I like Stefanie Japel’s style and asthetics, and I’ve knit a couple of her patterns, and I ordered Fitted Knits pretty much sight-unseen. I haven’t seen much info on the book out on the internets, so here’s my review.

The concept behind the book is well-fitting sweater patterns, and that’s an idea that I can so get behind. No boxy, unflattering knits in this book - everything has very modern styling. If you follow Stefanie’s blog, you’ll recognize a few of her patterns here - both the Bulky Mini Cardi and Angelica are in the book. I also like the focus on sweater patterns - no filler hat or scarf patterns here. From a quick skim of the introduction, it looks like most of the patterns are worked top-down. There’s a quick, two-page walk-through on customizing a sweater to your body, and then the book dives in to the 24 patterns.

The book is divided in to four sections based on garment type, but you can really classify the sweaters into three categories:

1. The Chunky.

There are some pretty sweaters in this section, but they call for some thick yarn. The sweater coat is gorgeous, but clearly impractical for Houston.

2. The knits where there’s some pattern on top, two or three rows of reverse stockinette stripes, then some different pattern underneath the reverse stockinette action.

There’s a lot of these - Stefanie really, really, really adores that reverse stockinette detail. It’s in a couple of her previous designs (Forecast, Simple Knitted Bodice), and there are 9 designs in this book that feature it. That doesn’t even include the cover sweater or the pink wrap below, which only have one row of the reverse stockinette thingy. Even the suit uses it as a border! I’m not really feeling the textured stripey action (especially when there’s a vertical pattern below it) but there are still some great sweaters above. The green tunic is simple and beautiful, but I would modify the floppy sleeves. I also really like the poofy-sleeved red cardigan, which puts those textured stripes to good use.

3. Sweaters that don’t fit into either of the two previous categories.

This is where the book really shines - the unique sweaters that don’t follow the above formulas are really interesting and wearable. The photos above are my four faves. The lavender wrap is awesome - I had seen a photo of it before I bought the book and I totally want one. The two-tone shrug is both an extension and improvement of the One Skein Wonder pattern. I even like the dress - it has some lovely detailing, but I’ll probably chop off the skirt portion and knit it into a regular sweater.

Overall, I like the book. It definitely contains some contenders for my to-knit list this summer, and I think it’s worth buying. However, it really left me wanting a pattern for that faboo sweater that Stefanie is wearing in her author photos - a really gorgeous, textured cardigan!