Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17732 in Books
• Published on: 1981-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Customer Reviews

literally the only sweater book you'll ever need
If you want just patterns that tell you exactly what to do stitch by stitch, this isn't the book for you. If you want to everything necessary to learning how to design your own garments, along with a generous helping of commentary and lots of fodder for your imagination to spin off and invent your own "knitting workshop," then GET THIS BOOK. The seven separate sleeve shapings and how they can be done on a circular needle alone are worth five times what you're going to pay. The garter stitch chapter doubles that to ten.

Seriously -- get Barbara Walker's stitch collections, a fair isle chart book or two, and this. You literally do not need anything else to be knitting sweaters that you yourself designed for the rest of your life. Then, when people ask you what pattern you used, you can smile subtly and say, "Oh none, I just made it up." You and Elizabeth Zimmerman. :-)

Another winner, one of my favorite knitting books.
There are 4 great books by EZ (Knitting without Tears, Knitting Almanac, Knitting Workshop and Knitting Around.)

This one has the famous "surprise" sweater which looks like a rumpled bathmat and magically transforms, with a few deft flips and a bit of legerdemain, into the cutest baby sweater you ever saw. It can be modified to make an adult jacket, too.

It also has plenty more useful and adaptable patterns--sweaters, hats, you name it. And since the patterns are adaptable to many kinds of wool, this is one knitting book that won't seem dated five or ten years from now.

The book was written to go with a video series. Some of the videos are still available from the publisher. The book, however, stands alone as a great knitting classic, and one that I reach for all the time when I need to make a gift.

I use it all the time
I am a huge Elizabeth Zimmerman fan, and I love this book. The baby garter stitch surprise jacket is an icon of knitting. Everyone who saw the first one I made went completely gaga over it. I was embarrassed at a baby shower when I gave one and everyone went nuts over it. One caveat: EZ gives the pattern in a 7st/in guage, which makes a VERY tiny sweater. I would recommend going up some needle sizes.
I like the directions for the seamless shoulder shapings in this book better than the directions given in "Knitting Without Tears" because there are more of them, the pictures are front and back, and I feel the directions are more clear. Of any of EZ's books, this is the one with the most projects I want to make. I love it, and I frequently refer to it for techniques I want to use in my own projects.