Mason-Dixon Knitting
Kay Gardiner and Ann Shaye (Potter Craft)
AUD$55/ISBN 978 0307 236 050
The co-authors of this colourful effort hail from New York and Nashville, but they met online in a UK yarn company forum and together started a blog called Mason-Dixon Knitting. From this unlikely beginning has come a beautiful friendship and a book which gives you the feeling of being a part of it. It's got good reading, laugh-out-loud asides and, with contributions from several of their online readers, an inclusive DIY spirit that inspires you to jump right in.
The patterns here are equally inspirational—but they're also achievable. Sure, their log-cabin blanket is big, but Ann and Kay give you the encouragement to do it. (It's just a bunch of strips put together! And your boy will never grow out of it!) Their knitted bassinet liner is beautiful, but the two versions of it here also show there's realism at work: a full-on totally knitted incarnation called 'The Ambitious Grandmother Version' is presented along with a more sedate but still speccy variety called the 'Stovetop version'.
This real-life take on knitting is the key to this book's success. In Chapter One, 'What You Will Learn from This Book', Kay writes of knitting projects that have blown her mind (like Debbie New's knitted maze and fully knitted portrait) and she concludes, 'Over and over, we see this same phenomenon: complex things are often very simple. And simple things can be beautiful.' This book reminds us that life and knitting intersect and 'figuring out how you can knit the two together' is the fun part.
—Barbara Coddington