Pick And Choose Patterns To Knit Socks Your Way by Jonelle Raffino (2009-01-08)

Wonderful book. Not too difficult for an advanced beginner. Grand ideas to "jazz-up" a mundane item. Good yarn ideas too. The spiral back lays book open very well. Other book by author is delightful also for ideas.

This may be a wonderful resource for sock knitting in it's spiral bound form but it is a very poorly designed Kindle book. There is no table of contents and no way of navigating back and forth among the pages. When you click on a selection for a cuff, toe or body pattern the book navigates to the instructions but there is no way of getting back to where you started from other than clicking through every page or adding a bookmark.

It looks like a great book to have but not in Kindle form.

I have collected a few of these books for learning how to make socks by Jonelle Raffino and Katherine Cade. Their books are best selling Socks à la Carte. To create perfectly fitting pairs of socks every time with toe-up construction and sizing tips from the experts, you can become a master sock designer by combining interchangeable foot, leg and cuff patterns to create your own original designs. Perfect for sock mavens and beginners alike, Socks à la Carte 2 combines design savvy with easy-to-follow instructions to knit eye-catching socks every time.

Inside this book you will find:
•Innovative flip pages: Preview your designs before you knit them by matching the foot, leg and cuff of your choice. See what your socks will look like before you knit them.
•Easy tutorials: Clear, illustrated instructions guide you through the toe-up technique, specialized cast ons, sock sizing and more!
•Thousands of design possibilities: Totally unique and personalized socks are possible with over 50 pattern options. Create literally thousands of different pairs.

What were they thinking? I should've read the reviews first. The common plague with pattern books is the lack of attention to photography, and I can't think of a worse presentation than this book has, since the idea is that you "design" your own pattern based on the images.
Shame on you two for not asking for a target audience review. Using tweed in socks is a miserable idea. Using red color makes it even worse. You can't see the stitch definition in any of the images, so the whole point of the book (which is otherwise nicely executed), is completely lost.
Another minus for the absence of charts with lace patterns. What a miserable waste of money...

I was really disappointed that all the stitch patterns are shown knitted in the red yarn that is displayed in the middle on the cover. Other books will feature stitch patterns on light colored yarns or neutral ivory yarns so that you can clearly see the stitch patterns. The gallery part and a few other pages do feature a variety of socks in other colors. I found it to be somewhat confusing that I have to mark down the pages for each part and then also book mark or use post-its to know which pages I need to work from. Surprisingly the back of each flippable page is BLANK! A time saving feature for every knitter would be to have instructions for that part of the pattern to be right there on the back of the page. I have to disagree with "thousands of possibilities" - since I only found one combination that I will at some point make. I will stick with my other sock knitting books that are far more useful.

In addition to the previous comments about the yarn not doing the patterns justice, anyone thinking about this book should be warned that, while brief mention is made of dpn's at the beginning of the book, all the directions for heels and toes are only given for circulars. Since I don't feel like puzzling out how to convert the directions, that whole section of the book is useless to me (well, for toes anyway). I'll keep the book around for when I get around to trying socks on circulars.

I really think that Charlotte Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks books are a better investment. If you have both of them, you might want to pick this one up just for the stitch pattern suggestions.

If first impressions are any indication, I think I am going to LOVE this book!!!!!!!!! It's bigger than I expected for one thing, so the pictures of the various designs are much easier to see than in your typical knitting book...almost life-sized, in fact. Also, unlike the picture on the cover, the flip pages of the book are all depicted in one color yarn, so it gives you a good sense of what the end product will look like. Then at the end of the book there is a "gallery" of socks in different colors. Sprinkled throughout the book are "insider secrets" for knitting socks. All in all a most satisfactory choice for anyone who loves to knit socks, but wants to mix-and-match patterns.

This book sounded like a good idea mixing and matching the pieces of the socks. But my complaint is the HORRIBLE yarn they used in the socks. It is a ugly red tweedy kind and you can NOT even see the patterns because they used a "busy" yarn. What were they thinking? The pictures of the socks are terrible. I'ts my least favorite book and just collecting dust on a shelf.

Awful! Do not purchase this book. I am an experienced knitter. I have never used a book with such confusing instructions. There is errata on the heel instructions that will cause you grief when you have done lots of work already.

Innovative idea but I would like to see pattern charts. The description for SSKWSL Is not clear. Is this what she means?
Do an SSK with the next stitch and the loop below the following stitch (the row below) then knit the stitch in the current row (the one above the loop you just knitted.)

After purchasing this book, I took it upon myself to look up any errata on this book. Sure enough, I found one. Little did I know that there would be more of these. I started working on the origami heel and found the instructions confusing. I had to rip several times and then later found out that there was an errata on the origami heel instructions for the first Socks a La Carte book (Part I). I don't understand why the editors did not correct the second version when they posted the errata on the first version.

Do not buy this book especially if you're a beginner. I am an experienced sock knitter and I think this book is full of mistakes.

If you are looking for different heel, toe and cuff designs, this book can be of some help. However, because all the examples are knitted in the same variegated yarn, the patterns in most of the pattern/body sections cannot be made out, rendering them and the flipbook section which includes them useless. Buy the Ann Budd sock books instead.

I have just started knitting socks and when I heard about this book I was really excited. I bought this book and was very disappointed. I knit socks on DP needles. All of these instructions are for circular needles. I tried to adjust the patterns for DP'd needles, but since I am a novice at socks, it just didn't work for me. So the book went back this morning.

This is a great book and very self explanatory for those of us who love to knit socks. This book has a wonderful section on techniques, patterns and I especially like the flip section that allows me to choose my own design. The variety of toe and heel stitches are a wonderful reference for me.

There are enough reviews already. It is an OK book, but there are better. Most of the pictures are not very clear. The yarn choice to show off patterns was not a good one. If you have purchased this book, there are errors in it, and somebody took the time to write a correction. I found it at

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