No Sheep For You Review
Today I'm going to review No Sheep For You, by Amy R. Singer. I realize the book's been out for months; since I have no problem with sheep, it wasn't high on my list of necessary books. But I picked it up at the library, and thought I'd write about it.
As you might guess from the title, No Sheep contains information about and patterns designed in non-wool fibers. As a matter of fact, the non-wool mandate extends beyond sheep; apparently there are no alpaca, camels, angora rabbits nor cashmere goats for you either. I find this slightly surprising, given that many people who can't tolerate wool do fine with alpaca or angora, but the addition of non-sheep animal fibers might have made the book unwieldy. Still, a quick note about "we're not going to do anything with any fur-based fibers" might have been helpful; as it was I got to the end of the fiber-description chapter with mild confusion, wondering where the info on qiviut might be hiding and if I had missed it.
After the introduction, which Singer remarkably contrives to write without even hinting that those grapes were sour anyway, the book jumps right in to a very useful chapter on the nature and properties of such fibers as linen, cotton, silk and the various synthetics. It's hugely informative (did you know the hemp that makes fiber is not the same species as the hemp that makes marijuana, despite having the same scientific name?) and contains a number of useful sidebars, though it, like the entire book, is written in a slightly twee tone that made my teeth occasionally grate. But stuff like the difference between reeled and spun silk is handy no matter how perky the explaination, so onward we go.
The next chapter is about substituting, and contains perhaps the most useful chart in the whole book. On page 26, it ranks all the common fiber types in order by everything from strength to how likely they are to wrinkle. While there aren't any absolute numbers, it's still terribly handy to be able to see that silk retains heat better than wool despite being a little lighter (that is, a length of silk of a given diameter will weigh slightly less than the same length of wool in the same diameter) and only slightly less elastic. There's also a lovely table on picking an appropriate non-wool yarn for your traditionally wool design idea--cables, intarsia, whatever. It tells you in so many words that you don't get to felt if you're not using wool, but suggests the essential properties to look for for everything else.
Chapter three is all about swatching, and is my least favorite part of the book. Not because it's about swatching, however; instead, it's because this chapter is where the cutsey really got out of hand. I think I lost it when she took the phrase "getting to know you thing" (as in, getting to know a given yarn) and made it into the pseudo-acronym "geeky thing", which she proceeded to use rather than "swatch" for the rest of the chapter. Hint to the author: if you feel compelled to apologize for your choice of wording ("...it's my book. I can push the limits of acronym construction if I want to."), perhaps that's a sign that you shouldn't use that wording. Nonetheless, the chapter contains a lot of good information.
After that, the book wraps up with its patterns. Most of them are lovely and well-designed, though of course not everything's to my personal taste. Interspersed in the pattern section are sidebars about such useful topics as figuring out whether you're really allergic to wool, what to do with non-grabby yarn ends, and how to wind really slippery yarn without ending up with a tangled mess. There are a total of twenty patterns, most of them feminine sweaters but with a good scattering of accessories and male garments.
Last but not least, there's a brief techniques section, containing things like directions for doing long-tail cast on.
Overall, No Sheep For You is a worthwhile book. It's lovely to have so much non-wool fiber information at one's fingertips, and I'm sure the thing's a godsend for those who really can't bear the touch of wool. But none of the patterns grabbed me, and several struck me as being "why bother" sweaters--as in, "Why bother knitting this myself when I can get something functionally identical at the store and spend my time on something fabulous?" Also, the casual, oh-so-perky tone of the whole book grated on me; I skip blogs that read like this, thanks. As a sheep-enabled knitter, it's something I might someday pick up to fill out my book collection. However, to the sheep-deprived of the world I recommend it heartily, for its fiber info if not its patterns.