Margaret Radcliffe

Despite knitting prodigious amounts for a dozen years, I've never yet bought a knitting book. That habit may now be altered. There are dozens of 'help for your knitting!!1' books out there, but none of them as good as this. It's clear, well-illustrated, explanatory, and - holy crap! - comprehensive. This isn't a book that tells you 'knitting through the back loops is wrong wrong wrong', but 'knitting through the back loops (tbl) leads to a twisted stitch, which may or may not be what you show more want. If you are ribbing, it will come out as twisted rib. If you knit tbl and purl tbl, your stitches will be extremely tight*." Et cetera.
SO USEFUL.

My only qualm is in the organization - it's laid out as a story, rather than an encyclopedia. The cast-ons are in the same general area, but there are pages of explanation in between, say, the loop cast-on and the long-tail cast-on. So finding what you need could be tricky. (Why not use divide clearly with headings? "Cast On: very firm/firm/ribbed/stretchy/very stretchy" ...)

On the other hand, gathering information in that informal way lets the author ramble a bit, & in the long term (or for the obsessive knitter who reads this cover to cover, hmmm, fortunately I don't know anyone like that), most things knitting link up in a dozen ways, and a rambling encyclopedic knowledge of knitting isn't going to hurt anyone.

*please don't rely on me for accurate information about knitting. This book is far better than me. show less

As the title promises, the focus of this book is on knitting techniques and how to best integrate them with color knitting. The author starts with a solid introduction to the basics of color theory, not too complicated, but enough to give the reader a working vocabulary of color terms. From there, she moves to the techniques themselves with chapters both on well-known ones like stripes and stranded knitting as well as one on less commonly-used techniques such as helix knitting, double show more knitting, and mosaic knitting. There are also chapters on using multicolor yarns effectively, finishing, project design, and an appendix on basic knitting techniques .

This is an impressive work. There are good clear color photos on almost every page, as well as several charts, to go with just about everything the author discusses (the book is oversized, which means there is room on each page for pictures large enough to see easily). There are only a few patterns included, great for a book that I want to keep for years as a reference. Radcliffe's writing is interesting enough that I read the book from beginning to end instead of just flipping straight to whatever technique I wanted to learn about. She discusses the well-known techniques thoroughly, and provides a bibliography of more specialized books—useful for the techniques she doesn't discuss as much. This is a great reference on color knitting, and I look forward to putting it to use. show less

Great for both beginners and advanced knitters. Answers all sorts of questions and clearly too, from how to read your knitting to several different castons and their uses (which is best for what). I love answers that tell you that all techniques are useful and when they are most useful.

This really does seem to answer a lot of my questions. My other general knitting books are written for beginners. This one is more for the intermediate knitter who wants to improve.

I suspect that some of the answers might be overwhelming for beginners. But if you think that might be a problem for you, the chapters are generally set up so that the answers get more complicated as the chapter goes on. If you just need some way to cast on or decrease or whatever, read the first few questions show more and answers until you have what you need, and stop there. If you are ready to learn several ways to do it, and which method might work best and why, just keep reading. show less