Nancie M. Wiseman

Just to be clear - this is a technical book about knitting, not how to kill your opponents using martial arts or Mortal Kombat.

I'm working on the second level of the Master Knitter program, and I used this book all through level one. It has a nice breakdown of when and why to use each type of increasing, decreasing, binding off, grafting, etc. and awesome illustrations of how to do them. The reason why I gave it only four stars is that it has no index, and since it's a straight-up reference show more book, I need that. show less

This book is nothing short of wonderful. The photos are close-ups, the illustrations are excellent and the explanations are outstanding. Nancie shows several ways of working a technique and then explains the pros and cons of each one. Invaluable! Naturally, she has a few prejudices, as do we all. The book is small enough to fit in your knitting bag, exatly where it is needed. Dee J.

A must-have reference book. Not only does she explain every single cast on, cast off, increase, decrease, etc. you might ever want to know, but she also gives you the advantages and disadvantages of each one so that you can make informed knitting choices.

Uninspiring. True, I'm no knitter, but I am conversant with a number of other textile crafts, and this book did nothing to interest me in taking up knitting. The idea of historical patterns was interesting enough, but the projects illustrated could have come out of the average Walmart flyer - with better illustrations. Knitted Lace of Estonia, by Nancy Bush, handled similar subject matter much more deftly.