Crafty reading: Sense of style. Colour

I'm moving to a new appartment in a few months time and as it happens I'm going to have figure out how to decorate lot more space than I've ever had for just myself. This has resulted into lot of reading decorating books and magazines, googling a ton of sofas and pinning my ass of all things decorating and furniture. Laiter you'll probably get to see some parts of that kinda big decorating project I'll be overtaking, but for now you'll probably just get some reviews of decorating books and things like that. Like this one.

Don't worry, this blog won't be just about decorating now and there will be posts about other things too. This is just something that is an important thing in my life right now.

Sense of Style. Colour

Author: Shannon Fricke
Publisher: Murdoch Books (2006)

Finnish edition: Väreillä kodikasta
Publisher: WSOY (2010)

What is it about:

 If I needed to condense this book to one centence, I'd say it's a book to teach you how to use color intuitively in decorating. To elaborate more, Shannon Fricke has written a practical yet not rule and colorchart based book that helps you to find inspiration for finding the right colorpalet for your own decorating projects.

Fricke's aproach is rather philosophical and she does start the book by instructing how to concentrate and draw color inspiration from anything you see around you. From here she continues to by going through many different colors, how they have inspired her, how different shades of each color work, how to combine them and where each color fits best.

In the last part of the book Fricke gives more practical instructions on how to actually work the color into your personal home design. She goes through furniture, textiles and ornaments and how to use color in all of them. And yes, in the end she does also briefly go through the more traditional way of working with color, the color circle.

Fricke gives instructions how you can draw inspiration from all kinds of things, including fashion.

What I liked:

This was a really nice book to read. Fricke had a nice flow in her writing and even tough I wasn't reading this during an active decorating project, it gave good base to start figuring out what kind of color palet I'd live to have in my new home. I also think that a very important part of the book was the fact that Fricke did stress through out the book that choosing the colors and designing the home is a proces and you can't and shouldn't try to do it all at once.

Oh, and I absolutely loved the illustrations in this book. It was great that they weren't just pictures of different interiors but many of them (mainly in the color section of the book) were inspiration boards and gave a good idea how you can drow color ideas from objects that are not nesessarely related to decorating.


What I didn't like: 

Here and there the text was slightly too vague for my taste. I liked how Fricke wrote about her own learning experiences but here and there I did miss a slightly more bread aproach to things.

The one thing I didn't quite like about the layout were captions. It was rather frustrating to be forced to flip the book sideways on almost every opening to read them. They were rather interesting captions too, so I think it would have been way more reader friendly to put them horisontal and not vertical.

I might be biased as a green lover, but this page on the right is my absolute favorite in the whole book and the lower right corner asian picture something from which I'm plannign to pull colors from to my new home.

Final verdict: 

This it a nice book to help you (or me) on the way to finding the color palet that works for you and your space. It doesn't give straight answers but pushes you to figure things out on your own and to develope your personal sence of color. So this book is definitely not for quick answers but a nice tool to have helping you along the way to better decoration.

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Olen muuttamassa uuteen kotiin parin kuukauden päästä ja koska uudessa kodissa on paljon enemmän tilaa, kuin yhdessäkään aikaisemmassa kodissa, niin paljon on tarvetta suunnitella ja ideoida uutta lehtien, kirjojen ja Pinterestin avulla. Siksipä täällä blogissakin näkyy nyt ennen muuttoa joitakin inspiraation hakuun liittyviä juttuja ja sitten muuton jälkeen varmasti ainakin joitain sisustusjuttuja. Vaan pelko pois, ei tästä pelkkä sisustusblogi ole tulossa.

Väri-inspiraatiota hain kirjastosta lainatusta kirjasta Väreillä kodikasta, jonka on kirjoittanut Shannon Fricke. Kirjassa Fricke on filosofisella otteella neuvoo, miten erilaisista asioista voidan hakea inspiraatiota sisustuksen värimaailmaan. Eri väreistä esitellään erilaisia sävyjä sekä sitä, miten ja missä tiloissa niitä voidaan toimivimmin käyttää. Lisäksi Fricke opastaa, miten kodin sisustusta on hyvä lähteä rakentamaan kerroksittain erityisesti värejä silmällä pitäen.

