Vogue Knitting, Spring/Summer 2007

Over the weekend I bought Vogue Knitting for spring, and I'm pleasantly surprised--there are things in here I'd actually knit.

EZ's Surplice Baby Jacket by Meg Swansen:  Meg, being Elizabeth Zimmerman's daughter, is probably uniquely qualified to discuss her mother's knitting.  But this isn't a very complex project, just a baby sweater in garter stitch (and truly ugly colors) with a cross-over front.  Cute.

Neckline Know-How by Nicky Epstein: Basic templates for various kinds of necks and how to adapt them for the collar or other edging of your choice.  Very, very handy--of only they did more articles like this.

Finding Closure by Daryl Brower: Alternatives to buttonholes!  Lots of stuff with i-cord, which would make me wince if I didn't have the clicky thing to make as much i-cord as I wanted.  This and the previous article are almost worth the cover price.

Knit for Life by Joanne Seiff: Perhaps I'm in the minority, because I never really care about (or for) articles about Famous Knitters.  Maybe this is one of those female things I didn't get packaged with my X chromosome.  It's all about Kristina Wong, who does performance art with unfinished knit objects to draw attention to the problem of suicide rates among Asian women.

The Hand Painter's Tale by Cheryl Krementz: Aside from The Handmaid's Tale not being perhaps the association you want to draw here, it's an OK article.  About, alas, the woman who runs Koigu, a more overrated yarn than which does not exist.  I hate Koigu, so I don't care how she does it.  Next?

Spring Trends by Adina Klein: They're Vogue, so they have to care about fashion.  It's also not their fault there's a whole lot of ugly stuff on the runways, but then there always is.

Now we actually get into patterns.  First section: Land Ahoy.  It's summer, so we have to get nautical for some reason.

First up we get stranded colorwork in white, navy blue...and cotton.  If you can handle doing the colors in cotton, it might be a nice summer top, but whoever posed the model wearing it, black-polka-dot bikini bottoms and strap-up sandals should be shot.  I'm going to try to ignore the poses from here, because in the Vogue tradition they're pretty uniformly awful.

White mesh coverup thingie, with a hood you can't see in the photo and a "neckline" that exposes the belly button.  It's OK as such things go.

Your basic shell, with two cables on what the description claims is reverse-stockinette.  If so, their sample knitter read the instructions wrong because that's the knit side.  It's bright red, nice and simple.

Blue, tunic-length, boxy cardigan with a large-scale cable on the side fronts.  Reasonably attractive, but in a cotton/acrylic/polyester blend that can't be comfy for summer wear unless your nights get really chilly.

White, uh, thingie.  It's a top, and it's cotton, and the body is done in a texture pattern with a cable detail up the front.  That isn't so bad, but then the neck totally explodes and there are straps all over the place and it's just a big mess.  Give it some proper shoulders and it could be salvaged.

More white and navy blue.  The sleeves are three-quarter length and mesh, which likely makes it cooler, and the navy blue is in a band around the waist that might actually be slimming.  But the V-neck is very deep and might be an issue for those of us of the topheavy persuasion.

This time the navy blue is an edging on the white!  It's a hoodie, with a ribbed waist--that could be either a bonus or, well, not.  But it's supposed to look double-breasted, which it does, and that pretty much kills it for me.

The Case for Lace, because we all have to be persuaded to knit lace these days.  All are in white, so I'm not going to bother mentioning colors.

A nice lacy top, with short sleeves.  Very cute.  Till you read the description and discover it's in alpaca.  Yeah.  I don't care if it has short sleeves; I don't care that it's lace.  It's too warm for summer, unless you have some seriously cold summers, and then your arms would be cold.  You might be able to translate it into another fiber.

I'm kinda in love with the next project, which is a knitted dress.  You'd totally have to wear a slip under it, which could get warm, but there's this thing called a sewing machine with which one could make, say, a cotton or linen slip.  And then it'd be cute.  It's about knee-length, with a square neckline and bands of horizontal lace between the main patterns of the dress.  The waist's a little high, but on me would probably hit about right.

Lacy cardigan with the fronts knit on the bias.  Very cute, though not a style appropriate for anyone who weighs more than 120 pounds.

A linen tank, no shaping, no sleeves.  Another case of "wear something under this", but cute if you have a figure that can pull off no waistline to speak of.

Several patterns that purport to be Baby Coture.  Personally I'll settle for "Baby clothed and hasn't vomited on anything he's wearing yet", but some people have more money and/or time than I do.

