Learn-To-Knit-Afghan Book

The project in this book walks you through creating an afghan with 63 squares, introducing new techniques or adding complexity to already-learned techniques along the way. It is a significant undertaking. Most squares took me 4-5 hours (I timed them), making the whole project take around 300 hours of knitting before blocking and construction. Expect to spend several months on it at least. Luckily, it's pretty easy to listen to TV or podcasts while doing most squares.It's called "Learn-To-Knit" but it's really about mastery. It will help even intermediate knitters become better at the craft.I found the book to be fantastic for two things:1. Developing efficiency and muscle memory. This book isn't about understanding knitting or basic stitches (you can quite honestly find better resources for that online) it's about the mechanics. There's a big difference between knowing how to make a right twist and having had the experience of made over a thousand of them in a pattern where a quarter of the stitches were right twists (square 29). You pick up muscle memory and efficiency by internalizing it. Beyond that, the project will make you care about speed and accuracy. Getting 25% faster could save you literally months. Finding ways to discover mistakes early or avoid them altogether can cut the time for a square in half. Note that the book doesn't actually teach you how to get more efficient, but it puts you into a situation where you have to find what works for you, and as such, it's a great learning tool. Personally, this provided me right cost/benefit for switching to continental knitting from my old technique that was just too slow on anything but runs of knits or purls, re-learning everything. For that alone, it was worth it.2. Understanding how patterns work. By exposing you to many different patterns and variations on patterns, you end up getting a pretty deep understanding of how things like cables and slipped stitches can be used to make various shapes. Usually I find myself following a pattern for a few rows, then just understanding what it's doing and how it works and taking it from there.Apart from that, the book is very well organized and fairly comprehensive in terms of teaching techniques found in real-world patterns.Now, there are a couple of things I don't like about this book:* Formatting. Whoever put the latest edition together paid no attention at all to formatting. Patterns usually span two pages, making them hard to follow while knitting. Images are often not on the same page as the pattern they show. The first letter of every pattern is capitalized as a word processor auto-correct would do "K3 p1 k3 ..." I ended up transcribing every pattern into a small spiral notebook before knitting because they were so hard to use in the book.* Mosaics. Eight consecutive squares early on (9-16) are two-color mosaics. The last six of them are garter stitch and have a very high stitch count compared to almost everything else in the book. If you follow the instructions in order, you will do 21,758 consecutive knits and slips without seeing so much as a purl. Beyond that, they're error-prone, tend to require a lot of attention and counting, and are (subjectively) a little ugly. After about two of these, you're not really learning anything new. It'd be nice if there were only, say, two patterns with this techniques and a few more multi-color techniques represented.* Lack of help with construction. After spending hundreds of hours and several months on a project, the last thing you want is to mess up the final step of joining the pieces together. The book gives 5 different options for assembling the squares, with one brief, hand-wavy paragraph each, comprising a total of two pages. Construction is actually a bit tricky because in many cases you're joining different types of edges with different stitch counts. It requires thought.Some other thoughts about the book and tackling this project:* Spend time planning out your colors and feel free to ignore the book's suggestions about colors. I found a bunch of the patterns, especially the two-color patterns to be ugly (worth doing to learn the technique, but ugly). Because of this, I planned ahead to make sure those patterns were low-contrast. Meanwhile, some of the patterns are very nice and just scream out for a particular color.* As mentioned above, many of the patterns are great for an afghan like this and especially for mastering a technique, but are not ones you'd want to use elsewhere unmodified. As such, I don't think this book is the best option as a pattern reference, so I would only buy it if you're planning to actually tackle the project.

I have been knitting for over 35 years. I have mastered sweaters, hats, mittens, gloves, socks, lace, cables, intarsia, fair isle, entrelac etc. Yet I needed a new challenge to keep from getting bored so I decided to buy this book and set myself the challenge of knitting all the squares continental style (I used to be an English style knitter). At first it was awkward and I had to frog a few times and start over to meet my own standard of acceptability. By the time I got to the tenth square I was a converted continental style knitter for good.Each block or square teaches a new technique and you learn a great deal about how manipulating the knit and purl stitches in various ways, along with the use of contrasting colors, produces a plethora of different fabrics. You don't have to knit the squares/blocks continental style -- the patterns are in standard abbreviations and can easily be followed by "throwers" as well.I thought I was an advanced knitter when I started this project but my knitting improved with each block I completed. I really began to "read" my knitting and I developed a strong understanding of what is happening when I do different things with the stitches. Ms. Walker's logical and helpful progression teaches techniques that build, one upon another, into a wealth of knitting skills that open limitless possibilities for designing your own projects.I would highly recommend this book to any knitter who wants to improve their skills to the point they can go beyond published patterns and being locked in by other people's design choices. Along with anything by Elizabeth Zimmerman and Meg Swansen, this book is a definite "must" addition to any serious knitter's library.PS The only techniques not covered here that may interest some knitters are fair isle and entrelac. If you are interested in those you might look at the Tech Square Afghan by Interweave Press. I would suggest doing the Walker afghan first and following it with the Tech Sqaure afghan to really get a mastery of pretty much all essential knitting techniques.

I had the 1972 version of this text and when I finally got around to actually DOING this afghan, the book fell apart. This is an identical replacement of that book. The squares in this book build competencies in different knitting skills. I think it's one of the best examples of competency-based learning I've seen. While the instructions on how to do the stitches can be a bit confusing, a trip to YouTube provides all the illustration you need to learn how to do each block. The only reason I gave this a four instead of a five is because the people who did the layout stupidly split instructions across pages, which makes it difficult to follow the instructions on some blocks. I scanned the instructions on those pages and then pasted them together on one sheet to make it easier to follow along. Over all, this is an excellent project book to help you learn stitches.

I am a beginner knitter and have found this book to be fabulous. I have learned so very much from it. I have knitted 21 of the 63 squares so far. I am following them in the order given in the book. Some I have liked and some not. Good way to learn what kind of patterns you like. I find it very exciting. The glossary is great. Explains each type of stich in the book. Great reference source for any other project I may work on. I have bought three more of these books for each of my granddaughter who knit. I have also bought some for friends who are long time knitters and they love the book.Verna J. LGreenan

It might have been nice to have some colour pictures of the different squares showing what can happen when different colour contrasts are used. I just visualise using the front cover.

Superb book. Very clearly set out, but am used to knitting right handed, English way so it will be even more of a challenge. Am really looking forward to expanding my skills base after decades of knitting.Delivered early, which was a lovely surprise.

Ein solides Strick-Lern-Buch, das sich an den ambitionierten und interessierten Strickanfänger richtet.Ausführliche Beschreibungen von Aufschlag bis zum Abketten bieten reichlich Anleitung. Eine Fülle sehr unterschiedlicher Muster geben auch der erfahrenen Strickerin / dem Stricker Inspirationen, mal etwas neues zu probieren. Es muss ja nicht unbedingt die hier beschriebene Musterdecke sein.

Excellent knitter's guide, teaching me a senior the continental knitting method. I was always an Americal style knitter. Now I'm excited about making the afghan with more than 60 different stitches.

A book that will take you from the beginner level to advanced intermediate.