Dark evenings and lower temperatures mean time on your hands to take up crafts or rethink your living space, as publishers well know. Let's start with a new book guaranteed to have you in stitches. Modern knits are light-years away from the monstrosities collected by Stitchy McYarnpants, the nom de plume””nom de needle””of computer programmer Debbie Brisson, who must have mined every yard sale within a 500-kilometre radius to unearth these finds. The stars of her stash are in The Museum of Kitschy Stitches: A Gallery of Notorious Knits (Quirk Books, $19.95), a veritable treasury of knitted fashion disasters, from a body-masking caftan to a granny-square fanny pack.

Pungent text ups the pleasure rating. “Perhaps mildly tepid pants would be more apt,” Brisson writes of a crocheted outfit complete with matching knee socks. Peculiar stuffed toys, kids' clothes that were grounds for social-services intervention, “a creepy peek at the clownterculture of crafts”, a laugh-out-loud load of testosterone-draining guy fashions: they're all here. Once seen, an Aran vest with fringes as long as the wearer's sideburns will never be forgotten, nor will those gems from “polyesteryear”.

If you'd rather thread a single needle than fuss with two, but can't get your head around the saccharine kitten and flower-petal designs that prevail, take a look at Jenny Hart's Sublime Stitching: Hundreds of Hip Embroidery Patterns and How-To (Chronicle Books, $24.95), which has instructions and scads of cool designs to transfer onto cushions, blah blouses, and any other fabric crying out for embellishment. Hart makes her explanations of basic techniques and 14 different stitches easy enough even for home-ec dropouts. Photos provide inspiration””lanterns embroidered along the top of a sheet, a row of fruit for a retro kitchen curtain””but the author's real goal is for readers to dream up their own designs.

The short, inspirational sayings in Julie Jackson's Subversive Cross Stitch: 33 Designs for Your Surly Side (Chronicle Books, $19.95) are even further away from your great-grandmother's work. “Life sucks, then you die” and “Irony is not dead” are two examples. Jackson launched her slow slide into evil when she began altering purchased embroidery kits. Now, eager to spread the four-letter word, she provides full instructions and an alphabet so you can compose your own un-Hallmark messages. How about “Babies suck,” complete with a bottle, for smug new parents? “You can't make me” for your workplace? “Homo Sweet Homo” for your favourite guy couple? Master the art and you can whip one up in a couple of evenings. Do let's think Christmas gifts.

Wait for it, wait for it. Coming next month is 300% Cotton: More T-Shirt Graphics from design writer Helen Walters (Laurence King Publishing, $37.95). Street photos, graphics, and collections bring home the fact that this basic wardrobe item has become a personal billboard. If this book tweaks your sense of style, note that there are two prequels. No prizes for guessing the titles.

Now that you're back indoors, maybe it's time to refeather your nest or settle back amid the squalor with a good book to fantasize about that Tuscan villa or place on Mykonos. For dream fodder, check out the full-page photos in Mary Whitesides' Mediterranean Design (Gibbs Smith, $49.95). The stone walls of a Turkish hotel may be hard to reproduce in your '90s-built condo, but notice the big palm in the corner, how a kilim is slung over the back of a modern chair, or how a Mexican home is given an Italian feel with deep-turquoise walls, a heavy-framed mirror, and a wood chandelier. Like God, décor is all in the details.

As Caban's recent closure proves, minimalism can be too little of a good thing, so anyone who writes “No visible books, magazines, CDs or clutter. No bookshelves” as the third of his 30 “most important recommendations for the home” is walking on thin ice. But nothing daunts New York industrial designer Karim Rashid. (His clients include Prada and Issey Miyake.) In Design Your Self: Rethinking the Way You Live, Love, Work and Play (ReganBooks, $34.95), he takes on his biggest account ever: you, me, and everyone else. You can't argue with the aim set out in the dedication to all humanity, “Let's design and shape a better, more enlightened world.” But I did find myself groaning over such lines as “Why can't someone order a casket from Gucci or Prada?” while thinking that chances are they will at some point (and guess who'll design it). That's in the “death” section. Move to the “fashion” pages and he advises “Dump the brands.” Huh?

This book is provocative, hiply written and designed (“I love white and silver, bright pink, and techno color”), and egotistical, but there's enough sensible advice in among the BS to make it worth looking through. You'll swing between thinking “Yup, he's right” and wanting to fling the damn thing at the wall””or put it back on the bookshelf.