The Big Book of Granny Squares by Tracey Lord

As you may have noticed if you’ve read this blog for a while, I do not review patterns or pattern books.  The reason for this is twofold.  First, other bloggers and podcasters review many patterns and pattern books.  Second, I don’t personally purchase many patterns or pattern books.  The primary reason for that is my queue of projects to complete is always quite long.  My experience is that I frequently change my mind about what I want to knit, so I prefer to purchase patterns immediately before I plan to make them, rather than when they are first released.  By the time I buy patterns or pattern books, they’ve been well and thoroughly reviewed by many others.  In order to find books to review on this blog, I look at upcoming publications on Amazon and purchase the ones that look interesting to me.  I was excited when I saw The Big Book of Granny Squares: 365 Crochet Motifs show up in that list a few months ago, because I’ve been looking for a good crocheting stitch dictionary and this looked like it would fit the bill.  I was not disappointed.

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Knitting for Tommy: Keeping the Great War Soldier Warm by Lucinda Gosling

Today is Veterans’ Day in the United States.  November 11 is Armistice Day — the day that fighting ceased in World War I.  The Great War did not formally end until seven months later, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, but the United States memorialized the cessation of fighting rather than the formal end of the war.  (More background info on the Veterans’ Day is available on the website of the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs).  Since today is Armistice Day, it seemed an appropriate day to post a review of this book!

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The Spinner’s Book of Fleece by Beth Smith

When I started spinning last April, I did something I almost never do: I went into it blind.  I love research.  I’m the person who reads and reads and learns the nuances of something before I dive in and start doing it.  I knew I wanted to learn to spin, so when I went to The Fiber Event in Greencastle, I planned to try out wheels so I could start to get an idea which wheel I liked best.  I did not expect to buy a wheel, but that’s exactly what I did.  I spun a little bit with almost no instruction, then started looking for resources to learn more.  It was then, in mid-May, that I found The Spinner’s Book of Fleece by Beth Smith on Amazon.  I preordered it and totally forgot until I got the e-mail telling me that it had shipped!  The book is both more and less than I expected, and I truly love it for what it is.

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To Knit or Not to Knit: Helpful and Humorous Hints for the Passionate Knitter by Elvira Woodruff

I like books about knitting.  I do not mean pattern books, which I do love, but aren’t what I am referring to here.  I mostly mean memoirs or essays.  I also read novels that involve knitting, but they aren’t my favorite.  Most of the novels I’ve come across are genre series, a category of books I do not often read, regardless of knitting references, as I tend to get bored with them after a couple books.  There’s not a lot of knitting memoir and essay books out there, so a couple months ago, I went poking around on Amazon to see if I could find any that I had not read.  I looked in the “Coming Soon” list and found To Knit or Not to Knit (Is that even a legitimate question?!  Of course there will be knitting!).  It sounded interesting, so I pre-ordered it and then forgot all about it until it arrived on my doorstep a week ago, a couple days before the official release date.  Since I was in the midst of dealing with Pepper’s health, I did not get to read it until last night.  I’m sorry that it took me so long to get to it, as I quite enjoyed the book!

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