Customer Reviews

Knitting Ganseys

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These traditional fishermen's sweaters from various parts of the British Isles are beautiful, sturdy and intimidating. I've always admired them, but never thought they were within my reach. Then I bought this book. A few things hit you right away. The first thing is the very realistic view the author takes of the women who traditionally did this type of knitting for pay. Very clear eyed and unsentimental. The second thing that hit me was how clear and easy to understand the photographs are in this book. It is like sitting next to a friend who is showing you how to knit a particular stitch. Usually I think that the lack of color photos hurts a knitting book, but these black and white photographs are exceptionally clear and add tremedously to the quality of the book. The author suggests that you knit a very small sample sweater in order to become familiar with the process, before starting a full scale sweater on your own. It's a great idea...my granddaughter will have a very well dressed teddy bear. The concept becomes surprisingly unintimidating when the first project is so small. Since the author gives us so much information all at once, it is probably a good idea to read through the whole book first and then go back and mark the places you want in order to make your small sample. There are line for line patterns for six sweaters included in the last chapter. They include most of the techniques featured in earlier chapters. There seems to be a natural transition from the small sample to one of these patterns to finally drafting an original of your own. All in all a very satisfying book and definitely worth both the price and the time you need to devote to making the garments shown. I never thought I would have the courage or the skill to produce a real gansey, but this book gives me hope

Work through the sample sweater in this book and you will be able to design your own gansey-style sweater to fit, no matter what size you (or your yarn) may be. Along with the techniques presented in the sample teddy-bear sized sweater, multiple options are presented for design variations, including armhole shaping, ribbing, and two complete alphabets.

The fitting method is based on measurements and gauge, similar to several "percentage" methods. The approach followed in this book is less mathematical than most, more common-sense.

There are six patterns in the back, with detailed instructions. Personally, I would have preferred more pictures, more different examples, without the detailed directions. The techiques presented in the sample sweater do not produce a "traditional" written pattern, and I found that the row by row instructions of these six examples were somewhat confusing.

I agree with most of the praises other reviewers have bestowed upon this book, but I also understand the criticism in the review entitled "disappointing". I recently knitted a very challenging gansey (not one of the patterns in this book), and, as it was my first gansey ever, I used this book for reference for techniques that were unfamiliar to me. While most of the explanations were clear, a few were a bit obscure. I was surprised to see this, given the author's excellent reputation as a teacher. In these few instances, I was able to find another book with much clearer explanations of the same techniques.

Of the six patterns for full-sized ganseys, three are for children and three for adults. All of the patterns for kids are nothing special and I wouldn't make any of them. The three adult patterns are better. Two of them, the White Gansey and Grace's Cardigan, are very nice, and I may make them, or use them as spring boards for my own designs. The six patterns do use different construction techniques, so that all of them taken together do represent many of the various traditional methods that Beth describes throughout the book.

The section on stitch patterns is quite useful, and I have used this in the past for reference when designing my own textured sweaters (not ganseys).

All in all, this is a very useful book and well worth the money. But this is probably more because it is the only book of its kind. I think there is room here for an even better book on knitting ganseys, should anyone else endeavor to write one!

It is rare when you hit upon exactly the kind of book that you were looking for. Such was the case when I found this book quite by accident on my local bookstore's shelf. I am fairly new to the knitting craft and was intrigued by the idea of knitting a sweater on circular needles from the bottom up. I also loved the attractive Gansey patterning which I had discovered is fun and easy to knit when I had knit a hat with these type patterns. So this book seemed the answer to my wishes. I was not disappointed or intimidated by this book. I eagerly knit up the Gansey sampler (so cute!). The best thing about this book is that it shows the traditional methods of knitting ganseys in a very clear-cut way and actually gets you to do it via the sampler. It is also a great reference guide for various types of Gansey casting on, forming gussets, the knitted cast-off and different kinds of increases and decreases. Wonderfully done book!

This book has become a cherished reference and resource in my library of knitting books. Author Beth Brown-Reinsel accomplishes several tasks very well in this thoughtfully pieced more than a how-to-do presentation. She gives the reader a historical background in which to place the stiches, the craft of gansey; she provides wonderful graphs for the decorative stitches; she writes with an ease and enthusiasim that truly shows the reader how to learn new techniques... these are often backed up with clear photos. But, what she has done best has created a small knitting project that progresses side by side each chapter. This project teaches the knitter the different stages of a gansey sweater. The project is small enough not to be overwhelming for the beginner and complete in all the techniques that must be mastered in order to move to larger projects. As a middle-aged, "lay" knitter I am delighted to have discovered this book.

Knitting Ganseys is a clearly written book covering the history, technique and method of knitting gansey sweaters. This is more than a collection of patterns - Beth Brown-Reinsel explains the whys of each step & sweater section as well as the traditional alternatives. Her photos and charts are clear, and each chart has a legend - one doesn't need to flip back to the first chart to find an explanation of an obscure symbol. I would recommend this as a first sweater book, provided one already knows how to knit & purl in the round.

I returned from the Scottish Fisheries Museum with the itch to know more about the fishermen's ganseys of which there was a sample there but no instructions available. I had a bibliography with some older books that the assistant curator had provided. When I went to Amazon to see if any of those were available, I found that, yes, one was but I also found Ms Reinsell's book that looked most promising. It did not disappoint, and I made the gansey sampler to learn the techniques. Now I am ready to tackle a full sized sweater as soon as I find some five ply gansey yarn.

So thank you,Ms Reinsel,for making the instructions clear and understandable. While I have no trouble with the stitich patterns, the shoulder strap technique and some of the other design features were new to me, and you explained them well. The other, older book that I also bought had many interesting patterns but not good instructions.

Nanalou Sauder, a knitter for nearly sixty years.

While I did find the history of Ganseys informative, the instructions for executing the techniques to construct the sampler--the instructional tool for practicing the techniques to be used in the construction of a full-size sweater--were not consistently clear.

Maybe the author assumed that her readers have a certain level of knitting experience and therefore left out instructions figuring that they would be able to fill in the blanks. It has been my experience, however, that the more care taken to explain something in detail, the more likely one will be understood, regardless of how experienced the reader is in the given topic. Because of this lack of detail in instruction, I got needlessly frustrated during each phase of the construction of the sampler. Also, I found the photographs less than helpful--they were taken too far away from the work to get a good look at the detail of the work in progress.

I've been knitting since 7th grade (I'm now 34) and have knitted sweaters successfully using Jacqueline Fee's "The Sweater Workshop", so I feel I have enough experience to consider myself beyond the brand new knitter stage. I gave "Knitting Ganseys" a try because I wanted to broaden my repertoire of sweater construction techniques. Through trial and error, I have learned a few useful techniques from "Knitting Ganseys" in spite of the author.

Before you consider buying this book, ask yourself if you want to spend time reading the author's mind or learning to knit sweaters. If you want to do both, then by all means, pick this book up. If you want to learn to knit a sweater without cursing at the author's inability to explain herself clearly, I highly recommend Jacqueline Fee's "The Sweater Workshop".

This is a step by step approach to knitting ganseys, using traditional methods and shaping but presented in a very clear and coherent style. The construction of these garments is more complex than meets the eye, and Ms. Brown-Riensel makes it understandable and do-able.

I loved all the history included and I found the tutorials very easy to follow. I liked the way they are broken down into little bits, so that you are not overwhelmed with the information. Grab this one while you can.