I love my knitting books. I feel like I can never have enough. I like being able to look up a small tidbit in one book and a piece of a neckline in another and possible cable idea in the next book and read some insight in another book. Here I’ve listed some of my favorites and what I use them for.
I think I own almost all of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s books. Although I love really anything by her I do have two favorites. Knitting Without Tears for the straight forward technical help that offers throughout the book. Sometimes when I’ve got a design that just isn’t doing what I expected it to do, I’ll go back and read over different bits of this book to see if she can tell me why exactly. And Knitting Around where she shares pictures and stories of her life. I love those glimpses she shares.
Knitting from the Top by Barbara Walker is another book I find myself coming back to time and again as I think through a new design. I like to reread the sections before I set down to start a new pattern so I’m sure I don’t miss any of the important steps to consider in a top-down sweater design.
For design inspiration, I have a regular rotation of all three of Barbara Walker’s Treasuries (in my head I think of them as the blue one, the red one and the yellow one) and several of the Harmony Guides from the 1980s. I find I use three of them consistently with Volume 4 being my favorite by far. In fact, I’m going to need a new-to-me copy since every time I leaf through mine another few pages comes loose from the binding.
For a while this Spring most of my knitting books were stuck in a closet I couldn’t reach due to our ongoing construction (I talked about that here.) So I’ve been looking at new books. So I now I have four new books. I’ve only cracked open one of them so far.
