Color Style Book Review

BookDepository LinkOn Ravelry


Types of patterns: Garments and Accessories

Number of Patterns: 17 Pullover (6); Fingerless gloves (1); Socks (1); Cardigan (3); Scarf (1); Gloves (1); Cushion (1); Tank Top (1); Mittens (1); Bag (1)

Split of patterns: Women but see comments.

Size Range: 33-50, most patterns have a reasonable stretch of sizes

Colour/Black & White: colour photographs and colour charts

Schematics: yes for all patterns it really matters for

Target Audience: Intermeditate to advanced.

How to knit guide: some of the basics in the regular Interweave Knits Glossary

Experimental/Classical/Modern: Mostly classical stuff with some modern thrown in

Comments:
It's an interesting mix of patterns

Gee's Bend Pullover by Mary Jane Mucklestone. For people who like sewing, you make a back centre panel, a front centre panel and two side panels and sleeves and you sew them all up. There's no real shaping, it doesn't appeal to me from the pictures but it might be an interesting men's pattern. It's staggered stripes that breaks up the horizontal lines. Intereseting but not impressive.

Holi Mitts by Jaya Srikrishnan, a slip stitch pair of fingerless mittens. would be an interesting use of leftovers. One plain yarn and two variagated yarns make this interesting and fun.

Mohair Fair Isle by Mari Lynn Patrick, worked in the flat to the bodice and then half the sleeves and the front or back worked to the neck, has bell sleeves with a colour stripe along the end and a colourwork yoke. It isn't my style.

Faux-Embroidery yoke Sweater by Robin Melanson. the sweater is worked from the neck down with floats that make it look like emboridery and a mostly plain body, if I was to knit a roundnecked jumper this would be high on the list of jumpers to knit.

Honeycomb Turtleneck by Deborah Newton is interesting, you work cuffs horizontally and then pick up stitches to the armholes and then a colourwork yoke and a turtleneck to finish, you could possibly finish earlier and it would still be an impressive piece, not on my list of patterns to try due to it being not my kind of shape, the honeycomb breaks up the horizontal lines to make it more body friendly.

Bohus Style Knee Highs by Chrissy Gardiner Colourful cuff, and a little colour on the toes with shaping for the legs, worked in a k2p2 rib would make it comfortable and it would be a good introduction to colourwork on socks as it's not much colourwork over the whole design.


The Harvest Cardigan by Robin Melanson is a beautiful cardigan worked in a few contrasting colours with some embroidery to enhance it. I'd be tempted to make it more v-necked, and I'd love this cardigan, as it stands I really would love it for me. There are five colours involved.

Hooded Scarf by Kristin Nicholas - has the Nicholas trademarked bright colours, this is a hooded scarf, worked in the round it's then cut and ravelled to form the fringe. I'm not the biggest fan of Nicholas' work, this isn't changing my mind

Funky Fair Isle Bag by Pam Allen - work circular base on dpns, keep increasing until it's too big for dpns and change to circulars work fair isle to to, end with striped garter rib, sounding funky yet? No? Neither to me. It's a Fair Isle deep bag with a couple of colours, would be good fair isle practice as bags are pretty forgiving of mistakes. Could possibly also do with lining.

Mosaic Yoke Jacket by Veronik Avery. This has vertical striping along the body and 3/4 length sleeves and mosaic yoke with shawl style collar, the designer fastens it with a leather belt but buttons (and buttonholes) could be added if wished. I liked this one, enough colour but not too much horizontal colour

Cunningsburgh Star Jacket by Shirley Paden is one of my favourite patterns. The top of the jacket has a quite simple colourwork pattern but the bottom has a more complicated look, the tie-string is not my style and I'd probably ditch it and I love the fact that the inside collar has the same pattern as the yoke. I'm not sure how it would look with a dark, rather than light background, but I suppose Ravelry would inform me on this.

Peace and Love Gloves by Veronik Avery would be a good place to start with applied embroidery on a piece, as gloves there wouldn't be much work and if it went wrong you could easily fix it. These have a houndstooth pattern on the body, the words Peace and Love on the wrissts and a flower embroidered on the Love glove. The fingers are worked plain. A pattern that would lend itself to adaptation

Retro Andean Pullover by Mary Jane Mucklestone is one of my least gavourite patterns. A cropped pattern with horizontal stripes this is just not something that I would think would look good on me. Plus added Steaking ARGHness.

The Argyle Vest by Ann Budd takes the Argyle pattern and plays with it a bit. Working it in a patch along the chest and in several colours (with an added note from the author to feel free to add in more, this is a clever use of leftovers. It's got a ribbed sides and back to give it movement and some fitted effect, however I'd look at the armholes, from the slight bunching in the photograph they might benefit from lengthening.

Floral Pillow by Marta McCall is a felted cushion with an abstract flower and leaves pattern, some needlefelting is involved to add some details and to make it look more stitched. Different.

Striped Raglan by Cecily Glowik. Horizontal stripes in a think and thin self-striping yarn make for an interesting garment, still self-striping doesn't inspire me and there's bunching under the arms on the model so maybe some extra length in the arms might be a good idea.

Fun Flower Mittens, decorated with beads and embroidery these mittens are knit in the flat and seamed, not my sort of thing but still interesting.

The book continues with some commentary and some advice on playing with colour and it's a good section on the various ways of incorporating colour into a pattern. Some of the added ideas could be used to modify the patterns in the book. Overall it's an interesting book about using colour. I mightn't use the same colours myself but many of the colours aren't bad at all. I have some biases towards some of the patterns but they all have certain things going for them in terms of ideas and inspiration


Buy/Borrow: I borrowed it from Cork County Libraries to take a better look at it and intend to buy it sometime soon. It's not just that there are two cardigans that I really want to knit in the book but there's also a lot of very interesting ideas and inspirations in the book.

Where found: Cork County Libraries via the Borrowbooks scheme