The Ultimate Knitted Tee

More than your average tee-shirt. This book presents a lot of possibilities and illustrates how your choice of yarn can make all the difference.

I have a huge stack of knitting books, and they all have at least one pattern in them I want to try, or one technique I want to learn. But this book is definitely the first one I'm going to reach for when I finish my (mumble-hundred) projects in the works and start on something new. I love this book! There are many gorgeous tees in this book, made in a variety of techniques: top-down, bottom-up, side to side, and more. And the yarns are gorgeous. A further bonus: each pattern shows a swatch in two different yarn sets, so there are three looks available for each pattern. Enough variety for everyone. Another thing I like is, many of the patterns come in larger sizes, so those of us who are...um...unwaiflike can still find lots to knit. Do yourself a favor and pick up this book. Now! You won't be sorry.

What I liked the most about this book was that it showed you the same pattern in three different sets of yarn. There is the first set that they show on the model on the first page of the design, and then there are two more sets at the very end of the pattern. Just by changing an eyelash yarn to a ribbon, and the wool to a cotton blend, the whole shirt would change. I have enough patterns for knitting shirts (and if I don't, there is the web). This book, though, showed me how changing just a bit here or there can make the pattern my own. I'm not stuck with a railroad yarn or a fluffy wool that would scratch me raw. That is something you rarely see in books these days - how to knit the same pattern with different yarns. Yes, I know that you can change your yarn for any pattern, just gauge it. But this one actually gave examples of what a slight change here or there would actually look like - making this one of my favorite look-for-ideas book.

I should have noticed the publisher of this book; the format and style is very much like "Knit it your way" which showed several different sweaters knit in 2 different yarns. All the yarns were Trendsetter yarns and it's not a huge leap to see that knitting in cotton is different from knitting in wool. In this one, once again many of the designs are knit in high-end yarns, mostly Trendsetter, and sometimes combinations that would be difficult to match. However, the classic Tee is knit in many different ways, side-to side, top down, etc. and the instructions and diagrams are much better than the previous book. I'm sure I will find it useful for the non-traditional designs, but there are a lot more useful patterns for the basic Tee out there.