Knitting Expert-Ease

Stitch ‘n Bitch Superstar Knitting
Debbie Stoller

In A Nutshell: Advanced knitting techniques explained with flair and humour, accompanied by 41 fun patterns

I ordered this book from Amazon back in March so it’s been a long wait. Was it worth it? Probably.

I’m the perfect target audience for this book. I’ve mastered basic knitting skills and are tentatively exploring the brand new worlds of multiple colours, lace, cables, and perhaps even creating my own designs.

I’ve taught myself many crochet techniques from Debbie Stoller’s “The Happy Hooker”, and find her a brilliant teacher in both knitting and crochet. Her explanations are very easy to follow, and humorous prose a joy to read.

This book has three main sections – one covering stitch techniques, secondly how to create your own patterns, and lastly 41 patterns illustrating many of the techniques covered in the first section. As I am in the midst of knitting an intarsia cardigan, I read the intarsia chapter in detail to ensure I was doing everything correctly. I was relieved to find I was doing nothing fundamentally wrong but I picked up some great tips. I learnt I should work with short lengths of yarn. With 100% wool I could “spit splice” yarn together to join in a new piece of yarn. When adding in a new colour it’s a good idea to leave ends dangling from the front, rather than the back, so they do not become tangled up with the yarn in use. I was also relieved to learn that my loose stitches near the colour changes are unavoidable and the only solution is to manually adjust each individual stitch. This one chapter alone has been worth the price of the book. I will be consulting the other chapters on cabling, beading, lace, stranding and stripes as I need them.

There is a good selection of patterns but none have jumped to the top of my “To Do” List. They are all styled very prettily, though it would have been nice to see some of the designs on older models. The bios of the contributing designers are always fun to read.

My first impression of this book is that it is a good addition to my knitting library, and I will be using it extensively to develop my knitting skills.