The new library

As there has been no update on the new library in over a week, today seemed like a good day to update you on the progress.

The image below is of the new space, taken from where the library counter will be, roughly. At the moment the room is still looking very bare and not like a like library at all, however progress has been made. A new floor has been laid and a large amount of the cables, pipes and other remnants of the old inhabitants, at ceiling level have been removed. The room will continue to have the industrial feel, but with more book, sofas and journals, creating an interesting and hopefully enticing area for study.

So far the entrance doors have been moved, in the corridor. To provide you will some orientation of how the room will look, upon entering the room, the library will be in front of you, with the newly fitted shop to your right, just behind this will be the library counter. On the left, (just passed the pillars in the photo) will be the Mac suite, there will be an additional wall added to make this a separate air conditioned room. As well as at the back end of the library there to be the study zone; two dedicated rooms offering students help and advice with studying. But at the moment this is still a few weeks off.

So far the plan is on schedule to be completed on time, ready for the new academic year. Yesterday the designer came over to do one last measure up and check final dates for the project.

Book Review, for fashion

 Fashion Knitwear by Jenny Udale 

As a departure from what we normally blog about I thought we could also start doing short reviews about new books that come into the library. To start us off, this is a review of the newly published Fashion knitwear book by Jenny Udale. 

Jenny Udale is a freelance writer for Laurence King, having previously worked in education and now devotes her time to writing about fashion. 

This is a great text for anyone looking for inspiration in knitting, the book showcase 40 designers, from around the world, from international to commercial artists. Each chapter focuses on one artist or company, looking at artists sketches to high end photographs of the finished product, plus an interview with each artist.

The book mainly focuses on female garments, however a quarter of the book is dedicated to male garments. The garments vary in the methods in which they are made, from hand and machine knitted products, to crotchet and macramé to create garments. The variety in garments is also wide spread from the designer cardigan to cat walk chunky knitted dresses.






Woven Textile Design by Jan Shenton 

The second book up for review is Jan Shenton's Woven textile design. Jan is a lecturer in woven textile at Loughborough university and a weaver who designs have been brought by manufactures and design house throughout the world. 

The detailed texts covers a large amount of content, starting with the actual preparation of the design, covering a variety of plans to get you started. The book then moves on to cover a plain weave designs, twill weaves as well as more adventurous projects such as weft distortions, textured weaves, weft patterning and double cloth.

The book very usefully contains calculations in converting from imperial to metric system and is littered with threading plans. Providing colourful examples to anyone interested in working with weaving, this book is a modern text providing excellent examples for students wanting to working with weaving.