Knitting Emporium

by Jo Sharp

This is the latest collection of colorful sweaters from Jo Sharp, all using her wonderful, Australian-made yarn. Complete instructions are included for interesting designs reflecting the variety of influences that inspire this talented knitwear designer.

Genres: Knitting, Nonfiction

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Ligaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book. The photography is professional. It seems that each project includes a couple photos, some in different color ways. There are the necessary color and stitch charts and schematics plus the knitting directions are given as text row-by row or round-by-round. The garments themselves are a little oversized, as was the fashion back in the early 00s, but still very classic and wearable now. There is also a lot of variety in here. Some garments include color work like intarsia or Fair Isle, some are thickly textured with cables and bobbles, some are mostly stockinette stick with a solid color. All in all, a lovely book despite it being over 25 years old!

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good group of sweater patterns, mostly fair-isle-ish but a few with plain colors and nice stitch patterns a.la Guernsey. Sizings up to ~48". However, this book appears to only use charts and not give actual stitch directions. I've seen a lot of newer books do this, and I don't like it because I have a great deal of trouble seeing/reading graphs, and I suspect I'm not alone in that difficulty! Older knitting books used to give actual stitch directions INSIDE the patterns themselves, and then maybe also have a chart. I can understand the use of charts for colorwork, but not for actual stitch designs. Is it too difficult to have a pattern author set out the pattern both ways? I don't see it. How difficult is is, say, to indicate cables and/or knitted patterns in knit/purl stitches by writing them out? (grump...grump). A nice book, though, for those who are OK with graphs, with some really beautiful patterns that I'll never be able to make, alas.