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When I started knitting, way back in the early part of the century, I inadvertently joined The Knitting Revolution. Around the world, women and men of all ages were picking up sticks with a vengeance and knitting up a storm. And when I finally got sick of knitting scarves and blanket squares and things, I headed to the local library to look for books on knitting. At the time, there weren’t many—mostly old books with outdated patterns—but there were a few newer, hipper knitting books coming out from time to time. And when I first found Hollywood Knits, I realized just how cool my new hobby could be.
Hollywood Knits features designs by Suss Cousins, a Swedish knitter who started her own knitwear business after moving to New York. After she married an actor, she found that more and more of her clients were actors—and you may have seen her designs on TV shows like The Cosby Show or in movies like Scooby-Doo. In her first book, Cousins (who now owns a shop in California, where she sells her designs and teaches new knitters) definitely spends a lot of time name-dropping. She makes sure you know that she’s friends with Julianne Moore—and that Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock hang at her store. She even hints that she may have been responsible for the new knitting boom. You may roll your eyes a bit, but the little bits of celebrity name-dropping are sometimes fun, too. And once you get to the patterns, none of that really matters, anyway.
The thirty patterns in Hollywood Knits are, for the most part, easy to knit. Many of them, in fact, are just squares or rectangles, used to make scarves or wraps or blankets—or sewn together to make a whole bunch of really cool bags. There are also cute baby hats and sweaters and even golf club covers that would make a great gift for your favorite golfer (even if that just happens to be you). And once you move beyond the basics, Cousins features plenty of gorgeous sweater patterns, made in yarns so luscious you can almost feel it. The patterns often use bulkier yarn and bigger needles, so projects can be finished quickly—and though the yarn she uses isn’t always inexpensive, the creative knitter will be able to find decent substitutions.
Cousins’s patterns aren’t your grandma’s knitting patterns. The designs are fun and current. And if you love bags, you’ll want one of every design in the book (my personal favorite is the knitting bag—with fat needles for handles). And just flipping through the book will remind you why you love knitting.
Though I’ve amassed quite a collection of knitting books over the years, I still love flipping through Hollywood Knits. It was recently re-released in paperback—so if you don’t already own a well-worn copy, now’s a great time to add it to your collection.
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