Book Review: Sweater Success

Chantal Miyagishima is better known online as the designer Knitatude, who shares classic, streamlined designs for sweaters, sleeved scarves and other projects. She’s made it her mission to get knitters confident enough to knit their own sweaters, with the help of her book Sweater Success.

The book is part pep talk, part walk through of all the skills you need to confidently and successfully knit sweaters. It covers basic garment construction and styles, how to pick your size, what ease means and how much you want, tools you need to make a sweater, how to substitute yarn, gauge, reading a pattern, making modifications and blocking and taking care of your knits.

Each chapter covers one of these subjects in detail but also includes a TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) section to give you the basics in a hurry. If you’ve knit a sweater before or feel confident in your current skills, those little sections will give you a quick review and get you to the patterns faster.

There are six projects in the book:

a classic yoke sweater knit from the top down in the round
a simple stockinette stitch raglan (also top down in the round)
the Neapolitan pullover, a garter stitch, drop shoulder, cropped sweater worked in wide stripes and in pieces from the bottom up
a bulky V-neck vest worked in the round from the bottom up
a cropped cardigan worked in one piece from the bottom up to the armholes
a long duster worked in bulky yarn from the top down with wide ribbed edgings (this one doesn’t have buttons and the fronts aren’t meant to meet

It’s a nice range of patterns for beginners, but those with some sweaters under their belts already might find them a little plain, because those stripes are the only pattern that’s not worked in a single color. You’ll find no colorwork, cables or lace here (though the section on blocking shows a lace swatch), which is not necessarily a criticism but something worth knowing going in.

You can see all the patterns on Ravelry. Also worth noting that the designer is the model in all the photos, so head to Ravelry if you want to see the designs on different bodies. The patterns are written for 9 sizes, from XS to 5XL.

If you’ve never knit a sweater before and want a quick introduction to methods, sizing, skills and more, Sweater Success is a good place to start.

About the book: 144 pages, paperback, 6 projects. Published 2025 by Quarry Books. Suggested retail price $26.99.

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

Have you read?