When Bad Things Happen…Book Review

When bad things happen to good knitters:
This book is a complete survival guide for first-time knitters – and more experienced knitters – who need help in the middle of the night with project errors.

Call them knitting nanas, call them knitting fairy godmothers, authors Marion Edmonds and Ahza Moore are here to hold your hand and tell you everything is going to be all right. Whether your knitting pattern appears to have been written in Aramaic, you’ve dropped a stitch (or a whole bag full of stitches), you’ve forgotten to increase, you’ve been knitting in the wrong pattern sequence for 4 rows, or you can’t get your head through the neck hole of your newly knit sweater, Marion and Ahza will give you level-headed advice on what to fix, how to fix it, and when you can just fudge it. With 119 years of knitting experience between them, they’ve seen it all and fixed it all. For beginners and more experienced knitters alike (the more experienced you are, the more elaborate the mistake), When Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters should be in every knitter’s yarn bag.

About the Author
Between them, Marion Edmonds and Ahza Moore have 119 years of knitting experience. As partners in KnittingTogetherNYC, they have made knitting their livelihood, giving private knitting lessons and teaching at SoHo’s Purl yarn store. They contributed patterns to Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson and develop patterns for magazines. This is their first book.

source: Amazon.com

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

Have you read?