Customer Reviews

Creating original hand-knitted lace

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was extremely dissapointed by this book.

The content is anecdotical, directionless and rambling (and I don't mean conversational, I do mean rambling), you can read on and on... and on as the author recollects the tortuous paths she followed in order to knit her lace projects for the Royal Family... totally devoid of analytical thought.

I didn't find anything in this book that I haven't already figured out on my own, and I am just a dedicated newbie. Paraphrasing, "I tried to get this to work, and it didn't work out! so I went back to picking up my needles and trying out stuff, just knit samples and see how they look"... thank you, but I don't need a book to figure that one out.

I don't mean to be nasty, but this book is seriously lacking. There is some useful information there, perhaps for a total newbie in lace knitting, but it could easily have been laid out in a small booklet. For that I will give it two stars.

Save your money (the book is not cheap! beautifully edited, I will give you that), there are better books out there. Get Susanna Lewis' Knitting Lace instead.

Having knitted and done needlework for 50 years, I am always careful about books on how to create. I purchased Ms. Stove's book because I loved her Gathered In Lace book, and found it loaded with finer points about lace, such as the fact that a double decrease with YO,S1,K2tog,PSSO,YO results in a different size hole than YO,S2,K1,PSSO,YO.
So I looked forward to getting this older book and was not disappointed.

She really writes compellingly about designing. Unfortunately, most readers probably won't like to do the exercises she suggests - but they are really illustrative! Of course, some of them I didn't need to do as I've already done them accidentally!

Some of her finer points about tension between different lace patterns was quite interesting, and made me think about projects I have done and that could have been improved.

This is NOT a book of patterns to plug into a template, but rather a primer on how to create textures in knitting that will harmonize completely. Bravo!

Working your way through this book will teach you how lace works, structurally. Note that it was recently reprinted by, and is available from, Lacis in Berkeley, Calif., so if you don't care about getting the first edition, you can get it from them at a reasonable price. (I don't know why the current printing is not listed here.)