This is plain and simple a great book. In my opinion, anyone who knits lace should have this book in their library. I almost didn’t buy it, the cover image didn’t look all that promising, but I am so glad I did!
This book is very much a classic example of a 1970s fiberarts handbook, but that is not by any means intended as a slap or a criticism. If you look at books on embroidery, or bobbin lace, or knitting, from the 1960s and 1970s, it seems like they all present not only the basics — how best to secure your thread in the fabric, how to wind the bobbin and secure the thread on it, how to cast on, increase, decrease, and cast off — but many different variations on all of those techniques. Here, these techniques are all accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations, step-by-step where necessary, that really do make it clear what the work should look like as you do the technique. Even better, as far as I can tell the words and the illustrations are all on the same page; there is little that is more frustrating than having to flip back and forth between the text and the diagram!
The first 42 pages of the book are taken up with technique, but it’s useful technique and a lot of it is needed for the patterns presented. And oh, the patterns! There are 100 edgings and insertions, largely arranged in increasing level of difficulty and ranging from very simple scallops to naturalistic leaves to more abstract arrangements. Following that come 10 “background” stitch patterns, mostly meshes or “field of flowers” patterns.
In addition, there are 12 projects for which full instructions are given. These include a shawl, two collars, and two luncheon sets. The shawl is intriguing, as the center is knitted, then single crochets are worked around the outside of the center, and finally the edging is knitted on with short-row miters to turn the corners neatly. Fascinating!
The only drawbacks? The stitch patterns are not charted, but instead are typeset using mostly letters and numbers, and only a few symbols. I have yet to decide whether I am going to try to knit directly from the words, or whether I will try to chart things first, then knit from the chart. The index, while extensive, is not as user-friendly as it could be. If, for example, I want to see if there’s an edging that uses daisies, looking under “daisy” won’t help, as it’s listed under W for “wide daisy and leaf edging”. But, then again, with “only” 53 pages of patterns to look through, it’s almost more fun to just flip through looking at all the pretty patterns to find the daisy edging.
There were a couple errors in the original printing from 1973, but those have been corrected in the 1993 edition that I have.
Overall, as I said at the start, in my opinion this is a must-have. I bought mine direct from Schoolhouse Press, but Amazon put it in my “you might like” area the other day, so it’s widely available. If you get it, I hope you’re as happy as I am!
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