NORWEGIAN PATTERNS FOR KNITTING: Classic Sweaters, Hats, Vests, and Mittens, by Mette N. Handberg
(NOTE: I'm loading larger photos into Blogger now so if you would like to see larger versions of any of these photos, just click on the photo. )
If you are familiar with Dale of Norway's stranded knitting patterns, you are probably familiar with Mette N. Handberg's work. She designed the famous Dale polar bear sweater and also the foxes sweater. She is truly a colorwork goddess. To see some of her previous designs on Ravelry, go HERE. I knit a lovely Dale cardigan designed by her.
The book includes sweaters and vests for men and women plus some hats and mittens and wristwarmers. Each pattern is rated for difficulty. The back cover say there are techniques from Bergen, Trondheim, West Norway and Selbu. The author is a native of West Norway and the hat and wrist warmers shown above use embellishment techniques common in that area.
There is a short section on techniques where she discusses sweater construction and a separate section on correcting small problems and mistakes. There might be a bit of a language barrier here as I'm not always sure what she means. For instance, in the "patterns don't match at the sides" entry she says "The yarn is twisted and the piece biases as you knit. It is not good enough to lay the garment flat, machine-stitch, and cut. Make sure the side stitches match precisely." I guess she is talking about the stitches not matching up in a steeked cardigan front??
This moose sweater is my favorite pattern in the book.
She occasionally uses some low-contrast yarns in the book which I haven't encountered that much in Nordic designs - check out this sweater. I didn't even realize it was stranded all over on first glance. I do love all the red she uses in this book.
I'm so happy I bought this book. I wish there were more stranded designs (there are also some simple stockinette and textured designs) but the ones that are included are really beautiful. I have to make the pop-up glove/mittens seen below.
ETA: An eagle-eyed knitter on Ravelry's Dale of Norway group noticed that four of the charts in this book extend over the center page fold. There might be issues with photocopying or enlarging or even reading the charts accurately without harming the book's spine.
