Check out Vogue Knitting’s Winter Book Sale

If you’re in the market for some great knitting books, Vogue Knitting and Sixth and Spring are having their winter book sale, which means you can score books for 25 percent off.

They have so many great books, including the Stitchionary series — so inspiring! — tons of great books by Nicky Epstein, the Cascade 220 quick knit books, and lots of great compendiums of information and patterns from the pages of Vogue Knitting.

And because February is heart month, they also note that they published Knit Red, a lovely book full of projects by top designers worked in red. It raises money for the Heart Truth and raises awareness of heart health issues among women. (It happens that just yesterday I got a copy of Stitch Red, a book with a similar concept full of sewing projects. I can’t wait to dive in!)

If you score any good deals, let me know!

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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