Jil Eaton gives us a blanket and pillow set in a nice sage green with simple texture patterns.  This is great except it's in an alpaca/silk/cashmere blend.  No.  No, no, no, not for an infant.  In acrylic or superwash wool it could be a nice shower gift.

Debbie Bliss Chanel-style jackets.  Unsurprisingly, very nice, with raglan sleeves and Peter Pan collars.  I am distressed to note that the sample knitter didn't manage to get both fronts the same length on the pink one, however, and again cashmerino is perhaps not an ideal fiber for infant knitting.

From Annie Modesitt, a onesie in cream yarn with cables that has succummed to some horrible infection.  Seriously, it's got multicolored embroidery all over it that resembles nothing so much as a mold colony.  There might be a nice design lurking under there, but I'm not holding my breath.

Last but not least, another baby sweater, this one from Michelle Rose Orne.  It's lovely, with some nice restrained embroidery around the hem and a delicate allover texture.  But it's in cashmere/silk!  Where do these people get their idea of what constitues suitable fibers for infants?

The next section is called The Paper Chase, and features a model who is generally posed such that she looks horribly uncomfortable.  In theory, these are all patterns suitable for work.

A lovely kimono-styled jacket, but I don't know as one would or could wear it for work.  Also it's got a lot of crochet on it, and this is not Vogue Crochet.

Someday people are going to learn that a knitted pencil skirt is a great idea right up till the next time you sit down.  But the horizontal edging on it and the matching short-sleeved jacket is very nice.

White with black trim, sleeveless, and requires a shell under it to be decent.  Also they belted it with a belt I'm pretty sure an SCA fighter could use for kidney protection.  And it's in seed stitch, which I adore the look of and hate to work.

A cute lacy short-sleeved cardigan in a nice golden tan.  It's the kind of thing you'd keep at the office to wear when you needed to cover your shoulders, but it's quite nice.

OK, this is what a knit dress should not look like, though it's hard to tell if it might be salvagable on a woman who wasn't standing as if she were in traction.  Also it's brownish grey and looks kind of like someone saw too many WWII films of WAVES and WRENS.

Two square panels of tan, sewn to make neck and armholes and with a cable across the shoulders.  Not if you have an ounce of fat, you don't.

The Easy Life, but not, as we'll see, the cheap life.

A yellow halter top.  Might look nice on some people, but yellow makes me look jaundiced and halter tops tend to stop just where I need coverage.  Not my scene.

OK, this thing is hideous and from the "smile" on the model's face you can tell she knows it.  It's a calf-length, slender-skirted dress, just to start off with, and the yarn is this awful varigated stuff that makes lots of nice wide horizontal bands.  And then it has a halter bodice.  Igh.

Boxy, long-sleeved boat necks are not a good idea in summer, even in cotton, and especially not when that cotton looks like it has mildew growing on it.  And there are bands of non-poofy silk interspersed, so you too can look like you've got oddly lumpy arms.  I'll pass.

On first glance: Oh, beach coverup, might double as a blanket.  I love the colors.  On closer inspection: I better love the colors, because I'm going to be mortgaging the house to buy the eighteen skeins of cashmere this thing requires.  Yeah, right.  Call me back when you've got some Red Heart on sale.

A side-to-side knit jacket whose cuffs started hitting the floor about ten seconds after they snapped the picture.  Also, makes the stick-thin model look chunky, and it's in bad colors to boot.

I get cropped tops and I get extralong sleeves.  I don't get them both in the same garment; it looks like it shrunk oddly.  The raglan shaping has something funky going on, too.  At least it's in a nice color, a coral which is almost universally flattering.

Last but not least, we have Designer Allure.  If you say so.

Let me just say that chunky yarns should never be used in garments with lace patterns, and that lavender and brown don't go together.  Also, your chunky yarn doesn't make good short sleeves.

OK.  So first off, it's another light purple cardigan thing.  Then it's got green/purple changeable ribbon threaded through the fronts, to make dorky looking bows at the top of the closure.  The kicker, though?  It's crochet.  The whole thing.  There's nothing wrong with crochet, but perhaps they should have checked the name of the magazine?

It's pink.  It has poofy sleeves and raglan shaping done with YOs.  These things could be overcome.  It's also an A-line and has only three buttons, so no matter what you do you look like the thing's straining to close around your pregnant belly.  Might be nice for an expectant mom.

An acceptable casual cardigan, though I might choose a color other than light brown and I'm not crazy about shawl necks in general.  But it's not really supposed to close, so that's not such a big deal.  The sleeves are short and unfinished, which means they roll to the knit side; you'd have to do something with that to avoid looking like someone had stolen your sleeves.

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