With a German mother who knits and crochets, and her mother, and yes, her mother, I am naturally a great fan of international craft magazines. Some German mags have been available over here for years (Anna, for instance). Mon Tricot, a French knitting mag, offered designs and ideas that were fresh to US eyes in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
My foreign craft magazine habit has been well-known for a long time. My Tante Christa sent me a now-defunct German magazine called Handarbeiten (handworks). I loved that magazine.
Charles brought me a stack of crochet and knitting magazines from Mexico, when he did his graduate field work. Greek craft mags are stunning, with lots of embroidery, cross stitch, and crochet. We couldn’t leave Barcelona without stopping by a book store to check out the needlework and craft books and magazines.
I waited until the last minute to check out craft mags in Italy, but luckily the train station news agent was open for business on Sunday afternoon. These were my favorites. The blue and white, knitted and crocheted sweater on the cover, sold me on le idée di susanna. Love that name. Cross stitch took up most of the pages.
Consigli pratici has knitting (maglia), crochet (uncinetto), embroidery, cross stitch (punto croce), and even beauty tips and recipes.
I don’t make a point of collecting baby patterns, but the clothes in Prestigio collana—Moda Baby were so cute, I had to get the mag. There are a couple of little jackets that I think could be successfully translated to adult sizes.
By matching pictures to words in the basic instructions, you can figure out what words go with which stitches. Combine that with the fantastic charts, and you can pretty much work out how to make the garments. You’d have to be a reasonably accomplished crocheter.
Correction: I said in an earlier post that Filatura di Crosa was the yarn manufactured by the Missoni family, but that is wrong. There was a Missoni yarn up until just recently. The family got out of the yarn business to concentrate on designing. They have an interesting website. It has a very design-y, European feel to it. You can view it in English.