Fall Interweave Knits

The new Interweave Knits finally came, I had been waiting for it all week, since Alexine who lives a mile from me had it last Tuesday at group and I didn't.    Ahh, knitting magazine lust, it can drive you crazy.  I would hurry eagerly to the post office every day, I would count the hours until the mail is supposedly in the boxes (11 AM), I would rush to my box and open the door and..disappointment.

Well, it finally came.  I eagerly snatched it out of the box and hurried home.  I forced myself not to turn the pages. I made a cup of coffee; no peeking while I waited. I carried Interweave and my coffee to my knitting chair and turned on the light and -- disappointment.  All that excited anticipation for not much.  What a shame.

This issue is actually not all bad, it is better than the previous two, at least to my mind.  The cover sweater is very intriguing and I have been thinking about it since the magazine arrived (Saturday).  I will probably even knit this, or at least I will think about knitting it.  At 7 stitches to the inch it will require a lot of time, and for a project I am not yet sure about that is a big commitment.  I don't usually like wide bell-shaped sleeves but in this case I am inclined to think that narrowing the sleeve will detract from the sweater.  This at least gives me a dream idea, and it has saved this issue from instant oblivion.

The other really worthwhile article in this magazine is the article on Shibori knitting, which is filled with inspiration.

Otherwise I would have to say the issue is more blah than bad.  There are a lot of boring sweaters, there are several sweaters that have promising shapes or patterns but are knitted in way too bulky yarns, rendering the pattern unwearable in this overheated world and also completely unattractive, except perhaps for the naturally bird-like and they would be overwhelmed by the sheer bulk.

I am wondering why I renewed my subscription.  I have had a long love-hate relationship with this magazine.  I know it is popular in knitting circles and I have sometimes wondered why.  Perhaps I have bad taste.  I love Vogue Knitting, which often has terrible designs, and which seems to be reviled by many knitters, because they at least attempt to stay abreast of fashion trends, and their good patterns can be very very good.

In recent years every magazine seems to have fallen prey to the lure of bulky yarns and Interweave seems to the be the worst at the moment.  Yes they are fast to knit, but it is a wasted effort because why would you ever wear the results of your labor.  At least there are some more fitted sweaters in recent issues, still not appealing, but for a long time I thought of Interweave as the home of the baggy shapeless sweater.  And yet I continue to read the magazine for the promise, for the occasional good article, for the ads and for the inspiration, for there are always patterns that seemed to start out as a good idea and then take some horrible turn for the worse.

There are several articles by very good, well-known, knitting designers, and yet the sweaters are pretty awful.  How does this happen.  Is it hard to keep coming up with new ideas?  After a certain period is there nothing new under the knitting sun?  Is it that the poor designer is thrown in a knitting dungeon of sorts with a terrible yarn and a terrible idea and forced to knit themselves out of the darkness with inadequate tools?  I suspect that yarn marketing has a lot to do with the bad designs.  Magazines are driven by advertising space, but what about integrity in design?  I suppose that is another one of those idealistic dreams that don't hold up in the cold hard light of day.  Even knitting designers have to make money to put bread, and yarn, on the table.

I decided, after reflection not to post all the awful designs, as there are actually quite a few that are not completely awful, just very badly executed, as I mentioned earlier, a good idea gone horribly awry.  But there is one exception, not actually the worst thing I have ever seen, but a great disappointment to my soul:

I have long loved the work of Shirley Paden.  I think she has designed many interested fashionable and sophisticated knitted garments.  I have been known to buy a knitting magazine just because it contained one of her designs.  I had not, until now, seen a Shirley Paden design that I would call terrible, or that I would not consider knitting;

The bubble has burst.  Everyone can make mistakes, goodness knows I make many.  But for one of my design idols to produce this?  You could carry your whole dinner with you in your sleeves.  It looks like a blanket rolled up into a shrug.  Oh, in the lovely fuzzy photo (another recent trend in Interweave knits) a kind of romantic image of knitting is cast.  You can almost imagine how cozy it must be, until you actually look at it and think about keeping it on your shoulders, about not dragging the sleeves through your soup, about getting your sleeve sucked up into the vacuum when you reach down to pick a penny up off the floor.  If only we lived in some marvelous knitting neverland.

Comments

[Liana]

I agree with you entirely on Interweave Knits. (Didn't they used to have something to do with Threads?) I could never understand what was so "wonderful" about it, when all/most of the patterns are so icky. If they're not completely bad, there's always at least one element that is way off the beam. I never did subscribe, and have restrained myself from buying it for a long time. I always think I must be missing something, but I'm glad to hear I'm not. I see they publish Piecework magazine, which I used to get, and liked very much.

Speaking of unwearable designs in bulky yarn, have you seen VK's new mag for the young/hip knitter? I think they're attempting to seduce them with quickie projects, but I would think the results would drive them away....