I’m allowed to now share some sneak peeks of some of the projects from my upcoming book, Knitting Basics, to be published by CICO Books in April 2015. Over the next few weeks I will show you a few images from the photo shoot, and some of my own process photos taken on the journey.
Let’s start with the cover, shown above.
Besides the project shots on the cover you can see some of the instructional diagrams taken from the workshops. There are 20 workshops in all, and each has a project that follows on and gets you putting the skills learned into practice. If you’ve seen any of CICO’s other successful books in this series, Sewing Basics, Sewing School Basics, Sewing Machine Basics and Crochet Basics you’ll be familiar with the concept. If you haven’t, then I encourage you to seek them out.
OK, so here’s the first project I’m going to share: it’s from workshop 3, which covers various ways to combine knit and purl stitches into a rib pattern, amongst other things. The project is a sweet baby beanie, topped off with a very oversized pompom. I was a bit worried that the pom would be too big but it worked out OK. If you use a pompom maker then it’s easy-peasy to chop down your pompom to the size you want. I use the Clover large size pompom maker and find it saves a ton of time. It’s really easy to use too.
photo © PENNY WINCER, KNITTING BASICS published by CICO Books (£14.99)
And here is a sneak peek of some of the detail of another project, from workshop 16, which focuses on the colour work technique of intarsia: a terrifying prospect for some knitters, but with patience and careful organisation of your yarns it’s a really exciting technique. I’d say it’s like painting with yarn, because you can create whatever you like. We cover this step by step, but a top tip if you’re going to start designing your own intarsia motifs is to get hold of some knitter’ s graph paper, which will make the whole process much more intuitive.
This project is a child’s sweater with a central animal motif: what do you think it is? I’ve used lovely Debbie Bliss Rialto DK to knit this up: gorgeous colours and great stitch definition.
photo TRACEY LORD, KNITTING BASICS published by CICO Books (£14.99)
More sneak peeks to come over the next few weeks, and details of where I’ll be talking about the book, and which publications you can find excerpts in. Let me know what you think!
Tracey Lord Knits 