The Advanced Knitting Architect

This is my first book-review blog entry and I had never intended to do one. That is, until I read this book, The Advanced Knitting Architect, by Sion Elalouf of Knitting Fever.

How did I chance upon this book? I was at Stitches West early this year and desperately hunting down books on knitting garment design. After an exhausting search for some/any such book, I found a few copies of Elalouf's books at the last booth I went to. In addition to this one, there also was 'The Knitting Architect' on the stand. They looked - how shall I put it - modest. No fancy images/colors and no marketing spiel on the back of the book. I peeked inside and found some matter-of-factly sketches on body-measurements and decided to go for the 'Advanced' issue. That's because I have had priceless training from Mum and Sis, both of who are excellent at fabric garment design/architecture and so, I'm not someone nervous about the process. I just needed a knitting-related reference.

It was only yesterday, that once I completed blogging about my newly completed project, did I sit down to read this book cover-to-cover. It starts with basic tape measurements and how to take them. And then, introduces the reader to one basic shape of a knitted garment. The instructions on how each stitch/row count is arrived at are clear, simple and elegant. The counting is simplified by using certain 'constants' depending on body-type. For example, you can either choose to measure the exact depth of armhole for your sweater or use a constant given in the book based on chest measurement.

Once the basic shape is drafted, the author then delves into a number of necklines, a variety of sleeves, and different styles of sweaters too like the dolman and the wrap sweater. What follows this is the side-knitting and top-down knitting techniques. This book is an amazing first-read and as good a reference. I like it so much that if there comes a time when I am asked to discard all knitting books but one, I'll keep this. This one teaches you how to fish. I mean design.

I firmly believe that there is no knitting without mathematics. Well, actually, 'math' is too big a word to use here. In all languages I know other than English (and I know 5), the word used is 'laek' or 'ginthi' - or a small variation of either. Translated, this means 'counting'. And I think that's what we do in knitting. We count. Most times, we use the simplest arithmetic and sometimes, the simplest of all geometric alogirthms. What we learnt until grade 9 is more than sufficient, really. How that is applied to charting a wearable design needs just a little more study. And knitters who want to be designers but are stopped by a mental block about garment design principles should take heart in that designing knitting garments is far, far simpler than tailored fabric garments. Well, one can make it as complicated, but the learning threshold required to begin designing is much smaller than the one required in fabric design.

Sion makes a point that I could completely relate with. He has observed that "In the other developed countries of the world,... the customers at the retail level are the architects. All they need is the yarns and the needles and they will custom design and knit." (I personally do not appreciate the terms developed/undeveloped since it presents a prejudice but that's another subject.) In India where I've lived most of my life, I've never seen a knitter refer to any book/magazine for row-by-row pattern for sweaters, shawls, caps etc. For that matter, I've never seen my Mum use a purchased paper-pattern for the million clothes she has designed and stitched. Knitting is so tightly bound to designing, that you cannot learn one without the other. Same with sewing. And inorder to simplify the counting, there are rules of thumb used - which Sion has presented as 'constants'. So, really, it's not a new concept but an incredibly useful one.

You can find 'The Knitting Architect' online here.