Review: Knits Men Want

First, the facts:

Title: Knits Men Want: The 10 Rules Every Woman Should Know Before Knitting for a Man, Plus the Only 10 Patterns She’ll Ever Need

Author: Bruce Weinstein

Published by: Stewart, Tabori & Chang

Pages: 127

Type: Patterns and guidance.

Chapters:

One chapter for each “rule.” I’d list them here, but why give away all the good stuff?

Pattern Size Range: Text

The In-Depth Look:

How can you not love a pattern book that not only educates you, gives you great patterns, and truly fantastic tips, but that is darn entertaining while doing so?

The premise behind this book is that most knitters–male or female–have made something, sometime for a man who simply never wore it. Maybe the design was too complicated, too busy. Maybe the sweater shouted “Look at me!” or maybe it was too warm, too bulky. Who knows? The point, though, is that men can be just as picky about what they wear as women … the trick is, they won’t admit it. They shrug and mutter that they don’t care what they wear, that women’s obsessions with clothing are incomprehensible, what’s the big deal?

Except, it turns out, men are as particular as any fashionista–just for completely different reasons. They don’t like anything too trendy. They don’t like to be too hot. They don’t like anything that’s fussy or complicated. They like their clothing to be soft and simple. It’s not that they don’t appreciate when women knit them sweaters that don’t meet their criteria, it’s that they’re just low maintenance, and too many hand-knits are high-maintenance.

How do I know all these things? This book taught me. Written by a knitter who is male, he lets all us women knitters in on the secrets our menfolk haven’t bothered to share–mostly because it would have meant really thinking about what they like about their clothing, and most of them can’t be bothered to do that.

Structured around 10 main rules about knitting for men (and trust me, they are helpful rules), this book provides the “only 10 patterns you’ll ever need” as well as all the reasons that you need them. They really are good patterns, too. Straight-forward, classic, simple, basic … the kind of knits men want to wear.

And, did I mention it was funny? Because it is. There were parts I was reading outloud to my mother because they were so amusing and spot on in verbalizing all the things my father has not quite said all these years.

This truly wonderful book is available at amazon.com.

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