Knit Your Own Kama Sutra: what it says on the tin (picture-free review)

[mme_hardy]

This is the best knitting book of all time. Seriously.

You'd think Knit Your Own Kama Sutra would be a one-joke wonder: naked dolls boinking. Ha ha, how droll, let's go read Oh Joy Sex Toy for some real laughs. Hypothetical straw-person you would be wrong. This is a fabulous knitting book about making 11 1/2 stockinette dolls, with the best accessories ever. The author has contemplated knitted dolls and the tropes of pornography, then created appropriate sets and costumes for each scenario. There's the farmer's daughter (dress, overalls, cowboy hat, milk pail, and chicken). There's the rustic lodge (winter coats, bearskin rugs, moose head). There's the office (pinstripe suit, skirt outfit, briefcase, and photocopier).

This is a knitted doll book that has a knitted photocopier. An awesomely detailed photocopier.

As far as the Kama Sutra goes, each scenario starts with two knitted dolls in a position from the Kama Sutra, with a page-long description of the position and how to achieve it. The bulk of the scenario, however, is knitting instructions.

As far as diversity goes, all couples are heterosexual, but there's multi-racial representation (signified by different-colored yarn). All body shapes are the same, because there are only two patterns, male and female. (If you want varying body shapes, I suggest Knit Your Own Royal Wedding, which has the short, stocky Queen.) The naked dolls are more-or-less people shaped, but lack pubic hair, nipples, and genitalia for the woman. These deficiencies, if you consider them such, are easily rectified with embroidery and a little ingenuity.

If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you like. It's a poor joke gift for a non-knitter, but the right sort of knitter will be very grateful.

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

I may have to get this book just for the photocopier.

My Mother Made Me a Homosexual...If I Gave Her the Wool, Would She Make Me One Too?

[executrix]

It *would* be fingering yarn, wouldn't it? /12

Srsly, there's nothing to stop the knitter from making two men or two women, of any yarn-signaled ethnicity. Or a whole orgy.

[laurashapiro]

I seriously would get a carshare and drive to your house just to look at this.

[mme_hardy]

I'm going through a bad patch, but in a couple of months it's a lunch date.

[laurashapiro]

Get well soon! I'm looking forward to it. (:

[ironed_orchid]

From the "look inside" feature, I see that in the index there references to smoking jackets, tents, and cucumber slices. I want to knit all these things.

[mme_hardy]

The cucumber slices are for the hot tub. You also knit champagne bottle, champagne bucket, deck chairs, and bathrobes and slippers.

The cucumber slices are knitted on 4 needles which IMHO is effing insane.

[ironed_orchid]

I thought you meant size 4 needles, but then realised you meant 4 double pointed needles, which is how I knit socks and some hats. It's entirely possibly that I am also effing insane.

[mme_hardy]

I need to learn to knit with 4, but when it's cast on 1 stitch, increase 3 stitches per row, bind off after you get to 18 stitches, I call insanity.

[perennialanna]

Less insane than trying to seam that neatly, though.

[mme_hardy]

This is a job for ... Sculpey!

[ironed_orchid]

Yeah, that is extremely fiddly.

[caulkhead]

I think by the time you are knitting your own Kama Sutra, sanity is a negotiable concept

(and besides, the gloves I am currently knitting - or would be, were it not for the tendonitis - used eight, at one point).

[mme_hardy]

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most...