Knitting

For anyone whose New Year's resolution is to knit more The Knitter's Year: 52 Make-in-a-Week Projects - Quick Gifts and Seasonal Knits by Debbie Bliss offers great inspiration by providing patterns for 52 quick (depending on your skill level) knitting projects.

Bliss offers a project per week, grouped by season. The projects she's chosen are a nice mix of home decor and functional items (pillow cases, chair covers and door stops), clothing (baby cardigan, hat and sandals), accessories (scarves, hats, gloves and bags), and whimsical items (bunny egg cozies, tech gadget covers, Christmas tree decorations and pompom garland). Of course, all projects call for Debbie Bliss yarns, but you could easily substitue a yarn of your choice. However, Bliss's yarns are beautiful and luxurious, so it might be worth a little bit of a splurge to use her line. Since the projects are small you wouldn't have to make a huge investment.

Reversible Knitting by Lynne Barr offers 50 new reversible stitch patterns and 20 projects by Lynne Barr and top designers like Norah Gaughan, Pam Allen and Wenlan Chia. Each project creates a garment that can be worn from either side or inside-out, so you get 2 garments for the work of one!

In the first half of the book Lynne illustrates the 50 stitch patterns, which are grouped into six different chapters based on a shared or similar technique. The second half of the book is devoted to reversible patterns for scarves, sweaters, dresses and more.

Although there were only a few patterns that struck me as immediately doable as a beginning knitter, I really enjoyed browsing the stitch patterns and projects, which range from creative and fresh to high-fashion chic to timelessly classic. If you like the idea of creating reversible knits, you should also check out Iris Schreier's Reversible Knits: Creative Techniques for Knitting Both Sides. Happy knitting!