Ah, the smell of new books!
Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 3:28PM After their long (long) journey here, all the way from Hong Kong, my new Japanese stitch dictionaries have arrived! And like any other who has been patiently waiting for such gems to reach their impatient owner, everything was dropped in favour of a thorough browse.
I am so not disappointed. These babies are the business.
As it says, this one has 300 stitches, and they are all lace. I bought these from YesAsia after recommendations (Thank you Jo and Katya!) and when I was shopping I spent a long time trying to find books that would cover most of my needs... I could see myself developing a bit of a habit with these and I can't afford that. A whole book on lace is perfect - it's something I really would like to explore more with my Hats.
(oops - this post went and published itself again before it was ready! And it got a comment too.. (thanks! but come back - there's more!) how did that happen?)
This 2nd one is mostly cables with some lace - again something I want to explore more, with the 'Twisted Woolly Toppers' collection. Not that I need any excuse, really...
The books are great - fully charted, and for each symbol there are illustrations demonstrating how to do the stitch - no words needed. Fabulous.
And finally, a little something to feed the obsession collection...
I doubt very much I'll make any of the patterns in these, but they are fun to browse. If anyone's got schematics down to a fine art, it's the people who produced these books. The charts and diagrams are beautiful in themselves!
Reader Comments (3)
Just the pictures on the cover are wonderful. I'd love to see a hat with some of those stitches incorporated into the design. I'll be waiting!!!
I too was really impressed by the books, (I've got the lace book and was really tempted by the second one and there was another one of 1000 stitches too, but I only had a limited amount of money to spend.., maybe something to look forward to next time), anyways, the books were fresh off the printers and I loved the charts and drawings and the simple photography. They are great.
Japanese pattern books are the best aren't they! I can't read a word of Japanese but I now have a small (but growing) collection of crochet, embroidery and dressmaking books. I can follow the patterns with easy thanks to the clear layout, pictures, english numbering and helpful arrows. Sometimes I think they are easier to follow than some UK/USA patterns! Enjoy your new books :D