Or, How I Got Bitch-Slapped By a 10-lb Book.Because I happen to know some very nice people, I got a present--a copy of June Hiatt's The Principles of Knitting.
Folks, this book is awesome. And it kind of makes me want to hide in a corner. It tells you absolutely everything you could ever want to know about knitting, from--no joke--the "subtleties" of knitting a stitch, including how you should hold your elbows, and the importance of keeping your hands down low over your lap, so as not to place undue stress on your stitches from the weight of the growing fabric.
There's an entire chapter on swatching, and another on picking up stitches. I have discovered that there are six different ways you can hold your yarn when doing colorwork. And I lost count of how many different methods one can use to sew a seam. Not only am I impressed by the amount of information in this book, I'm actually sort of shocked that anybody had the mental capacity to sort through it all (think about it, how many different knitting cultures must have contributed to this?), much less gather it all together in any kind of comprehensible fashion.
Once I've gotten over my fear of mental breakdown, I imagine I'll use this book literally every single time I knit something.
2 comments:
is it too much for a beginner? like me, auntie jo?
We-ell...it does teach you really simple stuff, down to how to knit a single stitch. And as you get better the other stuff would be useful. But it is a heck of a lot of book to dive into unless you're really feeling committed.
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