Strong Book Thoughts

So I love the art. It's adorbs. However, a cookbook cannot be judged on artwork alone. So how are those recipes?

Okay, so I really, really appreciate that this book has a section on 5 minute boba. Because you can't always buy the good stuff, or you don't have time for the good stuff when you are throwing together a quick treat. I mean, it also tells you how to make boba from scratch.

So the first bit of the book is about tea, tisanes and infusions, and the history of such. The rest of the book has gardening tips and hints organized by what part of the plant makes a tasty drink.

As an absolute novice gardener, I wouldn't call this book a guide to growing anything, as the subtitle claims. However, it's very inspiring in terms of what I might want in a home garden. And the tips on what to harvest when and how to preparing it look solid. Just, like, find a different book if you want more advice on keeping plants alive until harvest.

So, weirdly, I'd recommend this book to people who want to nudge their home garden towards tea blending, or to authors. I think this would be a great reference book for anyone who wants to write that "herb witch/wise woman" archetype and actually talk about what the character is doing. Harvest times apparently vary wildly if your primary concern is tea. And this has a great list of North America-friendly real world plants could be in such a person's garden.

So what we have here is the end of the section on patterns for woven fabric, which means the most intricate designs, as they get harder as you go through the chapter, and more or less all of the patterns for knits.

I'd say the book is "just" a set of stitch patterns, but the instructions are actually quite good as well. This book focuses a little more on aesthetic choices than types of mending, so I wouldn't call it the only mending book you should have. But it's a great idea book!

Here's one of the iron-on transfers. It looks like that kind of decent quality that might get more than one use. Since I don't need to mend anything right now, I'm not going to waste the transfer just to find out.

Now I've been on a bit of a dive on youtube about sashiko specifically recently. That's given me some extra opinions about this book that, well, I might be the only person who really cares. If you want to really dig into traditional sashiko patterns, this is not the book for you. It has clearly, heavily influenced a lot of the designs in this book, but these designs are mostly a bit... looser? More casual? And every so often, I look at the recommended stitch order and question how often the author likes rethreading their needle. That second grumble might be relevant to more people, honestly.

Anyway, the stitch patterns are quite lovely. I like the rainbows and the dandelions in particular. And the directions are quite clear even if I don't always agree with them. I'd add this to a small collection about mending, but it's not my overall favorite.

So this book is all the details about socks. ALL OF THEM. In a good way. If you've never knit before, and you want to start with socks? Grab this book. If you've already knit several different pairs of socks? Get this anyway. She breaks down the process really nicely and gives you a nice framework for making your own sock patterns.

Okay, so I love the aesthetic of this book. In case the yourtube channel name didn't give you the hint, the author favors earth tones. This results in a really warm vibe throughout the book. All of the photography is really nicely framed, too.

The instructional photos are really clear. I'm fairly sure the author is the model for all of them. I can't find any model credits, and she's absolutely the sort of person who credits people, you know? Also, she got a lot of her yarn from indie yarn dyers, and that sparks so much joy in my heart.

Also, it's nice to see a book where all the pictures that show a person? It's a black person. Like, the whole time. And when I consider how many crafting books are white people all the way down? Just, it's nice.

So first, I will say the recipes look reasonably solid. I wouldn't say they are for beginners, but if you know how to bake, you can mostly do this stuff. The gothicness is mostly in the decorating.

So what's driving me crazy? The pictures. Every so often, there's an artist's rendering of a recipe instead of a photo. And that means I'm staring at it trying to figure out if food can actually do the thing that I'm looking at it.

There's also a certain number of recipes that have strong wizard school vibes. You know the one. I'm very aware of the aesthetic overlap between goth and wizard school, but... I dunno. A few specific ones hit badly enough that I feel the urge to check the author's politics.

So the directions are pretty good, and the designs are fun. There are a few patterns that look very beginner friendly, but most of the patterns are a bit quirky. I don't think that's a bad thing, btw. It just makes me think the book might be more interesting to someone who has knit some socks and wants to knit some *different* socks next.

Gonna be honest. even though the recipes look well written, most of them aren't great for the at-home chef.

It's not that they're hard, tho some ingredients might be hard to source in some areas? It's just that a decent number of these recipes work best on those more professional set ups, or need a specialized mold or tool.

HOWEVER! If you want to know what kinds of street food you'll find in Japan and what typically goes into them? OMG, so much information! If it's a festival food, there's notes on when and where the festival is celebrated. If it's a regional food, there's notes on where to go to find it! (Hiroshima Okonomiyaki, here I come!!!)

This was published 2007. The models are surprisingly diverse for the time, but they are also all skinny, little twigs. I'm pretty sure any of them could have modeled the shift dress that's only sized for a 32in bust.

