If you’ve hitherto resisted the knitting craze, Knitted Icons may convert you yet. Author Carol Meldrum cleverly amplifies one or two signature characteristics of 25 cultural giants of the 20th century and adds them to a basic doll body. Among her best: Gandhi, the Beatles (early and Sgt. Pepper era), Einstein with hair standing on end, Bob Marley with dreads and cap, Jailhouse Rock Elvis (and later Elvis with sneer and white jumpsuit), Che Guevara with beret and distinctive facial hair, Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly (the dress and accessories are stellar) and Madonna in pink conical bra c. 1990. Definitely judge this little book by its perfect Rolling Stone parodying cover.

Tom Nardone, creator of the website ExtremePumpkins.com, is out to prove there’s no such thing as a friendly ghost. His pumpkin-carving designs are disgusting, gruesome and, more often than not, bloody. And we mean very bloody. Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors is not a Martha Stewart guide to Halloween decorating. Instead, Nardone uses power tools, fake blood and kerosene to jerk Halloween back to the fearful occasion it once was. Adults will recoil in horror while kids will be both grossed-out and delighted by the lengths to which he travels.

Twenty designs are featured in the book including the cannibal pumpkin and the puking pumpkin and many more are on Nardone’s website. If you’re ready to go beyond the usual lopsided jack-o-lantern grin, Extreme Pumpkins will help you shock even the most jaded trick-or-treaters.

Girls’ Best Book of Knitting, Sewing, and Embroidery, by Virginie Desmoulins, aims to give girls an overview of three classic crafts that are still popular among women of all ages. The projects are small, ranging from embroidery sample cards to a knit bag to four sewn outfits (one for each season) for a cardboard doll that is punched out of the cover, perfect for an afternoon (or many afternoons) of crafty fun. Given the doll, readers might assume that Desmoulins is aiming at the relatively young, but the vocabulary sometimes seems a little advanced for grade-schoolers, and some of the instructions will likely send girls running to their favorite crafty adult for advice. Girls with some crafting experience, however, will find the instructions and illustrations enough to guide them through the easy projects. And a mother, grandmother or aunt who wants to teach a young girl how to knit, sew or embroider, will find Girls’ Best Book a helpful resource.

For people whose crafty skills are limited to getting airline upgrades, Travel Scrapbooks: Creating Albums of Your Trips and Adventures might inspire vagabonds to keep their travel photos and mementos somewhere nicer than that old shoebox in the back of the closet or the memory card in their digital camera. This book features real scrapbooks from crafters across the country, showcasing their travel photos, journaling and design skills in albums about trips to the zoo, Niagara Falls, the great cities of Europe, Sea World, a local carnival and many more adventures. The scrapbooks are all shapes, sizes and formats including round books and a book in a vintage-looking suitcase and use tons of different techniques, tools and scrapbooking supplies (resources are helpfully listed in the back so readers can recreate a technique). Tips on such topics as travel photography and using souvenirs in projects are included. Some of the pages featured here may be a little intimidating to new scrapbookers, but crafters of all levels will surely be inspired.

If you’ve traveled to London, you may have visited V.V. Rouleaux, the world-renowned ribbons and trimming company. Annabel Lewis, the company’s founder and owner, has so many ideas about what to do with her products it will make an inept home decorator’s head spin. Her Ribbons and Trims: 100 Ideas to Personalize Your Home includes more than 100 ideas for using ribbons, beads, feathers, bows, yarn, rope, chandelier crystals and other adornments to recover, repurpose and remake everything from furniture to curtains to lampshades (the feathered lampshade has a certain garish Victorian appeal).

Step-by-step instructions illustrate some project ideas, while others are described or pictured merely as a technique that the home designer could use as a guide. Multitudes of gorgeous photographs give the book a you can do it feel, even for people who don’t have perfectly put-together homes. The projects can get a little intimidating at times, as when whole rooms decorated with ribbons and trims are shown (a plaid wall created with ribbons rather than paint, for example), but it also offers great tips and tricks that anyone can use to jazz up a footstool or a pillow, or even their whole house.

What it is about today’s society that gives fathers so much disrespect, especially around Father’s Day? On Mother’s Day, our opposite numbers get flowers and jewelry and candy and sentiment, but on our day we dads get shirts that don’t fit, underwear, gag gifts and goofy cards. It’s those attempts at humor that really hurt, mainly because they’re usually true. I present to you a case in point: Richard Jarman’s Smooth Operators: The Secrets Behind Their Success, a look at men’s fashions of the 1970s and ’80s, told with an almost straight face. Jarman’s motivation is not to humiliate every man who lived through those decades (though he’s wildly successful in this), but to come to terms with the way his newly divorced father acted and dressed during that time. Evidence abounds in the advertising of those years; the scary part, for me, is that I know these guys heck, I was trying to be these guys! This droll little book illustrates our decades-long fashion faux pas, and as someone who lived through that time and who committed some of the same fashion atrocities (polyester, mutton-chops, platform shoes), I find this book downright embarrassing! So will your dad.

There’s no need to feel guilty sipping a margarita while sunning yourself if you’re reading Hannah Keeley’s Total Mom Makeover, since you’ll be coming home renewed and ready to follow this fast-paced, feisty guide to female empowerment. Despite the daunting task of being mom to seven children, Keeley’s mantra is thriving during motherhood, not merely surviving the adventure. She structures her program in pyramid fashion, with the bottom base being Week One: Starter Mom where exercises are geared to teaching you how to develop a vision, how to make every motion and moment count, how to speak your way to success, and how to develop a winning attitude. Her six-week jump-start program includes steps that will eliminate toxins from your diet, clutter from your home, and boredom from your sex life. Her highly motivational guide is a call to action. Whether playing with your kids or romancing your husband there is no better time than the present. So do it now. At the end of week six, your total mom self will be well on her way to experiencing life to the fullest.