Jessica Polka

Borrowed this from the library to inspect. I'm so glad the library has it; this is exactly what libraries are for. I would pick it up if I saw a copy, but will not make great efforts to buy it.

This is a thick book with patterns from 5 different designers: substantial excerpts from three books by Lesley Stanfield, from two books by Jessica Polka and by Kristin Nicholas, plus two "additional" designers. Further research is necessary if you want to know for certain who designed what.

The layout is sometimes eccentric. If you have three patterns, who would fit them on two pages by making two spread horizontally across a page and a half each and putting the third vertically on the remaining half of page two? Whoever signed off on layout for this book would, apparently.

The photography is cute, It consists of scattering photos of the finished objects across the page. Only the finished object, sometimes several of them. There are no photos of works in progress to see construction, no photos of assembly, no diagrams for the insanely complex stitches that make little feathers of "Swansdown". Since this is an anthology, that pattern would have been better left out -- even if they had to title the book 199 Fun Things to knit! -- but since they had (counting the titles of the books they excerpted) 375 to choose from, I think they could have found a substitute. I can't make head nor tail of the instructions, and although there are five photographs of the feather (connected with dotted lines so it's supposed to be drifting to the ground, that's "artistic" I assume), no detail is visible. White feather on a white background, yarn ends frayed out.

Sometimes the patterns use a coloured background for the print. This does make it easier to tell which instructions belong to which pattern, but so would a line around the pattern. A white background is easier to read. ...Larger print would have been welcome too, but I'm over 65 so I am biased.

There really are some good patterns here. I am going to make some of them and return the book to the library.… (más)