Friday Plans

There ought to be a law against making plans on Friday. I never seem to stick to them anyway.

This weekend, about the only thing my fingers did not want to work on was the vest. I'd pick it up and it just made me feel icky. Since I really hate things that made me feel icky, I put it down with all possible haste and did everything else.

I worked out variations on a Calorimetry, I did swatches from other yarns, I finished Mr. Needle's brown socks (they worked out great and I forgot to take a picture) and he has already worn them and is very pleased.

I worked on the green sock, past the heel to the calf, no photos of that either, and I worked on the vest. I've made the decision to ramp it up by adding two increases at the beginning of each row. I hope to take some of the bulk out of the parts that go over the shoulder and arms, to make it more wearable for work. We'll see how it goes. In anything other than sock yarn, I think I'd be afraid, but sock yarn is not problem to frog. But there are not pictures of this either.

So today, I'll give you another book review. I saw this for a sale price the other day at one of the specialty book vendors, I know it still is available at Amazon, and since its a pretty good book, you may want to look for it.

Books of patterns, versus booklets, are often an expensive purchase, but unless they are filled with only trendy things, a sweater can almost always be made to look up to date. The general price range is between 25 and 40 dollars. Books are an investment in your craft.Crochet with Style by Melissa Leapman is a good investment. It was my first major crochet book of wearables, bought some time in 2001, and I bought it about the time I was becoming deeply frustrated with the fit and quality of sweaters available to plus sized women. I made my very first aran style crochet work,
and it was a great fit with no changes to the largest size. The sweater did not last long, though. It was an acrylic yarn, and it was dried once in too warm a heat. For several years, it was my campfire sweater. I've also made the following sweaters from it.
The first picture and the last were extremely versatile. In both cases I've used these to work several variations, adding sleeves, mock turtlenecks. I've changed yarns, colours too. The centre sweater was a personal favourite and will be made again.

Melissa Leapman has a lot of other great patterns in here. A good range of sizes, though it would be nice to have plus sizes, a great range of yarn weights, and nice wearable design that is versatile enough that it was worth spending the money. She leaves out the usual crochet instruction, and prefers to stick to just a few design notes. There is a great sleeve section explaining how different sleeves are attached and seaming details. Stitch patterns are worked into the sometimes wordy sweater patterns so you do have to keep this book by you, but you never have to go searching through the book for various stitches as you work.

Overall, it is worth the bucks, and it rates a double crochet.