handmade by stefanie

I wanted to take a few weeks before revisiting the two Fresh Designs Series books I have yet to review ( Fresh Designs: Sweaters and Fresh Designs: Men). For those of you who missed last month's review of Fresh Designs: Scarves and Fresh Designs: Shawls, you can click here to get up to speed. There are also a lot of general notes about the book series as a whole, which I'll summarize in the following bullet points before we move on to the task at hand: Graphics: A clean, modern aesthetic. Patterns are clearly written and laid out in a way that's easy to follow and include well-shot photos of each design. Bonus points for non-conventional models! Stitch patterns are written out and charted when necessary. Charts are readable and easy-to-follow (only one lace design has an unavoidably small chart) Patterns have all the information you need right there - no rifling through the book to find the symbol or abbreviation key.  Each garment has at least 4 size options, som...

I should probably start by saying that I have a design coming out in the upcoming Fresh Designs: Toys book, and I'm a huge fan of Cooperative Press and Shannon Okey. Through the Cooperative Press , Shannon has managed to publish some of the most interesting titles in the yarn industry. California Revival Knits , Extreme Double-Knitting , and now the Fresh Designs series readily spring to mind as shining examples! I volunteered myself to review the books that recently came out because I'm really excited about this series (currently out are Scarves , Shawls , Sweaters and Men ) and jumped at the opportunity to help promote my fellow Fresh Designs designers. All of the books in this series share a clean, modern graphic aesthetic. Patterns are clearly-written and laid out in a way that's easy to follow. The images of the patterns are directly followed by the pattern, which is something I appreciate (I hate having to search through a PDF document when all the photos ar...