reading through the pile

I’ve actually stopped adding books to my library hold (aka wish) list. My to-read pile is monstrous and my reading has slowed with all the joy and time home ownership (compared to apartment ownership) brings.

Following are two books I’ve finished recently that I’ve written up a few thoughts about.

Super Stitches Knitting: Knitting Essentials Plus a Dictionary of More Than 300 Stitch Patterns
by Karen Hemingway

My search for a good, affordable, and useful-to-me stitch dictionary is pretty well known. I’d complained to my good friend enough over the past few months that she finally broke down and sent me a copy of her favourite book (by way of Amazon, which was not my plan when I started my complaints). It’s quite good and I see why she likes it. It improves upon many that I’ve looked on over the years: beautiful technical drawings highlighting advanced techniques where appropriate, gorgeous clean photos, indication of reversible patterns, and lots of extra space upon the page.

However, for me, it is not perfect. I find these imperfections fairly minor at this point in my knitting life, and I aim to eventually improve upon my copy of this book. How? First and foremost, charts are only provided for the most complex of cable patterns. Since I prefer knitting from charts, this makes me very sad. I plan to take advantage of the blank spaces on the pattern pages and paste in charts where and when I want them. I don’t have much experience currently in complex chart writing, so this will be a fun and appreciated exercise. Additionally I’m sad that there is a “how to knit” section. I personally prefer that section separate. It is not spiral bound, which all and all is not a big deal as the spine (sorry my book spine purists) appears to crease easily and it should lay flat soon. And lastly, the various moss and seed stitches are spread out over several pages. I would have have grouped them together so that the various minute changes in the stitches could be shown in comparison more easily.

All in all, it’s a very well thought and designed book. I do wish the photographer(s) were given credit on the cover, they deserve it!

Thank you Melanie for recommending it to me!

The Gluten-Free Nutrition Guide
by Tricia Thompson

This starts off as a heavy, but highly informative guide to nutrition, and specifically gluten-free nutritional needs. I recommend the summary charts if you are familiar with calorie and vitamin requirements as they show what foods are good for various vitamins and fibre and things. (i.e. p 52, 53, 72-79, etc).

I was surprised while reading (I guess I had forgotten what was on the cover & table of contents) to find some recipes. They look boring at first glance, but there are a few which caught my eye and I may try in the future.

What I found to be the most valuable section of the book was hidden away in the Appendix where she takes you through reading some food labels and explains why certain things are bad even if they have those names from chemistry class you have long forgotten. (In short, most things will say wheat on them if they contain wheat. Especially now).

Now I’m off to find the nutrition guide I really need: a gluten-free vegetarian one.

• Category: books
• Tag: gluten-free, knit