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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good designs, but hard to see, December 11, 2004
This book has a lot of charts of mythical creatures of all shapes, sizes, and origins. Not only are some of the charts designed for cross stitch, but many are also easy to convert to cross stitch if needlepoint is not your forte (such as it is with me). There are several dragons (including blackwork), unicorns, sea serpents, and fairy beings.
The gem of this book, however, is the Mythical Character Alphabet sampler. From Anubis and Basilisk to Yama and Zeus, each letter has a fantasy animal or being attached to it. I'd never heard of some of them - a Wyvern, a Re, and a Karkadann, just to name a few. It obviously took a lot of research and work to chart each of these. The color photo of the finished project is gorgeous. The beautiful Dragon of the Sea picture is wonderful too.
The book has a lot of features - instructions for beginners, finishing techniques, descriptions of the materials you'll use, etc. Most are charted with DMC floss, but some use Persian yarn and DMC perle cotton. Many of the charts come with small descriptions of what inspired the artist to chart the graphs, and what cultures the creatures are from.
The two problems I have with this book:
1. The graphs are way too small to see well. Many of the charts' symbols are so small, I have to lean really close to the page to figure out what they are.
2. Some of the "charts" are really patterns you have to transfer to what you want to stitch on, and then do some guessing from there. I don't know how to do that. The blackwork patterns are especially disappointing - the blackwork dragon isn't charted out at all, and you are pretty much left on your own to figure out how you are supposed to get his outline onto the fabric, and then fill him in.
Still, the book has a lot of good patterns that are charted decently enough. Although I wouldn't recommend the book for a complete novice, some of the smaller patterns are easy enough for a beginner, and none of the charts are very complicated (some of them are quite big when finished, though!).
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