Review: Make Your Own Idea Book with Arne & Carlos

One of the things I love about the Arne & Carlos books is the way they are designed. There are so many fun pictures displaying some of their collections and the things that inspired the designs.

Arne & Carlos develop their ideas using idea books, which are part art journal, part three-dimensional Pinterest. These handmade smash books are glorious, holding sketches, swatches, ticket stubs and whatever ephemera they collect on their travels.

They share exactly how they make their idea books and what people might include in their own in their book Make Your Own Idea Book with Arne & Carlos: Create Handmade Art Journals and Bound Keepsakes to Store Inspiration and Memories.

While the book doesn’t really have anything to do with knitting, it’s possible to use idea books to gather knitting inspiration or pattern notes, and Arne & Carlos use them in developing knitting patterns, books and designs.

The first part of the book covers how they make their idea books, using a variety of papers sewn together and bound. Most of the materials are pretty simple to acquire, and you can easily make a bunch to store all sorts of ideas and inspiration.

The rest of the book talks about different ways you can use the journals, with pictures from their idea books to show how it might be done. Some of the many ideas shown include collecting ideas for knitting and crochet, gardening, geneology, hobbies, travel, weddings, holidays and more.

This book is so fun and inspiring and will make you want to make your own books (I have a simpler version on my blog) and fill them with all sorts of great stuff.

About the book: 168 pages, paperback with interior flaps. Published June 2016 by Trafalgar Square Books. Suggested retail $22.95.

One of the fun things about knitters is that we will use a holiday theme on any kind of project. From Easter bunny socks to Christmas sweaters, there’s no combination of holiday motif and knitwear genre we won’t combine.

Case in point: Halloween cowls.

This fun cowl from Sweet Vireo Designs features large carved pumpkins and little cats and skulls. It uses two colors of DK weight yarn and I love the multicolored yarn for the background color on this one. And the braids! So cute.

Spooky Season by Jocelyn Tunney (also on Ravelry) uses fingering weight yarn in two colors to make a design with crescent moons and eyes. There are two circumferences and two heights available so you can make it a neck hugger or a slightly bigger project if you like.

Make more moons with the Broom Riding Cowl from Vanessa Ewing Knits. This two color pattern looks extra fun with a multicolored yarn for the colorwork, but you can use a solid as well. It calls for DK weight yarn but there is also a fingering weight version if you have some yarn in your stash you want to use.

Jinx Made has another fun Halloween cowl, this time covered in skulls. South Philly Skulls uses DK weight yarn and comes in two lengths, and there’s also a matching hat pattern, both of which can be found on Ravelry.

The Ghost Stories cowl from Melissa Knit Wear is a two-color cowl with ghosts of different sizes on the body. It uses DK weight yarn, and average sized skeins will allow you to get two cowls out of two skeins. It also calls for stitch markers to help you keep your place in the chart.

Or stitch up a cowl with a giant bat on it. The Nightling Cowl from Jen Immer uses DK weight yarn in two colors and has moons and a large bat on it. This pattern can be found on Ravelry.

How about spooky trees? The Weirwood Cowl from Andrea Krüß-Anders is inspired by the weirwood trees in the Game of Thrones books, and is worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn. You can find this free pattern on Ravelry.

If a bandana cowl is more your thing, try Cowloween from Tellybean Knits (on Ravelry). This colorful design is worked from the top down and features pumpkins, ghosts and candy colored stripes, and is worked in a light fingering weight yarn. There are kid and adult sizes available.

Have you read?