There are some things that can’t be learned from a book.

Unhappy Hipsters is hilarious. And while I take issue with its title (it should be called Unhappy Modernists) I can only chuckle and giggle when I read the captioned pictures pulled from the pages of Dwell and DWR’s catalog. The images are clean, simple, perfect. And the captions, anything but. For those of you who wondered what perfect people really though. Here’s your chance.

Graphic design has undergone many incarnations in the last century, but before even Alexey Brodovitch’s name rang any bells in the United States, the so-called New Typography movement was taking hold in countries like Germany, Russia and Czechoslovakia. Modernist designers rejected the traditional two or three column layout for text and instead of working from a grid, they began instead from the blank page. Free from constraints, images moved across the plane, often with little adherence to spatial relationships. But before image and line came into play, typography was at the forefront of the design revolution, and leading the pack was designer and author of the seminal book, “Die Neue Typographie” (1928), Jan Tschichold.

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If the name Julius Shulman doesn’t immediately ring a bell, what about names like Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, or Mies Van der Rohe? Julius Shulman documented them all. But he did more than just take pictures of famous buildings.

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Many days of the week as I walk through SoHo to get a cup of coffee I often stop and stare through the window of Purl, the fabulous knitting shop. And while the women, yes, they’re almost always women in there, shop for yarns and quilting fabrics I cannot help but become envious of their ability to create home fashions from scratch. I wished I had the patience.

Then the other day I was reading Apartment Therapy and noticed these adorable Charley Harper needlepoint canvases. Harper is one of my favorite Modern artists, famous for his unique, graphic images of wildlife. This may be just the kick in the butt I need to get all grandma on you and start knitting.