Suggested Books

This book is considered by many as the ultimate reference book for knitting – comprehensive enough so that you can teach yourself how to knit and beyond.  The illustrations and layout are wonderful.  Excellent reference to include in your library.

This is an excellent and comprehensive book for anyone interested in spinning or plying their own yarns.  There is much in-depth information on spinning wheel mechanics, fibers, wheel construction and yarns, including plying.  There are also useful diagrams that enable you to make your own tools such as niddy noddy, nostepinne, drop spindles, among others.

There are many books that cover knitting with woolen yarns, which have a characteristic “memory."  But when working with the beautiful yarns that are made from inelastic fibers, the resulting garments may “droop” and not retain their shape over time.  Indeed, a number of relatively well-known knitting patterns for 100% silks looked downright awful after being worn a few times.  Ms. Righetti wrote about these issues in her wonderful book, “Sweater Design in Plain English.”  This book goes further; it underscores the importance of swatching, and provides very useful information about key issues like durability, weight, and pilling of non-woolen fibers, and how to knit with them.

Lovely book provided as a gift by one of the owners of Artyarns. This book has a beautiful compilation of classic lace patterns ranging all the way from beginner to advanced intermediate lace knitting projects. The photography is absolutely stunning. The stitch and shawl patterns can be knit on their own, and certainly can be used as foundations to create new and exciting lace garments.

This book provides a simple, precise and altogether excellent introduction for knitters who want to design and create unique shawls, using their own combinations of stitch patterns.  We found that one can learn a great deal by designing “miniature” shawls or blankets as mock-ups before investing the time and materials in a final design by following Martha Waterman’s methods.  Includes a very comprehensive library of stitch patterns, but be sure to knit swatches first to make sure that your results match Ms. Waterman’s pictures, as you may need to make adjustments.