Finds

I stopped by the going-out-of-business sale for a local weaving store today. The looms were a little too large and expensive for my traveling student existence, and the yarn was not really knitting appropriate, but I did come away with two great stitch dictionaries for a few dollars. I had been eyeing Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns series for a few years now, but am reluctant to accumulate too many large books. Today, I found this condensed version of lace patterns from the first two Treasury books, The Craft of Lace Knitting, which I guess is out of print. It's a nice, slim book with a ton of great patterns that could be used lace, sweaters, and a myriad of other things.


I also picked up a fantastic Japanese stitch pattern book that looks to be from the 1960s. It is called 2000 Patterns of Design and Figure-Knitting and was edited by Y. Miyashita. Apparently this is a fairly rare book--I just did a quick internet search and didn't turn up a single one for sale currently! The book opens with a nice intro to the pattern chart symbols. I wonder if these are the same symbols used in modern Japanese knitting books?


The rest of the book has photographs and charts of each stitch pattern, and these great little illustrations of Japanese women with 60s updos. Each illustrated sweater looks so cute--very vintage, yet something I could easily see on the shelves of Anthropologie. Between these two books, I should have enough design inspiration to last years.