

Title: Knitter’s Stash

Author: Barbara Albright

Date: 2001

Publisher: Interweave

ISBN: 1-883010-89-6

Length: 174 pages

Illustrations: full-color photos by Joe Coca

Quote: “This book is meant to take you on an intimate armchair tour of thirty-three of America’s premier stores.”

That’s what’s not to like about this book. It’s a great knitting pattern book, but it’s mistitled. This is not a book about using up the skein of this yarn and half-skein of that yarn that make up a “knitter’s stash.” Some, not all, of the patterns could be reworked with odd yarns from a knitter’s stash. The writing is about wool shops; the patterns are things storekeepers have designed to market what was in their stashes. By the time the book was printed some of the yarn these patterns were designed to market had already ceased to exist. Many of the patterns use more of one kind of yarn than knitters are likely to have left over from other projects. You may use up some of your stash but this book will send you back to the store.

The table of contents titles sections (mostly four pages each) by wool shop. “Great Yarns, Inc., Outer Banks Throw. Knitting By the Sea, Graduated Ribbed Top,” and so on.

Turn to page two. One page contains a short description of the shop by that name in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a photo and contact information. Page three is the photograph of the afghan as it was made in stripes of the novelty yarns of the season, “from greens to peaches and then to off-whites.” Page four contains the instructions for copying Linda Pratt’s afghan, which are simple: take some expensive multicolor yarns and knit them on big needles in stripes. Page five fills in with some general knitting tips. This one would be easy to do with whatever’s in your stash.

Page six describes a shop called Knitting By the Sea in Carmel, California,again with a photo and contact information. Page seven shows the finished sweater. Pages eight and nine contain the instructions for a basic rib-stitch pullover, with a chart for a distinctive way of increasing as you knit your way up the sleeves. You could knit it in the cotton yarns that are available everywhere, every year, working tightly and probably having to redo the sleeves, or a lighter-weight cotton if you were lucky enough to find some; you would have to have overpurchased wildly to have that much cotton in your own stash.

And so on. The next (eight-page) chapter introduces the Pennsylvania shop of Kathy Zimmerman and her latest design, a pullover in “Age of Aquarius” cables (heart shapes for love, rope shapes for peace), and a matching hat and pair of heavy socks, all worked in a bulky, fluffy llama-wool yarn. (“Montera” yarn [] was on the market for many seasons, and was fun to handle—but I knitted my “Age of Aquarius” set in cotton. I used Lion Brand Kitchen Cotton,which Michaels no longer sells.It was interchangeable with Sugar’n’Cream and Peaches & Creme.) Only a wool shop, I suspect, ever has enough yarn to make a cabled sweater (cables use up more yarn) and hat and socks, also cabled, all matching each other, in a “stash.”

Most wool shops are owned and operated by expert knitters. In addition to Zimmerman, a few other designers’ names were familiar to people who read knitting book and magazines in 2001: Ron Schweitzer, who designed new American patterns using the nine natural colors into which Shetland sheep’s coats are classified; Melissa Matthay, who published a book of her own sweater patterns a few years later; Judy Dercum, one of the design team  for La Lana; Tara-Jon Manning, author of several books; Beryl Hiatt and Lindy Phelps, joint authors of two books.

More of the designers featured here were just storekeepers, though knitters may have remembered visits to their stores as particular treats. I always thought Yarns International was worth the extra bus ride—from Bethesda Station and the wonderful wool shop there, even.

Shops and yarns have changed, but knitting has not. In addition to the first three designs, readers get patterns for one basic poncho, two far from basic shawls,two lightweight long-sleeved sweaters, three sleeveless sweaters, a rug, eight thick warm cardigans (including baby sizes),a scarf, two pillow covers, a cowl, a set of eight washcloths, four stuffed animals, three more thick winter pullovers, a tea cozy,two more hats, a baby-size pair of socks, a bag, a baby-size sleeveless smock, one blanket-thick pullover with buttons opening down to the waist for relief from the heat while wearing it, and a pair of mittens. Making them up in this year’s yarns will make them this year’s knitwear, although one cardigan definitely preserves the memory of 2001’s fad for super-bulky sweaters, which was a fad all active and healthy sweater wearers were glad to put behind us.

