Fitted Knits Review

Over the weekend I got an opportunity to examine Fitted Knits by Stephanie Japel.  It was, to be brief, a vast disappointment.

See, what I was expecting from the title and advance press was a book on how to construct knits that are not boxy, that have shaping, that conform nicely to the body of the wearer.  What I got intstead was a book of twenty-some sweater patterns, most of them extremely ugly, and a single two-page spread on fitting an existing pattern.  Since the spread focused on altering a pattern that had an adequate bust measurement but the wrong waist, I suppose that could count as "how to construct knits that conform to the wearer", but it's nothing like what the hype had led me to expect.

If the book had included such things as how to calculate short rows for bust ease, when to use different sleeves, and how to calculate armseyes, I could have forgiven the patterns, which were pretty uniformly hideous.  Let's leave aside the fact that all but a few had raglan sleeves and were knitted from the top down; they were also generally in yarn at least a size too big for the style--summer tee in worsted, anyone?--and colors so bright that even I, a person who generally approves of magenta and yellow together, was kinda squinting at them going, "Gee, that's a little loud".  Plus, a sweater intended for cold-weather wear is not the place to do yarnover increases, especially along the raglan lines where the holes thus generated will freeze the wearer's shoulders.

It's a bad book.  It's not what it was advertized to be, and even as a book of patterns it falls flat (that nifty cover sweater, by the way?  Nowhere in the book).  It gets half a cookie, of five, for introducing the idea that one doesn't have to knit to exactly the dimensions given in the pattern.

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