Books galore!

I recently picked up three new books.

Latvian Mittens: Traditional Designs and Techniques by Lizbeth Upitis. I got this book with my gift certificate at Knitter's Studio in Menlo Park. I'm just amazed at the intricate patterns in this book. This is not a book to pick up to learn how to do any kind of color knitting as the instructions are pretty minimal, but all I really wanted was the charts, so I think it's fabulous. I should say that there are great instructions for how to do the braid at the cuff and some good advice about how to tack down floats in the back of a project. She also has an interesting method of doing the thumbs. She calls for just cutting your knitting as opposed to using waste yarn for the afterthought thumb. I think I'll go with waste yarn. Speaking of thumbs, I am amazed at how the thumbs just sort of melt away into the pattern in some of the pictures. And, oh, the pictures. These are well-photographed mittens, folks! I also enjoyed reading some of the history of Latvian mittens and learning a bit about the different symbols.

***********

On Saturday, C and I visited the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale. They are currently having an exhibit on black lace, which was amazing. It was neat to see all different types of lace -- bobbin, tatted, tape, knitted, etc. Especially neat, I thought, was the scarab beetle adorned piece of lace. The colors of the scarab beetle wing were so nice against the black lace. We also enjoyed looking at all of their books and information and I'm considering taking a class there, but am a little afraid of spreading my crafting time too thin. When I got back home that afternoon, my order of two lace books was there. So I got to continue the lace fun! I got these two great books:

The First Book of Modern Lace Knitting by Marian Kinzel has charted patterns for many different lace projects. A lot of the lace projects are square in this book, which seems like a good place to start with lace knitting, but I am particularly excited by the round patterns, which are lovely.

And The Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting. Again, charted patterns, most of which are in the round. I can't decide which project to do first, but I think I have to rip the doily I had been working on, so maybe I'll do a little tea doily from this book. Both of these books give good suggestions for casting on such a tiny number of stitches on tiny little dpns, for which I was thankful (tip: use a crochet hook!), as that was a real pain the first time. In fact, I think both of these books are very accessible to the beginning lace knitter, because I really don't think there's that much to lace knitting other than things knitters already know!