My Newest Favorite Knitting Reference Books

I love books. I love the fact that by opening a good book, one can be transported to another place and another time. Or, if needed, one need only open a book to find the answer to a problem or question. I have books of all types, but lately I have been increasing my knitting library. I love machine knitting books, especially the ones from Alles News and Views. Alles passed away a long while back, but her knowledge of machine knitting lives on. I have stacks and stacks of her newsletters. I try to buy the classic machine knitting books as references because I know that a lot of them are out of print. Here is my latest purchase:




Hand-Manipulated Stitches for Machine Knitters by Susan Guagliumi is a classic! In Chapter 1, she talks about how knitting machines work, which levers do what, etc. Not in a superficial way, either. She has illustrations that show the needles' passage through the carriage (I've always wondered about that!), how certain stitches like knit, tuck, and slip are formed, and how to read a chart. And that is just chapter 1! I love this book and I am so glad I was able to get it off of Ebay.




Another machine knitting book I recently bought is by Tricia Shafer of Knitters Edge: "Translating Hand Knit to Machine Knit". This is a great book, especially for me, because I seem to be gravitating towards the hand knit look.

Lately, I have been buying hand-knitting books and magazines.







I was disappointed when Machine Knitting Sources went out of business, but later I found out that it had been absorbed into the INKnitters magazine. Although the patterns at MKS were a little home-made looking, I loved reading about the techniques and what was the latest in machine knitting. Well, it looks as if the publisher of INKnitters has done a great job in combining both hand knitting and machine knitting in one magazine! She gives patterns with both techniques. I love it, and I will surely subscribe to this magazine. The cover photo is what drew me to this magazine. You see, I had been looking for a short sleeve raglan blouse with a wide ballerina-type neck pattern, but coming up short. This blouse fit the bill! I will probably NOT do the ribbing (all those rolls around the bra strap and my waist line, you know!), but I am so glad I was able to find this pattern.

P.S. As you can see, I figured out how to post pictures (the secret: use Mozilla Firefox). Please look down 2 entries below to see the pictures of my black v-neck blouse and my cleavage.