First, the facts:
Title: The Big Book of Knit Stitches: Cables, Lace, Ribs, Textures and a Whole Lot More
Author: The Editors of Martingale
Published by: Martingale Press, 2016
Pages: 192
Type: Knit Stitches
Chapters:
Introduction
Cables, Crosses & Twists
Lace & Openwork
Knit and Purl Textures
Ribs & Ribbing
Bobbles, Knots, Slip Stitches and More
The In-Depth Look:
I love a good stitch dictionary, though they’re often hard to review because, well, they’re basically dictionaries–useful resources, to be sure, but not generally chock full of imagination and creativity.
What dictionaries (stitch and otherwise) do provide, though, are the tools you need to feed your creativity. You can’t build a house without lumber or bricks, and so you can’t knit anything without needles, yarn, and some kind of a stitch pattern.
This particular stitch dictionary has 360 patterns, all nicely photographed, ranging from basic garter and stockinette stitches (yes, they’re in there) to assorted cables, lace, bobbles, and textures.
The only glaring omission I see is that none of them have charts–just written, line-by-line instructions, which seems like an oversight. Not everybody loves them, but for some of us, working from charts is definitely the easiest way to knit on patterns with any complexity at all.
But still … 360 stitches with nice photographs to make browsing a pleasure. They’re not the most complicated stitches I’ve seen, but there certainly are a generous number of them.
You can get your copy at Amazon or at your favorite bookstore.
Want to see bigger pictures? Click here.
This review copy was kindly donated by Martingale. Thank you!
2017 will likely not be as prolific as 2016 — 26 new designs is a hard number to beat, and much of what I’ll be working on won’t be published til spring 2018.