Review: Good Mail Day

Innovative, bright ways to re-invent your junk mail and build relationships via the old-fashioned art of correspondence wait for you in this book. Gone are the days of the pony express, sadly. Yet we humans still loiter around the mailbox, rallying our hopes if the postal worker's bundle looks interesting. If I received any of the resourceful and occasionally stutter-inducing missives pictured in Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art, I'd probably give Phillip a hug. I'm not sure he would like it, but there it is. Mail as an art outlet is definitely the kind of mail you want to receive.

Enter this book. Authors Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler cover almost everything you might wish to know about paper salvaging and minimal skill, down-and-dirty crafting, leading into hardcore artistry. Included are tips for careful mailing, postal regulations that might affect your creative boundaries, guides for building envelopes and keeping your delivery person happy, even some starter postcards and "mailing seals" (I call 'em stickers) in the back. Those newly pondering a stamp-based relationship can even find a pen pal and kick-start a friendship by post, all within the bounds of this book.

Reading Notes:Knitting Brioche

Having never heard of brioche stitch, despite five years of knitting experience, I delved into this book eagerly. I quickly realized that I've seen this when wandering aisles at yarn stores, fondling a knit section and wondering "how did they do that?" The answer is brioche. It's a whole new world of knitting.

• Lovely pictorial step-by-step illustrations show not only right- or left-handed variations, but others as well — this is a first for me! I'm a left-handed knitter who ended up with a continental sort-of hand, and even I found an illustration that applies! Happy.
• 2-color, reversible knitting
• Extremely details how-tos that don't skimp on directions for beginners
• Multicolor knit techniques and stitch patterns
• Brioche technique seems like an excellent way to build a seamless sweater pattern, as it lets you weave in a neckline and armholes without stitching together separate pieces of knit fabric.
• Cool motifs, like flat cables, textures and waves of color created with brioche stitch
• 25 full projects from hats to sweaters, jackets to scarves
• Complete start-to-finish tutorial for learning the stitch

I can't recommend this book for new knitters. It's quite complicated, and you should be able to read patterns already before attempting brioche. If you already know how to knit, this book offers a next step that will challenge your dexterity and make a great addition to your sweater-loving skillset.

Knitting Brioche: The Essential Guide to the Brioche Stitch
Nancy Marchant
Paperback
North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
$27.99

Coming in January 2010

View book at Barnes and Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Button and Stitch

The button jar. Does everyone have a mason full of random, rounded gems? Or is it only me? It's not just me. To my relief (and surprise), Button and Stitch fully addresses makes brilliant use of my decade-long accumulation. Rather than toss them, Kristen Rask suggests low-skill, handmade gifts like a button-laminated picture frame or button-studded photo album.

Heavy duty projects, like Rask's fabric collage jacket, require sewing proficiency but utilize dozens of colorful buttons and scrap fabric to create a fanciful, personalized garment. Others, like her camera-shaped camera case or a multi-button ring, offer a clever way to practice burgeoning craft skills. Many projects make good use of other lightly used objects you may already own, a shrunken sweater, glass condiment jars, an ex-boyfriend's tie. Photo-heavy guides let you glide seamlessly from the materials list to project completion with a pictorial reference at every step. With this level of inspiration at hand, I may not have a button jar much longer.

Button and Stitch: Supercute Ways to Use Your Button Stash
Kristen Rask
Paperback
North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
$22.99

Coming in January 2010

View book at Barnes and Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.