Knitting in the Sun by Kristi Porter (2009, Paperback)

Yes, I am shallow. Many times, I judge a book by its cover. And I love the cover of this one. It makes me want to make the shawl featured on the cover. So far so good!

Billed as "The first-ever knitting book to offer projects exclusively for warm weather," Knitting in the Sun is divided into categories such as tanks, wraps, bags, and more and features 32 projects for warm weather.

There are several beautiful projects in the book I want to make, which means a thumbs up from me. I especially like and want to knit Santorini, Coronado, and Anacapa (the cover shawl).

While the book includes traditional warm weather fibers like cotton and linen, it also features patterns using the best of newer natural offerings like yarns made of or blended with hemp, bamboo, and soysilk. More than 80 full-color photos showcase these knit projects.

By only real quibble with the book is that there are many patterns that could have been written for circular knitting and few, if any seams that instead are written so each piece is knitting separately and seamed together. I hate sewing together knitting so would jiggle the projects as much as possible so I could knit in the round. This caveat aside, I still recommend Knitting in the Sun.

About the author: Kristi Porter (La Jolla, CA) is an author, designer, technical editor, and teacher. In addition to writing Knitting Patterns For Dummies, her work has been featured in numerous other books. She is a frequent contributor to Knitty dot com and has been a part of that online magazine since its start in 2002.