Custom Knits

So last night I met up with a friend at the Doug Fir for a really awesome bluegrass show. She was coming from teaching a class, so I knew that I'd have a few spare minutes to flip through the book I'd thrown in my bag on my way out the door from work, before biking down there to grab us a table.

That book was Custom Knits, a book that I've actually skimmed through before but then had forgotten about as it sat here in the Yarnia library and new issues of Vogue Knitting and Interweave flooded in and distracted me. I remember thinking this upon that first skimming, and now have to emphatically reiterate, this is an awesome book.


As with cookbooks, it's rare for me to find a knitting book where I'm really smitten by more than three or four of the projects within, but as I turned the pages of Custom Knits I was like, "I want to knit every single thing in here!" The best part about it though is that it totally appeals to my pattern-adapting, yarn-substituting, make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach to knitting; it's written so that you can follow the patterns as closely or as loosely as you want, making your own modifications and decisions as you go along.

Plus, the first chapter begins by showing you how to make a dressform in your exact image with an old t-shirt and a roll of duct tape! Awesome.