Random House The Knit Stitch Pattern Handbook: an of 300 Designer Stitches and Techniques

Beginning her career as a freelance knitter, Melissa Leapman has designed her own collection of wonderful stitch patterns. Yes, there are old favorites here, but the depth of new stitch techniques and ideas of how to work them into patterns has really helped to round out my large, huge, library of stitch encyclopedias. While some lace is covered, it is not a huge book of lace designs. The world has many. They are needed, but I don't make much lace. If you want reverse stockinette, cables, texture and strong fabrication, this is a great book.All patterns are charted, as well as written and the colors tabbing the section make sense. There is little on, "how to do basic stitches," taking up page space. While that information is important, I find the redundancy of the simple knit and purl to be a tree-wasting effort to round out some books, which would be better off without them. If you cannot knit, nor purl, perhaps this is not the book to start with. Which is fine! It's part of the journey of knitting. There is no end to this road of interest and there should not be, Texture, working patterns into garments and general beauty with color photographs, that are not over-the-top, but show the finished pattern in good light, are the hallmarks of this book.If you knit can you exist without it? Well, of course. If you want to get a book with stitches I've not found elsewhere, then this is a must own. So much so, that after buying the edition for my Kindle, I got the book. I can't leave an entire sticky notepad's worth of paper in my Kindle. I can in the book and that's what I've done to this book. It sits in my pile in my studio space, within reach at all times. Right next to my Barbara Walker books and Vogue stitch dictionaries. I use it daily and make up swatches often, just to get a feel for them and to learn. Anyone who wants more will find this book a great resource. This is all my own thoughts. I am not being solicited in any way and believe me, I can slam with the best of them.Enjoy and get out the highlighter and notes. You're going to need them.

I'm a fairly experienced knitter of the one-color or color block intarsia vein, rather than a Fair Isle maestro, and what I loved best about this stitch guide is the multitude of reversible stitch patterns offered and shown reverse and obverse. If you knit and love to accumulate guides, stitch dictionaries, pattern books and design-your-own project books, this is a great resource. I find I'm always adapting knitting patterns slightly or significantly to swap out cables, add interesting borders so I can knit edges and body at the same time, what have you.This gives you enough classic stitches to satisfy but its strength is in fresh twists on the usual or entirely new (at least to me) options in textured, lace, cables&cross stitches, slip st., and novelties. As others note, the stitches are arranged from simplest to most challenging in each section-- also a great help when deciding how much sweat and tears I'm wiling to expend.This also does not frustrate me in the ways too many other books and guides do.Here, Leapman uses the symbols common in knitting magazines and most books on knitting you've seen. Yay!One of my peeves with some designers and guidebooks is the use of their own symbology for charting various stitches. Alice Starmore leaps to mind as a woman living in her own private Idaho filled with her own Runic symbols. I have to translate her every chart's cable squiggles into the symbols I'm more familiar with just to get the thing going. Gorgeous end results, but geez.This is concise but full of options, so I FIND something nifty quickly and easily.While I do love browsing Barbara Walker's stitch books, sometimes I'm just looking for a simple option and don't want to spend all day combing through umpteen volumes, each of which has its own section for lace, k/p, cables, slip st.s, panels, etc. I wish Walker would compile all her lace, all cables, all k/p, all color work, all panels, etc into huge sections in just ONE encyclopedia.Until that happens, this is my new go-to for fast, interesting ideas to enhance my knitting.This is not a great resource for traditional knitting stitch patterns, such as gansey (guernsey), it's perhaps best for 'modern' classic knitting.

I really like this book! The patterns are easy to follow and work out just as pictured. There is a wide variety of each type (cable, lace, etc) to choose from. The pictures are clear and colorful, easy to see the textured pattern. The only thing I would change is the slight gloss to the pages. The overhead lighting reflects off the page and makes it difficult to see when trying to work through a pattern. Overall, I would recommend this book.

There are some wonderful patterns in this book, and I've tried probably a half-dozen of them. From what I've tried, I've found the patterns to be easy to read -- I like that the author gives both written and charted directions --- and accurate. There are color photos of the patterns, and they are well represented. When a pattern is reversible, the author gives photos of both sides. The pattern book is broken down into different sections: cable patterns, slip-stitch patterns, lace patterns, etc. Maybe I shouldn't, but I found myself comparing the book to Barbara Walker's stitch pattern books. One of the things I love about Walker's books is that she tells you if the pattern will roll, lay flat, if it's stretchy, if it's good for a sweater, a scarf, etc. If Ms. Leapman had included some of that information with each stitch pattern, I would definitely have given this 5 stars.

I'll leave my original review below as that's only fair. But I'm now designing a multi-stitch shawl using this book & have found issues I didn't notice before.Firstly,most of the colour slip stitch samples in the photos are not helpful - why use 3 dull as dishwater colours that are so similar that you can't tell one from the other? It makes it so hard to decide if that's the right stitch for you, as you can't see the contrast clearly enough. A very basic mistake that dramatically affects the knitter's ability to visualise how the pattern will look.Secondly, I've found issues with certain stitches - the instructions are so unclear that, even as an experienced knitter, I can't make my stitches look anything like those in the book (baby eyelet cables, for example).Another example: I couldn't get another stitch to look right - then I realised that the pattern should have said 'Sl1p' instead of 'Sl1'. Sounds like a minor problem, but it's a mistake that shouldn't be in a stitch dictionary.I'm also pretty sure that one or two of the 'rs' & 'ws' pics are the wrong way round.However, if it weren't for these important problems, I would stand by my original review:I just love this book! I can’t praise it highly enough! It’s so thorough, so comprehensive, that I’m going to throw out several other books that I no longer need as all the info is here!Melissa Leapman has presented a gorgeous collection full of new stitches! The photos are incredibly clear and the stitches are beautiful, unique, and varied. Melissa gives lots of really useful info on how to design your own knits, incorporating her stitches into them.She also, very helpfully, explains how to read charts and I finally feel I may be able to master these, thanks to each page having both written and charted instructions.I’m very excited at what my knitting future holds, thanks to the inspiration and guidance in this fantastic book!