Congratulations to Eileen, the winner of our Splendid Apparel by Anna Zilboorg (XRX, 2015) giveaway!
Thank you so much to everyone who commented! There were so many great recommendations that I thought I’d recap the recurring themes from the comments for you – 3 authors in particular that came up over and over again.
Several of you mentioned the Principles of Handknitting by June Hemmons Hiatt… this book is a masterpiece. It was recently reprinted and it is probably the most comprehensive knitting resource ever published. For me it is indispensable, but at 730+ pages it may not be for everyone.
There were several references to Ann Budds’s ‘Handy’ series. I love these too, if you ever look at a pattern and question “is this going to fit?” this series is here to help. There are three books in the series – The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns and The Knitter’s Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters – and they are all worth every penny.
And of course, it was hard to write about influential knitters without mentioning Elizabeth Zimmerman. Zimmerman was a game changer for knitter independence but I came late to the EZ-party. My copy of Knitting Without Tears is an early one passed on to me by my grandmother. It initially didn’t grab my attention. In fact, it wasn’t until after I’d become completely obsessed by knitting that I finally opened it up. When I did it was not so much the knitting the bowled me over but her writing style – wandering digressions paired with perfectly simple and clear instruction.
I would encourage knitters of every skill level to peek at these books – they’re widely available and most can be found through your local library (or you can ask the Librarian about ‘inter-library loan’).