Book Review “Knitting New Scarves”

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d started a scarf out of a book I’d borrowed from the library, the New Wave scarf. The book, as you may recall, is “Knitting New Scarves, 27 distinctly modern designs” by Lynne Barr, with photos by Tyllie Barbosa, edited by Melanie Falick (of Interweave Knits fame).

This is a beautiful book. The photos are really lovely and, in my opinion, show off the scarves very well. It would feel right at home as a coffee table book. As I wrote yesterday, most of the scarves border on sculpture and would probably not be appropriate for a prairie winter, but as accessories, I think they’re amazing.

 

Ms. Barr uses some ingenious techniques to create these scarves, to manipulate the yarn into unique pieces of “art”. Really, as far as I’m concerned, that’s what these scarves are.

Once I got the book home, I did a search on Ravelry to see what others had to say about the projects in this book. They ranged anywhere from “can’t figure out how this works” to “once it clicks, it’s almost boringly simple” to “why does she use so many needles?”.

I can honestly say that, having sat down with the book for longer than a few minutes, I find the techniques intriguing, so much so that I logged into my KnitPicks account and ordered it (it’s on sale right now, so the price isn’t bad at all… $14.93). Already, I’m looking forward to trying out some of the other techniques, something I might not have time for with a 3 week library loan.

In other words, I think you’ve already gathered that I think this book would be a good addition to any knitting library, both for it’s artistic merits and for the techniques involved. I’m looking forward to having it in my personal library.