As I sit here typing, I'm wearing the second sweater I've knit from this book's selections, and I couldn't be much happier with the results.
Yes, the book's directions seem scanty and the sizes don't go up past a 38-in. bust; and, like other reviewers, I wish I didn't have to do so much work to decode the color charts. But just try working from a REAL vintage pattern from the 30s and 40s some time. Believe me, this book is much easier to use: the instructions are clear and stripped down to knitter's terminology basics, and the layout is uncluttered and easy to read.
As a realtively new knitter, I've needed a knitting reference book on hand occasionally while working with Vintage Knits, but the better part of the projects here are for intermediate-skilled knitters and are pretty easy and satisfying to complete. As far as yarns go (which for these projects range from fingering- to DK-weight and no heavier), there are cheaper substitutes out there for the recommended brands -- all that's really important is staying in gauge. If you were knitting from actual vintage patterns you'd end up searching for substitutes anyhow.
So here's my one complaint: while I dig the garment choices, color combos and presentation, and I think the very idea of publishing a book of adapted vintage projects is fantastic, the author's gone too far in "modernizing" the original designs. The shaping and sizing are too far from vintage, not nearly as close-fitting as real vintage sweaters and designed with slightly dropped shoulder seams (as opposed to the high-armscye, lightly shoulder-padded originals), making them more slouchy and casual than the tailored, high-Hollywood glamour-look of real vintage. (One clue: as cute as the contemporary models are, the b&w models look even better!)
Most knitters won't care, but frankly why bother to even look for vintage inspiration if the sweater ends up looking "modern"? You'll find pretty, casual-styled, vintage-inspired sweaters on the rack at Talbott's (!). Besides, it seems to me that the point of knitting is to have something unique as well as handmade. It's as though the publisher felt the need to over-compensate for the mistaken idea that "vintage" equals "dowdy" by taking many of the distinctive vintage features out of these sweaters, and in the process actually made them *more* dowdy and less sexy.
That said, I still strongly recommend this one. It's inspirational eye-candy and maybe it'll encourage knitters to go off in search of other resources for vintage knitting. Call me a tramp, but I'll take a vintage "sweater girl" sweater over anything modern any day.
