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It's easy to think that one knitting stitch dictionary is pretty much like any other one, especially when you've seen as many as I have through the years. But of course there are differences, from the bare-bones, black and white simplicity of the Barbara Walker treasuries to pretty, colorful books like the Vogue Knitting Stitchonaries.
750 Knitting Stitches is a pretty, colorful volume with a variety of stitches using several different techniques, and is a good choice if you like color pictures and lots of options.
About the Book
- Pages:288
- Format: hardcover
- Number of patterns: 750 (I'm taking their word for it)
- Skill level: patterns range from simple knit-purl combinations to colorwork, cables and lace, so there's something suitable for all skill levels
- Illustrations: full-color photographs
- Knitting lessons: the beginning of the book covers casting on (long tail), knitting, purling, binding off, increasing and decreasing and working with multiple colors and offers tips on reading charts, knitting lace and edgings for knitting projects
- Publication date: August 2015
- Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
The Paterns
The book is organized generally by technique, starting with basic knit and purl patterns, then cable and Aran stitches, lace and eyelet stitches, colorwork stitches, and edgings and trims.
Each pattern has a picture of the design knit up, gives the name of the stitch, the stitch pattern multiple and the pattern written out. The cable patterns have charts as well as written instructions, while the colorwork patterns only have charts.
(The knit-purl and lace patterns are only written out with no charts.)
The pages have as few as two or as many as six patterns on them, depending on the length of the instructions. That means some patterns have pictures that are twice the size of others. I know printing full color pages in a hardcover book is really expensive and its a nod to economy, but it would have been nice to have consistently large pattern pictures throughout the book.
Using the Patterns
The best part about a book like this is that it gives you inspiration to try different stitch patterns you might not have used before. Flipping through and seeing a stitch like Bowknot (aka Butterfly Stitch), you might think about using it on a project for a little girl.
A cable pattern might inspire a simple pillow design or a whole sweater, while a colorwork pattern might make you want to knit a circular scarf covered with different patterns.
In this particular book I was most interested in the patterns for edgings. Though I have looked at plenty of books that offer knit edging patterns, it's not a design element I used very often but it can make such a big difference on an otherwise simple pattern to use, say, a beaded cast on or a leaf edging.
There are picots, waves, braids and bobbles, pleats, fringe and decorative ribs. It's a fun exercise to look through these patterns and think about what kind of garment or project they might be attached to.
Bottom Line
Knitting stitch books are not essential reads for knitters, especially if you already have a few on your shelf. But this one is pretty, and it has a nice variety of patterns you've seen before and some that will spark new ideas for you.
Of course if you're a designer and you use a lot of stitch patterns in your work, you'll love this book for inspiration. I also feel like because it's a hardback book it's almost a coffee table book that would be nice to display or to give a knitter as a gift.
Publisher's website
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
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