"Victorian Knitting Today"

For those who have read my old blog will now that I am somewhat of an avid, if lazy, lace knitter. With that in mind it surely wont surprise that the book "Victorian Lace Today" has found its way to my hands. Granted, I could not afford it, but my mother is so smitten with the lace bug too, that she ordered it from Amazon.de :-)

I must say, it is amazing!

First off, it contains a lot of little historical bits and pieces. There are wonderfull, wonderfull pictures of historical and other sites from Victorian England, for example King's College Chapel in Cambridge.

The patterns are very appaling, simple and yet very intriguing. Some are knitted up in mohair yarns making them light and fluffy - some are knit up in handspun, or sock yarn, cashmere yarn etc. The colours are bold, the shapes are unusual for today, and the constructions are ingenious. I especially like the large section on simple scarves with wide borders. I learned more about borders by reading this section twice than reading my HK book several times. It is described in such a visual and down-to-earth way, with colour coded charts and all, that modifying edgings, adding insertions etc. seems very easy. The Author really understands her metiér!


Most probably know the book "A Gathering of Lace", which is also a lovely book on lace. The difference between those two is that while A Gathering of Lace has many small-gauged, elaborate, well-thought out, innovatice etc. garments and shawls this book only has vintage/retro clothing style, like the "fichu", a pretty little lace collar, and shawls deciphered from old knitting books that require less skill than A Gathering of Lace, yet have a strong link backwards because of that exact reason.

For a beginner, I would recommend Victorian Lace Today instead of A Gathering of Lace, simply because the Victorian shawls and scarves are easy, yet very effective, and the techniques section is by far better in the Victorian Lace Today book.


Have a really nice day


/Lene

(Who jumps right into Bed. Weekend was hard on little Author of Blog)