The Stitch Collection

I own exactly one knitting book. I guess I should amend that. I owned exactly one knitting book. Now I own two, or six, depending on how you look at it.

The solitary knitting book on my shelves has, for years, been Knitting for Peace by Betty Christiansen. I bought it on a whim in college when I was part of a charity knitting group.

I don't typically use patterns from books. I always end up only liking one pattern from a book of twenty, so I don't bother with them unless I find a pattern on Ravelry that I can't live without. I do like having reference materials around, though. I have been looking for a stitch dictionary for a while, but had difficulty picking one out.

So again, on a whim, I made my decision. I bought The Stitch Collection by Debbie O'Neill. It's not just one book- it's five booklets. Each deals with a different category of stitches: knit and purl, rib, cables, lace, and specialty stitches. I saw it in Vogue Knitting a few weeks ago and I was intrigued.

So I drank the kool-aid. And it tasted pretty good.
I do have a few issues with it, of course.

The marketing revolves around being compact. From the back of the box set, "Many of us never leave home without our knitting, but space in our bags is at a premium. So why tote around a big, comprehensive stitch book when you need patterns for only one stitch type?" Unfortunately, the idea of space being at a premium didn't extend to the individual pages of the book. Images of the stitches are small (2.375x2.25 inches), and on 90% of the pages, there is an abundance of white space. It kind irritates me that the books emphasize smart use of space, but they don't seem to take their own advice.

Each book is color coded- the knit and purl book is all orange, for example. This extends to the yarn used for the sample images.

Sarah's Knitting PSA: If you ever find yourself writing a stitch dictionary, please don't do this. Choose  colors for samples based on how well photos will show the stitch definition. Not all of the booklets are afflicted with this problem. Some of the colors photograph really well. Others don't. Maybe this would be alleviated if the photos were bigger.

Overall, I think the books are good. The images leave something to be desired, but am I glad I bought it? Yes. If only to make my knitting library a little more substantial.