Pidin kirjasta kovasti ja sitä oli mukava lukea ihan vaan lukemisen vuoksi. Ainakin minusta sekä teksti että kuvat olivat inspiroivia ja hauskaa oli, etteivät kuvat olleet ainoastaan kuvia erilaisista sisustuksista. Tämä kirja toimisi varmasti mainiona tukena koko sisustusprosessin aijan.

Crafty reading: The Big book of socks

I talked about writing about books some time ago and I think it's about time to actually start doing it. This book is something I borrowed from the library an actually read in Finnish, but was originally published in English so the review is in English too. (In the future, when I'll review books published only in Finnish, the review might also be in Finnish, but we'll see that when we'll get there.)

The Big book of socks 

Author: Kathleen Taylor
Publisher: The Taunton Press (2009)

Finnish edition: Suuri sukkakirja
Publisher: WSOY (2012)

What is it about:
As the tittle says, this is a book about knitting socks. In the introduction part of the book the author talks about the basics of socks:

• different parts and different types of socks, 
• different yarns used for socks and what kind of yarn works best for different type of socks,
• tools you need and tools you can use when making socks,
• different parts of the knitting process from the swatch to streching and mending socks.

How ever the main content of the book are the instructions for different socks. There are all together instructions for 75 different patterns devided into different chapters from basic socks to lace and fair isle socks. Each pattern is also categorized based on it's difficulty and there are instructions on how to make them in different sizes starting from childrens sizes goin all the way to big mens socks in most of them. Also pictures of all the socks can be found through out the book.

At the end of the book there are also attachment about different types of heels and tips, a glossery of knitting terms and a list of yarns shops (the Finnish edition has a list of Finnish shops too). And of course there is an index from where you can look for specific techniques, patterns or yarns within the book.

What I liked:
First of I have to say that this book looks great. It's fresh and colorful and the pictures are crisp and clear. Visually it was just a joy to browse and that was the original reason why I borrowed it. So a big plus for the look of this book.

I loved the beginning of the book and how the basics of sock making were explaned! It was compact and clear and teached something new for me too. Or rather, managed to explain some things for me. I very much enjoyed reading through it.

Some of the patterns were really pretty and I think it's a definite merit for this book that there was a true variety in the patterns and techniques. I bet everyone reading this book vill find at least one or two patterns they will like.

What I didn't like:
Unfortunately the bone I have to pick with this book are the instructions. I considered doing socks based on one of the patterns, but when I couldn't figure out how many stiches I should cast on, I just got terribly frustrated and picked a pattern from somewhere else. In general I don't think the instructions are the clearest in the world, but it may be that I and these instructions are not compattible.

Final verdict:
For me this was a great book to get some sock knitting inspiration with all it's various patterns. It's a beautiful book and lures you nicely into the world of socks when you might have lost your interst a bit (this was my case).

I mightn also recommend this to a  beginner as a basic work about socks because of the very nice introduciton to sock making there is. It does also introduce you to different types of socks very nicely with the grouping of patterns. How ever I would need to warn that the instructions are not the easiest.

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Aloitan vihdoin lupaileman sarjan käsityökirjoista, joita omistan tai olen lukenut. Ensimmäisenä kirjana esittelen WSOY:n julkaiseman Suuren sukkakirjan, jonka on kirjoittanut Kathleen Taylor.

Kirjassa on alussa johdantona perusteellinen selostus sukanteon perusteista, välineistä ja materiaaleista, sen jälkeen yhteensä 75 ohjetta erilaisten sukkien tekoon ja lopussa liitteet, joissa käydään läpi erilaisia kantapää- ja kärkimalleja, neulontasanastoa sekä lankakauppoja maailmalta ja Suomesta.

Parasta kirjasssa olivat ehdottomasti visuaalisesti miellyttävä ulkoasu, mielenkiintoinen johdanto-osio, josta vähän kokeneempikin neuloja voi oivaltaa uutta. Lisäksi monituisista ohjeista löytyy varmasti jokaiselle neulojalle kiinnostavia malleja. Heikkoutena taas kirjassa olivat ohjet, jotka koin ainakin itse paikoin toivottoman epäselviksi.

Kokonaisuudessaan kirja oli oikein miellyttävää luettavaa. Kokeneemmalle neulojalle kirja toimii mainiona inspiraationa, kun taas aloittelijalle on varmasti iloa etenkin kirjan johdannosta ja toisaalta erilaisten sukkatyyppien esittelystä. Ohjeita en kuitenkaan uskalla suurella lämmöllä suositella.