Knitting Fevers...and stages

Last Friday, we went to Borders and I picked up Wendy's book. I had had such a blast reading through it. I read out laud the part were she talks about discovering the meaning of the word "stash" and discovering eBay at the same time and how dangerous this combination was... I laugh really hard when I read this part and my husband just said: "Man, you guys are like... Twins" LOL

I also enjoyed reading about the different stages she went through with her knitting as I always think about these things. It made me think about the fevers I got as I discover first, more expensive yarns and patterns from companies like Sirdar or Tahki. I was suddenly going crazy trying to find their patterns and yarns. Then I went into a knitting book fever, then a designing fever, then I discovered Dalegarn and Sadnesgarn, then discovered Alice Starmore and got almost all of her books but since they are so expensive I only kept a couple and sold the others, and now I am in a Knitting Magazine fever. I have dedicated the last month to carefully document and acquire all the issues I can get my hands on of Vogue Knitting, Knitter's and Interwave Knits. (Knitting is such an expensive Hobby...)

The reason I love these magazines is: in Vogue is almost impossible to go wrong, in every issue there are at least two or three things I want to knit and the level of complexity is very high. What I like about Knitter's is that some of them have Elsebeth Lavold patterns never published anywhere else and I am a huge Lavold fan. Unlike Starmore's sweaters, Lavold items are modern while keeping a lot of the traditional techniques and artistry of traditional knitting. Although of course I love and plan to knit some Starmore sweaters as well. I agree with Wendy, as she states in her blog that the quality of this magazine had decreased in the last few years though. However, the issues of the 1990's are worth tracking down specially if you like Aran knitting and cables in general.

Interwave Knits has some outstanding issues although a few are not worth to keep in my opinion, so I just sell the issues I don't like. to my surprise there so many different tastes in knitting, that I have found that there are people willing to buy almost any kind of pattern. As I reflect on this, I realize that even I had change my taste over the last couple of years dramatically as my skills improve and things that I use to like, now I just don't care for. So, there you go, this is my current stage, knitting magazines. What is yours?