I have a whole shelf full of knitting, crochet, sewing, soap making, baking and other craft books. Everything from jewellery to macrame!
I like flicking through them occasionally and being inspired by the pretty pictures and amazing designs. There is not enough time in the world (or in the rest of my life!) to knit everything that I see and want to knit.
So, you really have to be strategic with your knitting project choices!
Here’s a few of my knitting books that I can recommend.
The Knitter’s Handy Book Of Top Down Sweaters by Ann Budd
I’ve only tried bottom up sweaters do far, but I’d love to have a go at the top down ones. Lots of people have said they’re easier than bottom up ones, as well as the fact that there are fewer seams to sew up at the end!
This book has a LOT of charts and tables to help you design your own sweaters. Sizing charts and the like, which I actually love. I don’t normally like charts and maths! But this book is telling you how to make your own patterns as well as giving you some ready made patterns to try first.
It’s split into sections such as making Raglan sweaters, Saddle-Shoulder sweaters etc.
Although I haven’t used this yet as I’m still knitting my way through my second ever sweater, I’m going to seriously look at this book for inspiration for my next one after that!
You can find it from Waterstones here:
The Ultimate Knit Stitch Bible by Collins and Brown
This book is an amazing reference book for when you need to know how to do a stitch or pattern, or if you’re designing your own knits, this is a really good source of inspiration and ideas as to things like lace and cable patterns, as well as variations of knit and purl stitches.
I flick through this book when I’m doing simple projects like scarves and dishcloths, that kind of thing. But if I ever decided to design a sweater from scratch, I would definitely look here for pattern ideas.
I never swatch projects (shock horror!) so this is like looking at pre-made swatches! 🙂
You can find it from Waterstones here:
100 Little Knitted Projects by Sarah Keen
The previous 2 books are regarding to big projects, this one to tiny ones!
Tiny toys and makes such as a strawberry, a fried egg, a plane, a helicopter, a rainbow, a whale, a sunflower etc.
Little makes that would be perfect for using up your leftover scraps of yarn. I don’t think many of the makes would take more than an hour if you know what you’re doing. An absolute beginner maybe a little bit longer!
You can use them as tiny presents, put them on your keyring, make a stretch of bunting from them, use them as decoration for gift tags on presents…lots of ways to use these little makes.
You can find it from Waterstones here:
The first 2 books were either Birthday or Christmas presents and I honestly can’t remember about the third. I have a feeling I bought it when I was looking for knitted leaves and autumn things like pumpkins and acorns for an autumn wreath I once did…but I can’t remember!
To be honest, as a knitter, you’d be happy getting any of those 3 books as a present, right?!
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I love the top down sweater patterns. My particular favorite is by Tin Can Knits called Flax, she has it for dk/worsted weight yarn and Flax light for fingering weight. No sewing up only weaving in ends. 🙂
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Everyone keeps mentioning Tin Cn Knits in the comments, I really should have a look at her patterns! I’ll add her to the list of possible next sweaters…the problem is I’m so slow at knitting sweaters that it might take a while 🙂
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I think all of Ann Budd’s “Handy Book of…” are great. They’re a really nice set of basic maths if you want to try your own designing. A great collection to have on the shelf!
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It’s the only one of hers I have – I didn’t realise she’d done so many! 🙂
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