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Book Review – Happy Gloves

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Happy Gloves by Miyako Kanamori RRP $13.95 US

This book review came to me from Penguin Books Australia and what a joy it was to receive it in the mail.

The title of this book is Happy Gloves, Charming Softy friends made from colorful gloves. Charming is the perfect description for this fun little critters like the Chipmunk shown below.

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The book has a quirky story book style at the beginning that introduces you to the softy friend patterns with hand drawn sketches and photos of the completed projects.

The patterns include step by step sketched tutorials and covers everything from Lions to flowers and even a little tea pot and cup for a total of 21 different projects all made from Gloves!!!

This book is available from the 31st of August in Australia RRP $19.95

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When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them. 

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere. 

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started. 

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm). 

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind. 

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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