Jane Brocket and the £55 tea cosy

Last week I sold some of my old stuff on ebay (violins) and I treated myself to Jane Brocket’s new book, The Gentle Art of Knitting. It arrived on Saturday morning so I thought I would do a review.

Domestic detritus around the gentle art of knitting. Keep Calm and Carry On

First all the positive bits. It’s a lovely book – Jane is an extraordinarily engaging writer, I think: she creates a little world, makes it look enticing, and draws you in. It is quite hard to do this in a knitting book where you are restricted to writing introductions to patterns, but, she manages it. Also, she has a real eye for colour and styling: the photos in this make you want to knit the patterns, even when it is something you wouldn’t normally knit (a bulky garter stitch hot water bottle cover, for example). For those of you who take a hard, has-it-got-any-new-patterns in it approach, well, there are some really nice patterns for cushions, tea cosy patterns, a couple of really attractive looking hats, and more. I’m disappointed that everything’s knitted flat, but other people definitely won’t be (I shall lend it to my mum for the hat patterns – she likes knitting flat and is capable of seaming properly!), and it’s not unexpected – it’s got a very best-of-Rowan kind of vibe. Pretty book! I’ve been reading it all weekend and I like it.

I liked these cushions

I do have a problem though (you knew this). In fact I have two. Firstly, this is a book which formulates a philosophy: Jane has a Gentle Knitting Philosophy, which is, knit easy things where tension doesn’t matter in lovely yarn – no-one does knitting for necessity any more, so have fun with it. Now this is fair enough – it’s not necessarily the kind of knitting I enjoy all the time, but she’s not saying it should be, and I certainly sometimes want to knit something in that vein. Don’t we all? However, these patterns aren’t actually all that easy. A lot of them use intarsia – ok, it’s probably not hugely difficult (I’ve never done it successfully though), but, it’s not the first thing you learn. A few use stranding (the technique I was muttering about in my last post).

I worked out stranding and I knitted this cowl

The round cushion one uses short row shaping. There aren’t detailed instructions of how to do these techniques. Now, I don’t know if I could work out intarsia just from someone saying ‘twist the yarns together so you don’t get a hole!’ but I’m going to hazard a guess that if I was wanting some nice relaxing knitting I might need a bit more initial detail. I think sometimes when books want things to be simple, they force them to be simple by ignoring complexity, and then people try, fail, and get put off. Whereas sometimes the simplest pattern is actually the one that is 5 pages long with 23 diagrams that you look at to start with and wince, but then you start it and think, wait, this might be making sense...

But, this is supposed to be simple, comforting knitting (whether it actually works or not: let’s not let facts get in the way) because this is about Domesticity As Retreat: Knitting As Comfort. I find the whole ‘domesticity as a cosy retreat where we all play with lovely expensive yarn without worrying about having to make anything that actually fits or is a bit difficult’ a bit problematic. I won’t get into the whole feminist angle (because I’d have to do a whole post) but I’m just going to say that domesticity as a concept isn’t politically neutral, and I think making it all cosy and lovely kind of flirts with the concept without actually engaging with the awkward bits. So, yes, I find it problematic. If anyone who is feeling more articulate than me today wants to tell me why, then I’m very happy to hear!

My final criticism though I do think I’ve got a valid point. There is all the usual stuff in this book about lovely lovely yarn and how terrible it used to be when we had to use acrylic, etc, and the pleasure one might derive from using said lovely lovely yarn on lovely lovely bamboo needles. Jane names her favourite types of yarn – the usual suspects, Rowan, Debbie Bliss, etc. So I priced up some of the projects for you. Now, I am being a bit unfair here, because she does tell you to substitute yarn (I mean, she tells you to substitute it for Rowan. But the principle is there!), and she also says you will have leftovers from a lot of the projects which you can then reuse to make others, which is fair enough. However (prices based on Get Knitted):

For the price of knitting this throw you could buy a small terraced house in Worksop

There is a crochet throw which requires you to use 24 skeins of Cascade 220. (It actually says 400g of each colour in the notes – I’m assuming this is a misprint because that would cost about £500). That will cost you £146.40. Another crochet throw would cost you £122.

There is a knitted throw which calls for 41 balls of aran-weight yarn. If you buy one of the ranges Jane recommends, you would be looking at about £160+. If you did it in Rowan you would be looking at about £270.

There is a tea cosy which calls for 9 skeins of Cascade 220. This tea cosy would cost you £54.90 to knit.

The offending cosy, propped open by my sock-clothed foot

Now, I don’t necessarily think patterns should recommend that everybody should knit them in Giant Acrylic Balls and a bit of bald tinsel, but, look. There is a big difference between someone on a blog, who has bought a couple of skeins of luxury yarn with their own money recommending it, and someone writing a book telling you you should knit with luxury yarns which would make half the projects in it completely financially out of reach of most people. I mean, I might like the sensual pleasure of knitting with nice yarn, but I might also like the sensual pleasure of being able to pay my mortgage as well. Something that takes only a couple of skeins and where the type of fibre really makes a difference – absolutely, fair enough, I prefer wool for some things too and indeed I’m just about to order some (so warm!). But I can’t afford £200 for a throw and I suspect most other people can’t as well. I accept that that’s a criticism of more than just this book: however, I find it lazy and elitist. So lazy and elitist in fact, that it made me buy yarn to make my own crochet ripple throw (£20). So now I have to get off my bum and try and sell more on ebay! My life, it is hard.

God, I sound a grumpy old person, don’t I? I really did like this book. You see, I was interested! I engaged! I bet you’re thinking, what does she say about books she doesn’t like, and the answer is, I say nothing because I think it would take me counselling to get over it if I ever dredged up the memory of Twilight. Can 5 billion teenage girls be wrong? Why yes. Yes they can ;-).