Excellent for charity knitting
I got this book at the library and liked it enough to buy it (at the discounted price). I'm an experienced knitter who makes mittens for charities, so it doesn't matter what size the finished mitten is - someone will have warm hands. I agree that there should be a row gauge, and sizes for child/woman/man for all the patterns would have been nice. However, it's great to have several sizes within each category.
I'm giving it 4 stars because I like the format & the pattern choices -- for my charity knitting, this book is perfect., But it could definitely be better written, especially for beginning knitters.
As an added thought: knitting up a sample swatch (which I personally don't enjoy!) is always a good idea. You can use your swatch measurements with the suggested finished sizes provided (or measure the hand the mitten is intended for!) to find out if your finished mitten will be the correct length. Most patterns can accommodate extra rows (or take out a few), even when you're doing a complicated Fair Isle design. Or you can use a slightly smaller or larger needle. Just be sure to make your swatch in the PATTERN that you'll be using -- whether it's cables, ribbing, or 2-color work.
Good at first glance, but annoying to use
At first glance, this seemed like a great little book with a variety of interesting patterns: lots of stranded colorwork, felted mittens, a good variety of sizes.
- I liked the layout of the instructions in tables so you can easily keep track of the numbers for the size you're making.
- I also liked the fact that the instructions for the left and right hand shapings are written out, rather than the author just saying "repeat, reversing shaping for the other hand."
However, there were definitely a few annoyances that I ran into when I started trying to use the book:
- No row gauge given for the patterns! I'm currently almost at the end of my first North Star Mitten and it looks like even though I was over on stitch gauge, my row gauge is tighter than what the author assumes, and my mitten will end up being shorter than my hand. For plain stockinette patterns, I guess this doesn't matter much since the row/stitch ratio is usually pretty consistent, but with the combination of colorwork and yarn worked on smaller needles than recommended, it would be really helpful if the author also gave ROW GAUGE instead of just telling you "x stitches per inch."
- No yardage information for the yarns used--the author just tells you the number of skeins of a certain kind of yarn. If you want to substitute yarns, it's up to you to research the recommended yarns on the Internet if you want to find out how many yards this translates to. If some of these are partial skeins, this isn't specified either.
- There is no single glossary of knitting terms. I encountered the abbreviation "ssk2tog" in one place and had to hunt all over the book to figure out if this was the same as the term that is usually written "ssk." (Yes, it is.) I also had to cross-reference a couple of different pages to find the author's definition of "M1". I prefer books that list all their abbreviations together, in a single glossary at the end, rather than scattering them throughout the book in cute little sidebars.
- I would have liked the mittens to all come in a consistent range of sizes. The "chicky feet" mittens were cute, but only had instructions for children's sizes. It would have been great to see children's, women's, and men's sizes for all the mittens.
Overall, it's a nice little book to get out from the library (which is what I did) but I probably wouldn't buy it.
Keeping fingers warm and have fun too!
Great book for visuals, methods, sizing and great instructions. Easy to modify most patterns to suit your own particular needs.
Great Addition to a home knitting library!
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