Eileen Hough

I had heard so much about this book, so i tracked down a used copy. While the knitting patterns are often interesting, much of the supposed historical and cultural information is pure fantasy. Nothing wrong with picking it up used, just don't believe the text. ( )

This is a very old book. I have added some of the designs to my knitting. The best one is the horse! It looks great on the back of a children's sweater. I have made it more than twice, I think, for my granddaughters. I made the sweaters in a tan color and the horse in a chocloate brown. A couple of horse heads from another source decorated the fronts of those sweaters. ( )

This book details the spread of knitting from its origins in the Arab world to Spain, Italy and France. Germany and Austria, Holland, Scandinavia, Fair Isle and the Shetland Islands, and the rest of Britain. It's broken into chapters for each of these regions, with a one-page overview of knitting in each region followed by photos and instructions for typical knitting patterns from each place.

If you have one or more of Barbara Walker's knitting pattern books, you probably already have most of these patterns -- or patterns that are very similar. And Richard Rutt's "History of Hand Knitting" would likely give you all the historical information and more. It's fairly thin compared to the Walker pattern books. But it's still worth at least taking a look at. It's interesting to see a compendium of patterns broken down by region, which I haven't seen elsewhere.

I haven't actually tried to follow any of the knitting instructions, and probably won't before I take this back to the library. None of them include suggestions for gauge, yarn weight or needle size, so you have to experiment, but you should be able to make a good guess by looking at the photos. A few of the charts looked a bit hard to follow just because the symbols used make them so busy, but the vast majority look pretty clear. ( )