Top-heavy sweater wearers were also glad to see the fad for sweaters and shirts divided in the middle, like the Marie Louise Lace Sweater in this book, passing its peak in the 1990s. Of course we knew in 2001 that there’s no reason why a person not trying to look bigger would actually have knitted lace up to the bustline and ribbing above. The sweater could easily be made flattering to everybody by knitting just one row of lace ripples around the bottom (if that) and eyelet ribbing all the way up. If you couldn’t find Berroco Linet yarn, which wasn’t imported for very long, you could always knit this sweater in good old Speed-Cro-Sheen cotton, which had the advantage of being available in white and black instead of “wild mushroom” color.

It’s also light enough to knit as a winter garment in Shetland wool, and might look particularly pretty in undyed wool from naturally “blue” (grey) or “red” (red-brown) sheep. When wool is groomed out of a sheep’s coat rather than cut, washed in clear water, and spun without being dyed, it feels nothing like the scratchy, acid-soaked “washable wools” to which many people are allergic. Ron Schweitzer’s nine-color undyed sweaters feel more like cashmere than like what many people think of as wool.

My own must-knit-nows in this book, in addition to the Age of Aquarius set, were the Celtic Cardigan (using up four congenial leftovers of wool from my stash), Cardigan with Garter Stitch Trim (sold the second day it was displayed), and Lace Ribs Pullover...and all those small projects that really will use up yarn from your stash, if you have one, or from another knitter’s stash, if you don’t have one.

To use up a large stash fast, the final “Opulent Evening Shawl” was designed to use up some not very knitter-friendly yarn from Italy, which you probably would have had enough sense to avoid in 2001. It will use up all your lovely ends of Sugar’n’Cream, Peaches & Creme, Red Heart, Decor, Berella, Philosophers Wool, Montera, Lion Brand “Homespun,” Mountain Colors, 1824, Cherry Tree Hill, Tahki, Cleckheaton, and similar blanket-weight yarns in a gorgeous rainbow of elaborate color mixes and plain stitching. If you have lighter-weight scraps, you can strand two or three together to put them into this shawl too. Heavier? The rainbow idea could also be applied to that blanket at the beginning of the book, and by the way, although a one-person afghan or “throw” can be only three or four feet long, there’s nothing to stop you knitting it as a full-sized blanket, seven feet long.

But of course Albright and her storekeeper friends were hoping that you’d notice the one-color sweaters—oh, the lightness of the Marie Louise Lace Sweater! the mathematical precision of the Lace Ribs Pullover! the almost Brownie-Scouts-project simplicity of the Cardigan with Garter Stitch Trim!—and think “Must knit now,” and go out and buy another bag of yarn, knit through it, and add some more leftovers to your stash. Serious stash knitters go into a yarn store and make a beeline for the stash of odd balls left over at the end of their seasons. Maybe you didn’t want to make a whole sweater or blanket in a fashionable shade of hot pink or dirt-color or “wild mushroom,” but one or two skeins will be a great addition to your stash. You might want to knit a little brown bunny with black eyes into a child’s sweater, or use a strand of bright orange to add depth and complexity to a shades-of-brown afghan...

(Fair disclosure: I think stash knitting is great, not only because it satisfies my bargain-hunting and pattern-tweaking instincts, but because, best of all, it yanks the chains of the “Everybody should ‘declutter’ and not own more than they can carry on their backs, so they can waste all their money nomadding about until they reach retirement age and can be packed into nursing homes where they’ll die faster” crowd. Hello...I would never want to interfere with your living like birds, or hobos, or whatever your role models for life may be, but I maintain that humans are better off when they live in separate houses, insulated with things they enjoy owning, and leave both houses and contents to those of their relatives who can appreciate them. Knitters should build wool rooms onto our houses in order to “declutter” the tossers out of our lives.)