Book Review: Mother Daughter Knits

Title: Mother-Daughter Knits

Authors: Sally Melville and Caddy Melville-Ledbetter

Date: 2009

Publisher: Potter / Random House

ISBN: 978-0-307-40872-3

Length: 160 pages

Quote: “Obviously my [M]om has more experience and so tends to write intermediate to advanced patterns—while I write beginner to intermediate patterns…[W]e knew that we both want what we wear to look and feel as good as possible…hence the Knit to Flatter and Fit material.”

After Elizabeth Zimmermann died…no knitter of my generation could take her place, really. Meg Swansen (EZ’s daughter) did a great job of carrying on without taking EZ’s place. Sometimes it appears to me that the knitter who’s come closest is Sally Melville. Her work reminds me of EZ’s in several ways:

1. There’s a consistent focus on knitting as a craft. Fashion comes second. Both knitters published designs that were fashionable in the season of publication (which is quite a feat), but both always seemed to have begun with an idea of “This is an interesting technique; what can I make with it?” rather than “What can I do with this yarn, especially if it was a manufacturing mistake in the first place” or “How can I shoehorn knitting, which is a woman-empowering craft, into New York fashion, which is a nasty woman-exploiting capitalist game?” One gets the feeling that they designed things when they did and published the designs when they were fashionable. I like that in a knitter.

2. There’s a continuous exploration of what knitting can do. EZ wrote one short, pithy beginner’s book, easy to overlook if you’re thinking “I already know how to purl,” that encapsulates everything you need to become a designer. SM wrote a series of technique books, presented as lessons for beginners, that also worked as fashion pattern books for serious knitters. 

3. Both tended to design sweaters that I wouldn’t want to wear, myself. That’s not bad. Both designed sweaters that do suit people who are different from me, and when you’re motivated to make your knitting pay for itself—as I’ve always been—that’s a very good thing. 

4. Each started knitting, designing, and publishing on her own, but reached new heights of success by working together with a daughter.

In this book SM and her daughter explain exactly why their sweaters mostly don’t work for me. Genetically predetermined hormone balances determine whether and where women’s bodies start to curve around pads of fat that won’t go away. My family tend to be top-heavy. SM and her daughter are thinner, with a little more curve below the waist than above. So the standard sweater, unshaped, with a waist that either stops at the natural waistline or continues just far enough to cover the natural waistline when one bends forward, makes them feel that they look bottom-heavy. Outside of my home town, where most people are related, I’ve seen more women whose shapes were closer to theirs than women whose shapes are closer to mine. Those women need this book.

Hand-knitting was an Eighties trend so, really, when I consider my pattern hoard, what hand-knitted sweater is not an Eighties Sweater? Revising older patterns to work with currently available yarn was very much an Eighties fashion…These are not Eighties Sweaters. Very little sweater shaping went on in the Eighties. Traditional sweaters had been worn by men and did nothing at all to flatter women’s curves, and the fashionable shape was boxy above snug ribbed waists and cuffs. The shaping of the sweaters in this book is very much a post-Eighties thing. (But go ahead and wear them. Many things that were actually knitted in the Eighties had shapes different from the patterns the knitters had tried to follow. My own very first Eighties Sweater had shaping, although it wasn’t designed to have.)

A couple of their shaped sweaters have waistlines designed to ride a little higher than the natural waist. That style was fashionable for the season, and it looks great on the slim models in the book. It also tends to be forced upon women whose figures are temporarily distorted. As a result, though short-waisted styles are comfortable and fun to wear for top-heavy women too, people do tend to greet a top-heavy woman in a short-waisted garment with “Congratulations! When is the baby due?”

That said, I’ve enjoyed knitting with this book…for the market, of course…and the first sweater I knitted, varying a design in this book slightly, sold in hours.

There really are thirty different patterns, though some of them are for things like headbands and neckties. They are different patterns, though, no basic stand-by shapes with a different color or texture thrown in somewhere. There are Shrugs, a sort of short shawl that’s held in place by a little vague sleeve shaping joining them under the arms. There are quirky ideas, like the sidewise-knitted boat-neck pullover and the scarf-laced-through-the-buttonholes cardigan and all the sleeveless sweaters, that I consider silly. (If top-heavy women ever wear vests, they have to be very light and very short and very well fitted; no stretchy knitted fabrics need apply.) Then there’s the shirt-shaped cardigan, the Camelot Coat that really does resemble early 1960s dress and coat shapes, the long-or-short shruglike jacket, the drapey mohair Mother-Of-The-Bride cardigan, the Gray Cardigan shaped by ribbing and cabling, the Altered Austen Jacket (which could very easily be altered back to put the waistline at the actual waist), and the Crinkly Blouse Cardigan, all of which are different from anything anyone else has knitted and at least one of which might appeal to you.

Because some may think the Jumper (dress) is another silly idea…If I knitted it, I would either knit only the skirt or knit a proper bodice with sleeves, and I would use Red Heart acrylic. Any knitted skirt that is long and roomy enough to be wearable is heavy enough to stretch under its own weight, even if you use lightweight yarn, and especially if it gets wet. Wool will shrink, so nobody in her right mind knits a wool skirt, unless we’re talking about the long waistband referred to as a “skirt” on some fishermen’s sweaters. Cotton will stretch, so you’d have to be cautious wearing a hand-knitted cotton skirt or dress. Cheap acrylic will shrink, and often shrink unevenly, so it’s best saved for rugs and dog blankets. Red Heart acrylic will stretch horrifyingly if wet, because it’s heavy…I have a big roomy robe knitted of Red Heart that I wear in cold markets to show off the heating, even snowproofing, qualities of this blanket-weight material. A long knitted skirt is like a blanket around your knees, only it moves with you when you stand up. I once dashed out of a cold building during a power outage wearing it. The skirt was soaked. I splashed home holding it up almost doubled to keep the skirt out from under my feet. Then I ran it through the washer and dryer and, you may see it if you can’t believe it,  it snapped right back to its original shape with the skirt just over my boot tops. So, yes, it’s worth knitting a street-length skirt if you use Red Heart. But for the life of me I can’t imagine why anyone would bother knitting a street-length skirt in that very stylish mix of wool and viscose yarn, which would have made a nice jacket, but not a skirt.

It's almost guaranteed that some of these designs won’t appeal to you—leg warmers?! Others probably will, though, and the nicest thing about this book is that the instructions do spell out how to alter things like high waistlines. The knitting mother and daughter can’t promise complete instructions for every body but they have taught a lot of knitters who had different kinds of bodies, and they explain how to make most of these designs fit most people who want them.