Customer Reviews

200 Ripple Stitch Patterns: Exciting Patterns to Knit & Crochet for Afghans, Blankets & Throws

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

First let me say that I have no idea why I decided to purchase this book. I almost never make afghans! That said, I am not sorry to have done so.

After looking through the book, the reader will realize that the book is actually much more than its title suggests. For one thing, it isn't simply an "afghan pattern book." It's more in the nature of a stitch dictionary with suggestive colors and textures of yarn. Designs are in both knitting and crochet, so the volume is useful for the practitioners of both crafts. The table of contents illustrates all of the designs in thumbnail pictures, allowing the book's user to compare and select among several possible designs.

Like many stitch dictionaries this book also displays close-ups of finished fabric squares. This makes the pattern clearer and the overall effect of the finished product more evident.

The author, Jan Eaton, uses standard written instructions rather than graphed ones. Even though I am a predominantly "visual" learner, I find the graphs take a lot of getting used to. I personally prefer the written pattern, because it's what I've used for most of my projects over the years. The younger knitting or crocheting audience, however, may be more used to the graphs and so find verbal instructions slow them down.

While many of the stitches seem mere variants of one another in different colors and textures, this makes more obvious just how individual and stunning the character of completed work can be by careful choice of colors and yarn textures. For the beginner, this might be a good first introduction to composition, color scheme and texture.

Some of the patterns are very simple ones that show the geometry of ripple patterns. These would certainly be easy for any beginner. Others are by way of lace patterns, requiring a little more advanced (though not prohibitively so) understanding of knitting and crochet, something to challenge both beginner and average worker. None of the patterns looked to me as though they would be difficult for the most advanced worker. I suspect that for the latter, however, the color, texture, and yarn ideas will provide inspiration.

A nice little book.

I realize that making notations correctly to reproduce a pattern is a tedious and time consuming task -- and I'd much rather pay other people (knitting book authors) to do it for me so I can spend my time on actual knitting.

So when someone writes and publishes a book full of beautiful patterns and charges you for it -- you'd expect that they'd actually done the meticulous and tedious work. Not so in this book.

I picked a pattern at random (the photos are beautiful!) and started knitting -- only to get into the 4th repition before realizing that no amount of blocking or pressing was going to give me a happy result -- and that the pattern was INCORRECT! In a 10-row pattern, rows 7 and 9 were transposed with rows 8 & 10!!! Simply knitting 5,6,8,7,10,9 would have produced the correct pattern, but the way it was written, it only produced a mess.

It's been a long time since knitting was as popular as it is now, and publishers are rushing to press with dozens of new books every year -- and not bothering to hire a knitter to edit the books that go out the door and onto the shelves. (not unlike cookbook authors/publishers who publish books of 1001 southwest soups -- most of which have never been tasted by man nor beast.)

Well, this is one of those books, so watch yourself if you try to knit from it. You're cooking from recipes that call for 1/2c of salt per quart rather than 1/2t.

This book is full of mitakes. I have tried about 20 patterns so far and all but one has had mistakes. There is no eratta online nor does the publishers website have anyway to contact them. Not to mention there are not 200 patterns, but the same patterns are done in different color yarns. This is a complete waste of money.

How do you publish a knitting pattern book with MISTAKES?? I can't believe how careless this editor was. DO NOT BUY unless you want a lot of heartache. The LEAST they could have done was publish an errata. If you do buy it, make sure you do a swatch of at least 2 reps.

I got this book for christmas (it was on my wishlist after I saw it in the store) mainly because I liked the crochet patterns.

I just sat down to try one of the knit patterns--"Celtic Waves"--which is actually a pretty easy feather and fan pattern. Or, at least, it *should* be easy. The pattern says to CO a multiple of 16st+3. So I got to row 4 of the pattern and did it stitch by stitch until I ran short of stitches on my needle.

So I added up how many stitches you actually *need* on the needle in order to do it exactly as written, and it's 33.

I really hope they publish an errata, because though I could easily figure out how to fix their patterns, I really shouldn't have to take the time to do that.

Many, many great ideas for any type of items you can imagine. I'm making a shawl right now with a crochet pattern I found in the book. The title makes you think of traditional ripple stiches, but there are a lot of contemporary patterns included. I will make a lot of items from this little book.

There are a few lovely ideas and patterns, and I'd buy the book, but only for the pictures and it were on sale for 50% or more off. I only recommend it to anyone who has the ability to really read a pattern well and rewrite a pattern to fix mistakes (Oh Boy are there a lot of mistakes in this one!) It's my habit to first write out any pattern I get from a book, so for me to do it with this wasn't too annoying, but I have to question what kind of follow-through was put into this to check for mistakes before printing. I've created a couple and they're fine. One more crochet book on my shelve won't hurt too much...

Shame on the British and the U.S. publishers for releasing on the public such a book as "200 Ripple Stitch Patterns".
I was required to give a minimum star rating, which I did but would have preferred NO STAR! I am returning the book to Amazon and have advised others on the online crochet group Crochet Partners that the book is full of mistakes.
Multiples and instructions as well were wrong!
I had trouble w/Pink Ripples item 16 on page 23 of the 200 book.
If the U.S. editor in Wisconsin wants to contact me, she may.
Mary Davis in Dallas

I bought this book as a design source only to find that there's lots of errata which make many of the patterns unusable...do take care.

I was very disappointed with this book, mainly because there are far fewer patterns than the title suggests. There are actually only 100 patterns for knitting (since I do not like to crochet, the 100 crochet patterns were irrelevant to me). In looking at many of the patterns, I realized that they were the same stitch patterns, but with different combinations of colors, which make them look different when they are not. I also have read other reviews that mention mistakes in the instructions, and although I have not found any of these yet, I find this inexcusable. I have been knitting for over 55 years, and I think the proliferation of knitting books (everyone wanting to climb onto the knitting bandwagon) has led to the production of some not-very useful books, this being one of them.