Inspired To Knit
Michele Rose Orne
In A Nutshell: An attractive book showcasing 19 seasonally inspired women’s knits with lovely colours and stitches but proportion and shape does not always work.
This is a good looking book with a fresh modern feel. The 19 women’s knitting patterns are grouped by the seasons, the time of year providing both the inspiration and colour palette for the designs. This is all delightfully illustrated by a mood board at the start of each section.
The patterns are interspersed with 4 workshops designed to help you find the inspiration to create your own designs. These basically cover creating a mood board, building a colour palette, creative swatching and creating a schematic to be able to knit up your design.
I enjoyed the inspiration aspect but am not entirely won over by the actual garments. Stitch patterns and motifs are very pretty but I felt the shapes of the clothes did not always work. The amber beaded cardigan looked better as a cropped bolero in its original sketch, rather than the long line version knitted up. The wedding dress proportions just don’t look right.
So for me, colour and stitch pattern were spot on but the shapes needed a rethink.
