Debbie Bliss is known for her simple, classic knits, often with cute, feminine details. Many of her projects don't take a long time to knit, but her book The Knitter's Year: 52 Make-in-a-Week Projects -- Quick Gifts and Seasonal Knits aims to make the knitting time even shorter, with projects that can be completed in seven days or fewer.
While some knitters will need to take longer than a week to complete some of these projects, the book is full of cute ideas for quick knits that will make great gifts or items to keep for yourself.
Knits for all Seasons
The Knitter's Year is arranged by season, starting with spring and ending with winter. Each season has 13 patterns representing it, ranging from bunny egg cozies and fingerless gardening gloves for spring to Christmas ornaments and a hot water bottle cover for winter.
Some of the patterns could work for any season, such as lace edgings for shelves and pillows, cabled socks, teapot and mug cozies and baby cardigans and booties.
None of the patterns are rated in terms of skill level, but none is too difficult, either. There are some cable, lace and colorwork projects, but the vast majority of the patterns use either a single color of yarn or basic stripes.
Many of the projects incorporate fabric and sewing, as in the numerous projects for bags and baskets that are lined with fabric.
The Patterns
Some of my favorite patterns include the knit basket worked in a textured stitch and lined with fabric, the simple Seed Stitch baby cardigan that closes with a ribbon instead of buttons, and the cute gingham chair cushion.
Simple lace votive candle holder covers would be a great gift along with some candles, and the knitting bag made out of leftovers is the perfect project for using up yarn and having a place to store project materials.
The cute pumpkin pincushion would be a nice addition to any crafter's sewing basket, and the Nordic-sweater-inspired noel letters are a sweet decoration that doesn't scream Christmas.
As advertised, most of these projects could be completed very quickly, but some, like the noel letters, the over-the-knee cabled socks and the chunky bobbled scarf, to name a few, might take a little longer depending on your skill level and the amount of time you have to spend knitting in any given week.
Bottom Line
The Knitter's Year is a good book for inspiration and patterns for people who like quick knits to give as gifts or use themselves. There are a lot of seasonal decorations here as well as bags, scarves and other one-size-fits-all projects.
Once you've looked through a lot of Debbie Bliss books, though, the patterns can start to look the same (she's a lover of textured stitches and duck egg colored yarn, for example, and uses both a lot). I actually thought I had seen some of these projects before, but I'm not sure if that's true or if you just get a sense of deja vu once you've seen a lot of her work.
The only other complaint I have about the book is that in a lot of cases the patterns are really short so there's only room for one picture of a finished project, when for some projects a close-up shot would have been very helpful. But for the most part the photography is very clear and sure to inspire knitters to want to try out some of these quick projects for themselves.
Publication date: October 2010
