Whether it’s slow food as the antithesis of fast food, or now slow knitting, the concept of traditional and slow seems to have returned.

Slow Knitting

Are you one of those people that watches period movies or television shows with a keen eye for finding a rustic hand-knit shawl, or a beautifully crafted child’s sweater and think how lovely it would be to be curled up in a stuffed chair, sipping tea in the vicarage with a cozy knitted cardigan around your shoulders?

If so, then Slow Knitting – a journey from seeps to skein to stitch, by Hannah Thiessen might just be your…well…cup of tea.

It’s a beautifully laid-out book that is both a pattern book (about a dozen patterns) and a knitting philosophy that encourages, reveling in the slow and methodical choosing of good yarns, and making quality knitwear.  It represents a number of yarn vendors, such as A Verb for Keeping Warm, Green Mountain Spinnery and Brooklyn Tweed.  It also has designs from well-known designers like Véronik Avery and Kirsten Kapur.  Here are two of my favorites from the book:

Overall, I’m not a huge fan of knitosophy (knit/philosophy) books…I know it’s heresy, but I’ve never enjoyed reading books that empower knitters or give them some raison-d’être.  But this book is quite beautifully done and it did introduce me to a number of wool and yarn vendors I wasn’t familiar with.

I’m glad to have it in my knitbrary.

Current Knitting

I am ALMOST finished knitting the 50 coffee cup cozies.

Other than sewing in ends, I have completed seven more cozies (one is still on the needles), which brings me up to 49.  One more cozy and I can start making hats and shawls and scarves again!

I did also start a new Color Block Scarf.

I only need to finish the last color block and I’m glad to say that I’ve sewn in my ends each time I start a new color, so I’ll only have a few ends to sew in.