So, you know, if you're larger than a 32in bust, be ready to do a hell of a lot of math or just focus on the accessories.

A lot of the pieces are femme leaning, tho some are pretty neutral for as much as I know the different subcultures.

And that's a thing I should note. The book is pretty inclusive for music-related subcultures of the time. Part of that is because the lines between goth and punk and rock were a bit blurrier then, I'm sure. But I appreciated it a lot back in the day because I had a lot more interest in goth than punk. And a lot less in the way of knitting skills.

BUT ANYWAY.

Yeah, I had this book back in 2007. That was my bookstore employee discount era, so I bought books very impulsively. This book was GOALS for me back then, when everything else was softly femme and homey and... yeah. If you're having trouble breaking out of the cottagecore of it all these days, this book is good inspo even now.

So pretty. The photography of all the quilts is WONDERFUL. I'm fairly sure several images in the book are larger than the quilts.

If you didn't read the image description on the book cover image, each of those figures is a block smaller than 10cm by 5cm. THEY ARE TINEH. SO TINEH. SMOL.

There are only 5 projects. The seam allowances are probably made of the tears of the damned. I AM IN AWE.

There's basically no instruction on how to spin here. This is a survey of all the fibers and so much technical info about each one. There are charts and numbers all over this book.

There's also a bajillion pictures that compare all those technical details.

So, no lie, I think spinning is best learned from someone in person, with watching videos a distant second. It's so very in motion. But that's not always an option, and some of us like to read about our hobbies.

The tone of the book is very conversational, even on the more technical bits. The author clearly loves the topic, and she's researched it deeply.

There's a really nice section on what to look for when buying your own spindle, or how to make one with easily available materials if you're really on a budget.

There's information on different spinning styles from around the world (and there are more techniques than you would think for something as simple as spinny spin makes yarn!).

The section on troubleshooting covers all the mistakes I've ever made and a few I've avoided so far. There's also a section on lowkey repairs you can do on your spindles.

The pictures are clear, and generally not very artistic compared to some other spinning books I've looked at. That's not to say they look bad; it's more that they value clarity over aesthetics.

So the book has three main sections: Native Peoples, European and African. And the sections are a bit of a conversation about how the cooking styles of those three cultures meshed and melded to give us food from that South East chunk of the US map.

Now is it perfectly confined to that region of the US? No. But that's the overall vibe, what with jambalaya and okra appearing in these chapters. And the native people who are particularly discussed are certain from that part of the land.

Not every recipe has a picture, which I think is a particular problem when several foods have a pile of regional names attached to them. Some of the recipes look really complex, but others are pretty simple.

There are recipes that are vegetarian or even vegan, as are there recipes that are gluten free. NONE OF THEM ARE LABELED THAT WAY, but they are there. ymmv on if you wanna do that hunting.

I've realized that all the boba books I've found were written by boba shop owners. So I guess now I have to hope that some of my other faves write books so I can learn how to make all my faves.

So this book has a section that basically walks you through figuring out your taste in sweetness and tea strength. I love that so much, because "sweeten to taste" is one of the most annoying phrases in the world when you are first learning how to make something.

This book also has multiple recipes for the tapioca pearls, but just recommends a list of stores for the rest of the toppings. It's also got a nice range of suggestions for the milk part of milk tea.

There's a small section of boba shop desserts, which includes those souffle pancakes that are (were?) trendy.

After a short introduction, the book is really about 10 different foods/food types: grapefruits & bitter oranges, bitter leaves, tahini, beer, walnuts, cranberries, tea, coffee, cocoa and licorice. Each food gets 8-12 recipes with a range of savory and sweet dishes.

There are pictures for all the recipes.

The range of recipes is really global, and several dishes are fusion dishes.

While some of the recipes are vegan or vegetarian (or other food restriction), none of them are labeled that way in the table of contents or the index.

So despite my memory insisting that this book really showcases the stuff that was trendy for spinners in the late 00's, there is some really good technical information for beginners who want to just make yarn. It's a biased in favor of non-electric spinning wheels, but someone using an e-spinner or a drop spindle will still get a lot of info from this.

There's a nice section about fiber types that were widely available in 2009, that includes silk and a nice range of wools. That section might be of particular interest to someone who has messed around a little bit and now wants to really explore fibers.

While I have no interest in making art yarns (I loathe knitting & crocheting with them), this book does explain several types of them very clearly. It also covers core spinning, and chain plying. I've noticed that both get regular mentions in my fave youtube channels, but with the assumption that everyone already knows how to do them.

Pictures are clear, but not overly artistic. I've seen spinning books that were prettier. So this has a little bit more of a textbook vibe than an art book vibe.