A Gathering of Lace

by Meg Swansen, Alexis Xenakis (Photographer)

Collected from knitting designers all over the world, the patterns in this guide will be a joy to create for any knitter. The lavish full-color illustrations and easy-to-follow instruction charts will make these traditional patterns an exciting addition to a lace knitter's repertoire. From beginner to advanced, the 34 projects contained include designs for sweaters, vests, shawls, scarves, gloves, and socks. With beautiful photographs of these unique patterns, this knitting book is perfect for those who love to knit lace and those who would love to learn.

Genres: Knitting, Nonfiction, Crafts, How To, Reference

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Renowned knitting designer, owner of Schoolhouse Press, and daughter of influential knitting designer and writer Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Reviews

[Melody Schwarting]

Over the past few years I've completed several very complex lace patterns. I love knitting lace. While I find plenty of the lace patterns here incredibly beautiful, I wouldn't make most of the patterns. If I'm going to spend that much of my one-wild-and-precious on knitting intensely complex lace, I want to be able to wear the garment, and a lot of these garments are not what I consider wearable. Maybe you are bold enough to put a baby in cobweb-weight yarn, but I would put a baby in Brussels lace first. That's just my personal taste. The charting is ridiculously small and the book should have been in a better format with an eye to that.

If you are looking for really astonishing lace patterns and more garment options than shawls and sweaters, A Gathering of Lace is worth a perusal. (As long as you don't mind re-charting on StitchFiddle so you can see the patterns!)

[Mauri]

An excellent resource...for intermediate to experienced lace knitters. The beginner patterns are few and far-between and, in my opinion, boring. However, I have the feeling that they are intended to be like most other beginnings, there just to give you a sense of how things go and to get experience.

And to judge from the intermediate-experienced-adventurous patterns, it would be well worth your time. They are all complex and beautiful, but I doubt they would look very nice unless one had a good amount of experience.

I got this book out of the library as a test drive towards the aim of buying my own copy. The problem with knitting books if that you often have to own them for them to be any use (and they are often expensive as well). I think I will try one of the easy patterns and see how it goes. The more advanced patterns are well worth the price, but not if I can't even begin.

All of this will be down in worsted or sport, rather than laceweight, as it is difficult to find cheap lacweight. This is another problem I have wih the simpler problems. Who wants to spend 20 dollars a skein for boring, simple patterns or practice?

[Mckinley]

Fine, intricate. Nothing for me.

[Nancy]

Meg Swansen's compilation of various laces is a wonderful reference for those who knit (or want to knit) lace. The directions are charted, requiring familiarity with reading needlework charts. All are lovely, with some being knit on heavier-weight yarns and some on lace-weight, with others in between. The finest yarns are really no different -- the stitches are made the same as the with the heavier ones -- but there can be so little fiber in them that a new lace-knitter may prefer to start with something heavier.

A Gathering of Lace is geared to the advanced-beginning knitter and up. There may be new techniques to be learned, but I found the patterns easy to understand.

[Anna]

I thought this book was OK, but I didn't love it. There weren't a lot of items I would make for myself and the garments looked really old fashioned. The accessories were better. It has intermediate to difficult items. I didn't find the stitch description images helpful, not detailed enough. If you haven't knitted lace before you'd have to watch some YouTube videos first. I got this fro the library and wouldn't buy it.

[Tammy]

I may have to buy this one, so many pretty projects, loving the shawls and sweaters . . . Yep, I want this book for my own! I don't think I was the only one either, the library's copy was pretty well shredded. So, if I had it, I might have to share. Might or might not.

[Kathy]

Beautiful shawls and things to knit. for the kinesthetically inclined. I can't wait to start knitting from it. Maybe because it has a photo of a woman in a shawl in front of the Golden Gate bridge, my home town.

[Jan]

I shied away from this book because I thought, oh, I really don't need another shawl book. But then I bothered to LOOK at it. Wow, all kinds of good stuff. Yes, great shawls but gloves, sweaters, vests. I love this book!

[Sue K]

Continues to inspire. I enjoy having books such as this for ongoing inspiration. Although I keep intending to try out some of the patterns “ some day”. It continues to add to my enjoyment of the craft.

[Sara]

A basic brilliant go-to book for wonderful lace patterns written by the top lace designers. I found a sweater that I really want to knit - designed by Meg Swansen herself! I would buy this book for my library, but I can get it easily from the Elmhurst library. It's a classic.

[Carrie]

This book is a collection of lace patterns from other sources. It was very unclear where one pattern stopped and the next began, and the pictures were small. I found one pattern I liked very much, but I will be looking for the original source before attempting it.

[Heywu]

This is the best book I have read about lace knitting. Instructions are clear and correct. Wish I had seen this book earlier, but here I am now, attempting to knit a round lace shawl

[EK G]

too advanced from me right now! i need to revisit this later.

[SR]

DUDE. THE PICTURES.

...I've never even knitted lace. But this book gives me hope.

[Patti]

LOVE this book. I knit my first last shawl from this book, the Pi Shawl. Excellent projects and history behind the stitches and patterns.

[Dharma]

The patterns themselves are good, the layout is TERRIBLE.
Not too many patterns I'd make.

[Tessa]

Good but not great; a number of patterns look quite dated. However, it does have multiple full pi shawls, which I love, and some of them are quite attractive. I'll probably make one or two.

[Alison]

lovely book for patterns and ideas