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Rating: 
Summary: HUGE disappointment
Review: If I could give this book a rating of zero, I would. First of all, it has the ugliest designs I have ever seen, and I love Asian designs. Also all the graphs are printed so small that you certainly couldn't use any of them for stitching. However, the author does provide black and white graphs at the end of the book to be photocopied and enlarged for stitching. All designs are charted for Anchor floss, with only one general conversion table given at the end of the book for DMC. The author does also give floss estimates, a materials-required list, and minimal instructions for making up each project.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a lovely book of Chinese designs
Review: The is a beautiful book containing designs to challenge the beginning as well as the advanced cross-stitcher. Each design includes details of the source of the design as well as some historical/cultural background. Many familiar Chinese symbols are represented including dragons, pagodas, phoenix, and my favorite the Chinese Zodiac with information on what date in a given year the Chinese year started.
There are two items that need mentioning but should not prevent the purchase of this book --
1) the color keys list Anchor floss numbers (this book was written and published in Britian where Anchor is more commonly used.) However, a floss conversion from Anchor to DMC is in the back of the book.
2) Some graphs (many larger designs are provided in both color and black and white)are on a small grid but this problem is easily solved with the enlargement feature on a copier.This is a well researched book with many traditional Chinese designs. Well worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: What a disappointment!
Review: What a waste! These are beautiful designs but they are almost unusable due to poor charting. For some reason, these designs are charted using colored squares only (where has this designer been?? Hasn't she seen or heard the endless complaints from stitchers about this form of charting??). Granted there are some black & white symbol charts at the back of the book but only 12 designs out of about 60 are there (does this indicate the designer actually does know there is a problem with her charts?). Often the key is on a different page than the chart making it even more ludicrous to try to determine which color is which. The only way I would be able to stitch many of these designs is if I first scaned them into Adobe Photoshop or a needlework charting program and let it tell me which squares go with which thread numbers (I haven't tried this yet). If you want some gorgeous oriental designs that you can easily stitch see Joan Elliott's "A Cross Stitcher's Oriental Odyssey" - it is certainly a much better value for your money.
Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment!
Review: What a waste! These are beautiful designs but they are almost unusable due to poor charting. For some reason, these designs are charted using colored squares only (where has this designer been?? Hasn't she seen or heard the endless complaints from stitchers about this form of charting??). Granted there are some black & white symbol charts at the back of the book but only 12 designs out of about 60 are there (does this indicate the designer actually does know there is a problem with her charts?). Often the key is on a different page than the chart making it even more ludicrous to try to determine which color is which. The only way I would be able to stitch many of these designs is if I first scaned them into Adobe Photoshop or a needlework charting program and let it tell me which squares go with which thread numbers (I haven't tried this yet). If you want some gorgeous oriental designs that you can easily stitch see Joan Elliott's "A Cross Stitcher's Oriental Odyssey" - it is certainly a much better value for your money.
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