I braved the crazy SoCal rain last night to go to the Anaheim Public Library. I had seen on their on-line catalog that they have both POK and She who must not be named’s fair isle book.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty huge selection of knitting books, and even more amazed to find that they were all organized by both their Dewey numbers, but also alphabetically after the numbers. I am not used to this, my local library is very good at getting books near the correct shelf, but never so neatly organized. It must be the German influence in the city, that they keep things so neat.
So, since I was there, and I had just opened an account and was limited to 5 books, I had to choose carefully. I already knew I wanted those 2 books, but there were tons more that I had heard chatter about on some of the lists I am on, and wanted to check them out. There were several Kaffe Fasset books, so I picked those up, and some Cheryl Oberle, and I picked those up too.
Browsing through the Fasset books, I was wholly unimpressed. The color patterns were nice, but the actual garments were crap, I think. Since I didn’t read the books, and only looked at them, I hope the point of the books was inspiration rather than blind pattern-following. Those long sweater coats were awful! They could have been so improved by just removing the ribbing from the bottom, I think. Anyway, his books did inspire me to think about making a sweater inspired by the photo I took this summer of the Bachelor Buttons planted outside my grandparents house.
I ended up only with POK and AS Fair Isle to take home, simply because I wanted to focus on one thing. (Remember, trying to pay attention.) I spent a bit of time looking through the Fair Isle book, and I can see what the fuss is about. Again, more inspiration in this book than patterns, I think. This got me thinking I could make a fair isle using the same photo as inspiration. (I will post the photo later. ) I may head out to the LYS and pick up some skeins of DK or smaller wools and make a swatch just to see if I can. (I don’t know of any reason why not, I just haven’t tried it yet.)
I didn’t look at POK much yet, just the first few sections, but I can see why someone would want this reference. It appears to be well written and organized, and very comprehensive. Not sure it’s $600 worth of info though… but I have 3 weeks to find out!