Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36206 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 146 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781933027760
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

Nice designs, but....
Debbie Bliss's designs are always simple and elegant, although the yarns she shows them in--her own line--are expensive. Those things I knew before I pre-ordered this book. I also knew that just about every design of hers is knitted flat and the pieces sewn together, which I never, ever in 50+ years of knitting have done and will not do. She is big on textured knits, and hers often are beautiful, but she doesn't use charts for these; she writes out every row in words. That's difficult enough to follow in her flat-style knitting; charts are much more succinct and, once you catch on, much easier to keep your place in than line after line of verbal instructions. It's almost impossible to translate verbal instructions from flat to circular knitting without making mistakes; charts are easy to use whether you knit flat pieces or seamless garments. All of this means that I would have to completely rewrite any of her patterns that I chose to knit. For that reason, I rarely buy any of her books. I ordered this one, however, hoping that, since I like her designs very much, I would learn something new. No such luck. There's very little here for the experienced knitter to learn; there are much better books already published on designing and fitting your own knits. The less experienced knitter, too, should beware: there are no instructions in this book for most of the elements of the patterns; you are supposed to know how to make cables and do stranded color work, for example, before you undertake these designs. This book would work, it appears, only for knitters who are what Elizabeth Zimmermann called "blind followers"--those who are willing to knit line by line and piece by piece exactly as the author instructs, and, of course, sew those pieces together. What you would learn by doing that, and reading the little bit of prose that accompanies each of the book's sections, I'm not sure. You would end up with some handsome garments, provided you were willing to buy the expensive yarns she recommends, but you'd hardly be ready to go forth and create your own designs.

Is it really a design book?
As someone who loves Debbie Bliss, her patterns, and her yarns, I couldn't wait to get this book. As I was looking through the book, at my local yarn shop, I agreed with some of what the above reviewer pointed out. I thought by the title of the book you were getting hands on experience on how to create a garment from scratch: measuring body shapes, choosing the right yarns, worsted vs. dk yarn, computations on finding the correct stitches to inch, etc., . . .but it is not.

The book is broken down into sections such as: Body Shaping, Choosing Color, Texture,. . ., with about three to four Debbie Bliss patterns in each section. I would consider this book more on inspirational ideas rather than direct hands-on designing. However, on the design side, there is a section with garment sketches and graph paper. For the experienced knitter, I don't see anything new that you probably don't know. For fans of Debbie Bliss, there may be a few patterns in the book you've seen or recognize.

I enjoyed this book, but consider it to be more of a "glorified" pattern book than I would a design book.
Maybe I'm just interpreting the title of the book wrong?

Not what I expected, but nice
This book is less how-to, and more of a long interview with Debbie. In some of the sections she takes you through her thought process as she begins and alters designs until she gets it right, but the information is not new.
The patterns are beautiful and inspiring and for that I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 3. But I am a fan of Debbie Bliss and I was hoping for more.
I will say that when she talks about her yarns she speaks of them warmly--they are her creation, afterall--and because she brings high quality yarns to the market for about the same price as many others I have no complaints, there.