PRINCIPLES OF KNITTING

Rating:
Summary: Hiatt's Knitting encyclopedia
Review: This is an excellent reference book to knitting. It uses 20 words where 6 might do better and is boring to read. But it has information that you will not find in any other knitting book.

Other flaws besides the excess verbosity are her opinions on ideal hold of needles and yarn, and the curious non-organization, and her flip dismissal of grafting using stitch holders or multiple needles.

Her favorite needle hold is awkward and slow. Her dismissal of the Continental hold is not rational. Some of the best knitters in the world use this hold. She does not mention the extremely fast Greek/Turkish/Macedonian/Peruvian hold using the thumb to flip the yarn, and tensioning around the neck at all. This is not a curiosity, but an extremely fast method of knitting deserving a spot in such a comprehensive book of words, words and more useless words.

The organization of the book is strange, but a good index makes up for it. Casting on which is the first thing you do is in Chapter 6, after you have read 120 some pages and five chapters about many complex knitting stich concepts.

The information on designing, charting and correcting patterns is the best I have seen anywhere.

I consider the classic Righetti and Zimmerman books useless, so I am not easily impressed by "sainted" knitting references.

It should be edited way down, reorganized, and reissued. It is definitely not worth over $300 in its current form weighing about 5 to 7 lbs. It was worth the $40, its original price.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: This is an incredible book, containing information not available anywhere else. For example, it has a modified long tail cast-on that produces perfect results - beautiful and very elastic. I haven't seen this version of the cast-on in any other book. The explanations are very clear. The book might be too comprehensive for a total beginner, and the author is a bit too opinionated on the subject of continental knitting. But these are very minor quibbles. The important thing is that if you know how to knit, but have nagging recurring problems, this book will probably fix that. Practically every technique is explained and/or illustrated in a way as to make easy to understand and reproduce. It's a shame the book is out of print.

Rating:
Summary: Love at first Sight
Review: When I skimmed through this book when it was first published, I thought it was a "must have" book for every lover of knitting, and immediately bought it. I was simply amazed at the amount of work and research the author put into this book. I have dozens of knitting books, some of them quite excellent, but none come close to describing knitting techniques as well or as thorough as The Principles of Knitting does. It is very detailed, well written and illustrated, and the directions are easy to follow. It is my most prized knitting book. I recommend it highly.