Can’t start on this book with out mentioning the blog that started it all. Mason Dixon Knitting is what you get when a woman from Tennessee and a woman from New York bond over a Rowan yarn chat forum, email back and forth, then eventually start their own blog. Over the years the blog has morphed into a wonderful source of patterns, information, and anecdotes. So, it only made sense that from them blog sprang books.
They’ve written at least two knitting books, but I haven’t picked up the second one yet although I did check it out at the library a few years ago. The books read like the blog, in a very conversational style that I always enjoy.
The sections in the book follow the projects discussed in the blog pretty closely, especially the earlier posts. The projects themselves range from the classic ballband dishcloth written with a spot of info about kitchen cotton yarn that I still reference frequently, to a baby kimono, linen hand towels, felted boxes, nightgowns, two log cabin blankets (a classic look and the aptly named Moderne Log Cabin blanket that explores the technique and twists it, scribble lace (alternating rows of very thin and very thick yarn), and more.
That reminds me! Unfortunately it’s not in this book but I first read about the quilters of Gee’s Bend from Mason Dixon and the last time I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond I saw that they had acquired some of the quilts as artwork. Gee’s Bend at the VMFA. I think that’s pretty fabulous. What a way to recognize the creativity and ingenuity of quilting like that.