I have Wendy's first book and totally LOVE it!! I have been waiting anxiously ever since for her second book to arrive.
I love knitting books that empower me as a knitter and this one does just that! Whether it's knowing how to take someone else's pattern that I like and alter it to fit me and tweak it here or there or to be able to take yarn in hand and create something wonderful that fits the way I want it to and looks the way I want to is a skill I feel is essential in the process of being happy with my finished project. Wendy's first book started me off in the right direction. Her second book just loaded me up with many more tips, tricks and techniques to truly make it my own.
I LOVE the top down seamless philosphy of knitting. It just makes so much sense. Custom Knits 2 contains so much information as to why and, more importantly, HOW to take a sweater, turn it on it's head and work from the top down. Wendy even includes information on how to convert a bottom up pieced sweater into a top down seamless sweater!! Something I am sure I will use often!
It is really important to be able to understand what we need to do to get our knits to fit the way we want them to. Otherwise, why even bother knitting garments? No matter how well written a pattern is, there is no such thing as one size fits all. We are all different sizes and even if we have the same measurements around our bodies as the pattern calls for, we might be longer or shorter vertically. Or our bust might match the pattern size, but our hips are a completly different size than the pattern was written for. Wendy takes all this into consideration and gives us the tools we need in this book to be able to make the kinds of changes we want to in our knitting whether we are working from someone else's pattern or coming up with our own. There is also information on how to size patterns up or down, bigger or smaller than what the original pattern gives us. How do we take a childs garment that we love and make it big enough to fit an adult. How do we take an adult sized sweater and make it small enough to fit a child. Or a change a pattern meant to be for a man into something for a woman? or vice versa? It's all here!
I really like the way this book is laid out. Wendy presents a couple of techniques and then gives several "real world" examples that implement them. There are 25 new patterns here!! Every pattern includes a "make it your own" area that gives ideas on how to tweak and change certain elements, ie add sleeves or subtract them, add a hood, change the neckline, etc, to get creative juices flowing. There really is an umlimited supply of patterns and ideas here!