Book Review: teach Yourself Visually:Beadwork

Chris Franchetti Michaels has published a new book Teach Yourself Visually: Beadwork. This is a very thorough book on off-loom techniques in beading.

Each chapter covers a specific stitch and includes tons of photographs and diagrams to help you learn these stitches. The author also covers materials, terminology in beading and adds extra tips on many of the pages so that the reader/beader learns a lots as they go through each project. This is a great reference book for new beadser and those looking to refresh their skills.

The first chapter is especially useful as it covers “Skills and Techniques” such as length of thread, ending threads, correcting mistakes and much more.

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From the front, the Simply Me Blouse from NORgardknitters looks like a plain, boxy, garter stitch sweater. The kind of thing you’d want to throw on every day, like the knit version of a sweatshirt.

But when you look at the back, you realize there’s more going on than meets the eye.

This sweater also has a giant pleat on the back, giving lots of volume and interest without making the knitting any harder.

Simply Me is worked from the top down, starting with the yoke being worked back and forth in rows. Extra stitches are cast on at the back to form the pleat (which is crocheted closed when the knitting is done) and the body is joined in the round under the underarms.

But if you know anything about knitting in the round, you know that to make garter stitch you have to knit and round and purl a round. To avoid that this pattern uses short rows so you can still knit every round and come out with garter stitch.

The sweater has a wide boatneck and a cropped, boxy shape with three-quarter sleeves. There’s no edging to interrupt the pretty waves of garter stitch.

The pattern comes in six sizes, to fit a bust from 31.5-33.5 inches, or 80-85 cm, up to 43 to 47 inches, or 110-120 cm. But there is a lot of positive ease worked into the pattern, so if you want less ease you can work it for a larger range of sizes. There are lots of projects on the project page on Ravelry, most of which show it in a solid color, but you can also see ideas for stripes or a fade. It calls for DK weight yarn.

You can find the Simply Me Blouse pattern on Ravelry, where it is available in English, Danish, French, German and Norwegian.

[Photo: NORgardknitters]

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