If you have read my earlier review of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears, then you can probably guess what I'm going to say.  Just as with all of her other patterns, Zimmerman's patterns in this book suffer from a surfeit of "pithiness."  In fact, an entire cottage industry has sprung up online devoted to providing more verbose instructions for Zimmerman's patterns.  (How ever did we knit before the internet?)

However, this book is one of the better Zimmerman books, because it has some understandable order imposed upon it.  It contains twelve patterns (one for each month of the year).  Each month has its own chapter.  Each chapter has some anecdotal stories in it, along with a knitting pattern.

A word on Zimmerman's anecdotes: I like them a lot.  I think it's her storytelling which differentiates her from other knitting authors.  I wish that more knitting books had this balance of charming stories and knitting patterns.  However, they get in the way of her more technique driven books like Knitting Without Tears.  

Zimmerman's art I feel reaches its peak with the book The Opinionated Knitter, but I'll save that for the review of that book itself.  Back to Knitter's Almanac.  I love the idea of a one-year knit along with Elizabeth Zimmerman.  This gives you the time to really devote to the pattern, to choosing the yarn (and figuring out what's the modern equivalent of "two ply sheepswool"), reading the stories, digesting the instructions, and so forth.

Now on the down side, you will probably not want to knit every single month's patterns.  For example, I trust there are few takers for a pair of hand knit wool pants.  Cute though they might be for toddlers, I just don't see many of us knitting these, in the year 2009.  

Heck, I live in a cabin in the remote woods of the Pacific Northwest with a wood stove as my sole source of heat, and even *I* wouldn't knit or wear these.  That's why we invented sweatpants.   As comfortable and toasty as I'm sure they are, I just do not see myself wearing a pair of hand wash only pants.

March's project, the Chainmail Sweater, is possibly the only Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern which has gone thoroughly out of style since she wrote it.  You would have to choose colors wisely, to end up with something that looks less 1974 than the pictured version.  

The rest of the patterns, though, are absolutely stellar.  This is the book with the lacy baby sweater that someone up-sized for adults, and which has been making the rounds of all the knit blogs, under the name "February Lady Sweater."  Knitter's Almanac also has instructions for Zimmerman's Pi Shawl, one of the projects for which she is most famous.  

Zimmerman has cleverly paced her patterns so that they can be knit in a month - The adult sweaters are fairly basic, but the Norwegian mittens are simply to die for.  I dare say that any knitter who even knit along with half of these patterns would be a better knitter at the end of the year for it.