Pattern Review

What's a girl to do when shes on a yarn diet??

Buy patterns of course!

Here's about half of my recent pattern acquisitions:


Two Schoeller Stahl - nothing terribly interesting in these. One or two cuteish cabled jacket thingys.

Gedifra 53 - I love/hate Gedifra. There are always some fabulous designs and a few WTF?? head scratchers in every book. They seem to come out with new yarns and discontinue last seasons yarns with alarming rapidity. AND my super pet peeve - the yarns usually come in VERY skimpy skeins sometimes with only about 33 yards. They do have some really unique yarns - some of their ribbon type yarns are so cool, very soft fleecy things, nice to knit with. But usually, at least around here and as far as I can tell from the internet all over the USA, the coolest yarns are very hard to find. AC Moore used to carry some but have discontinued that - I assume because KFI has taken over the Gedifra distribution. (What will come of THAT I have no idea. The whole ugly atmosphere surrounding KFI and their practices have me thinking we may never see any Gedifra yarn in the USA again.) Also, sometimes the yarn seems ridiculously expensive - like $17 for a 33 yard ball. I can't even afford to make a hat at those prices! And unfortunately the yarns are so unique that I could never get the same look out of any substitute yarn. :( All of that said - I still love their designs. They really do push the limits and come up with creative ways to showcase their yarns. I get a lot of inspiration just looking at the designs and seeing new ways of manipulating knitting. Of course this is the same experimental attitude which leads to some of the greatest fug I ever seen outside of a Berroco book - but I forgive Gedifra because their fug comes from the true pursuit of knitterly art, not just a compulsion to cover the world in eyelash boas.

Anyhow - this one was low on fug. I liked most of the patterns especially -

Very classic & I like v-necks. I love Gedifra's use of color. They make me think of using colors I wouldn't naturally gravitate to.


Of course the jacketaholic loves this jacket. I love the texture of the yarn.

In front is a Dale stranded knitting ABC jumper which I thought about knitting for my daughter. I would have to seriously change the color scheme though - probably to pink and purple!

I also got the Rowan 39. I pretty much liked this overall. In fact I probably liked the whole tribal section a lot more than most people did. I liked all of the men's sweaters. They were really very unisex which may have added to the perception problem! Aside from the jacket I've already gotten the yarn for, I also liked this:


Minnie. Feminine and romantic. Not sure if it would really look good on me or not though. It may look too costumey on a real person.

I also got - late on the bandwagon here - Rowan's All Seasons Cotton collection. I doubt I will knit any of these in cotton - but if I do ever use cotton I will probably try the All Seasons. It's very soft but has body. I'm just never sure that I really like the drape of cotton. But the designs are classic. I liked:

Called "Fruity". Dumb name but nice design. I am always complaining that sweaters aren't long enough. So this really suits me!

And of course I liked the jacket:

called "Caribbean". These were my favorites but the whole collection is pretty good.

Next is Jo Sharp Book 2. Mostly bland. A nice plain unisex jumper and a cabled stole thing were okay but I bought the whole book really just for this:

You guessed it - another jacket/wrap. It's called Bridget and has really pretty soft, celtic looking cables.

Last we have Jaeger Men's Collection. Almost everything in this one is really nice. Comfortable, classic and functional. All the basics for a great collection of sweaters that a guy would really wear. Maybe hubby will get a nice sweater if he stops being such a smart-aleck. (Did you see his Life of Pi comment?? Mr. Smartypants said he wanted to join the KAL and knit dried meat strips for Pi. I told him that would be easy since that's what his knitting looks like anyway. Oh - Snap! That's right I said it! LOL!)