Knitter's Stitch Collection

Lesley Stanfield is a freelance knitting and crochet designer who has worked on and for several women’s magazines. She lives and works in Whitstable, UK. She has written many best-selling books for Search Press including 75 Birds, Butterflies & Beautiful Beasties to Knit & Crochet, 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet, 200 Fun Things to Crochet, 200 Fun Things to Knit, 75 Knitted Floral Blocks and The Encyclopedia of Knitting Techniques.Melody Griffiths commissioned and designed garments and accessories for women's magazines and worldwide yarn manufacturers for over 20 years. As well as designing, she worked as a knitting editor and is the author of 201 Crochet Motifs, Blocks, Projects and Ideas, Crochet in No Time, and Knitting in No Time. Sadly, Melody passed away in 2009.

• Organised for easy access, stitches are divided into knit and purl textures and ribs, twist stitches, cables, lace, bobbles and bells, colour and intarsia designs, and unusual techniques – including rarities like entrelac, double-sided fabric, and mosaic effects.Each chapter has a number of simple designs for beginners, including both row-by-row written instructions and easy to read charts – allowing the reader to get used to using the standard charts given for more complex, or larger-repeat patterns.All stitch abbreviations and chart symbols are included on a fold out flap – unusual and unique stitches are explained alongside the relevant patterns.

Apr 10To be a real knitter who can tackle any project, it helps to have a good encyclopaedia of stitches at your disposal. Then, when you encounter an unfamiliar stitch you only have to look it up to learn it. This is such a book. There are 300 stitches in here covering all the types of knitting that I can think of - maybe true experts know of others but here are enough for most needs. The stitches are grouped into families such as knit and purl, lace, intarsia etc for easy reference, and each page is packed with information. At the front of the book you can find the inevitable (and helpful) guide to how to get the best out of the book and interpret the various space-saving signs on each page. Every stitch is graded according to difficulty, it has a unique number and there are photographs of how it looks worked as well as a chart to enable you to work a sample. There is a fold out flap showing what the various abbreviations mean for easy reference, and at the back a section on "knit know-how" with project ideas, helpful hints and even a brief refresher course on how to cast on and do basic knitting. This is not however a book for beginners, but rather for improvers who have done a fair bit of basic projects and want to branch out into more advanced techniques. If this is you, then you will find this excellent book very useful and remarkably exhaustive for its modest size.