ALICE STARMORE'S CHARTS FOR COLOR KNITTING
I honestly wasn't expecting to love this book as much as I do. I didn't even pre-order it from Amazon when I heard they were reprinting it but ended up adding it to my shopping cart recently when I needed an additional book to reach $25.
I have many books with color charts but this one is different I think. For one thing it is divided into sections by theme such as the Inner Landscape, Sea and Shoreline, Birds and Flowers and Far East. She includes Greek and Russian and Swedish motifs and some motifs that would be better for intarsia than stranding (due to float length). It really is one of the widest ranging books of charts I've ever seen.
She also has an chapter in the back of the book called A Word on Colour Knitting. One interesting thing she says in the chapter is that you should make sure to look at your color swatch from far away. That is a good point because if you look at the sweaters at her Virtual Yarns web site, the colors look different close up and far away. She also discusses how she adds colors and says that the number of colors in a design always relate to the size of the pattern.
For some odd reason my book naturally opens to page 31 which has a cute horizontal border of rabbits. Coincidence? The charts are divided into horizontal borders, allover patterns, vertical panels, and single motifs.
The one drawback of this book is that there is no indication of pattern length or width. You'll have to count it out yourself if you want to use a chart in your own design. Still I highly recommend this inexpensive and extremely useful book for all color knitters. Buy it!
CRAFT ACTIVISM
I received a review copy of this book as I am always interested in the subject of how we can use knitting to make the world a better place. The book defines activism as either making a statement, recrafting the past, crafting for a cause, crafting to recycle, renew, and reuse, and crafting a community. Ravelry is highlighted along with knit bombing, quilts with a message, and Ruth Marshall's work to highlight endangered species through knitting.
My favorite project included in the book is the Red Scarf Project. DH works as a Clinical Director at a treatment foster care program and the kids he works with who graduate from high school and go on to college are few and far between. The Red Scarf Project gives out 2,500 scarves a year to former foster care kids who are in college.
And yes, there is a pattern for those cute stranded mittens on the cover included in the book.