My Favorite Book This Season

Even without having seen all the new releases, even though I've got stuff in a book that's coming out this month or next, even though the Stitch'n'Bitch crochet book is gonna sell the pants off all of them--

My favorite new book this season is Inspired Cable Knits by Fiona Ellis.

Some of the designs are more traditional, some are less, but they've all got the elements that are so hard to find in cabled sweaters:

-- Attention to detail, and interesting details. The necklines are carefully worked into the cable patterns. And check this:


It's part of this:


Which brings me to the next item:

-- Shaping. I don't think there's a single drop shoulder in the bunch. And you can see the side shaping in the photo above.

-- Sizing. Because the cables make for large pattern repeats, plenty of cable sweaters are sized "40-44-48-tough luck." The size ranges here include at least one that starts as small as 30" and at least one as large as 60".

-- Cool stuff. I'm not usually a fan of books that claim to show what "inspires" the designer, but I could look at photos like these for hours:



And I probably will.