Review: Jil Eaton’s Knitting School

First, the facts:

Title: Jil Eaton’s Knitting School: The Complete Guide to Becoming a Confident Knitter

Author: Jil Eaton

Published by: Crown Publishing, 2010

Pages: 144

Type: How-to, with designs

Chapters:

1. Knitting Basics
2. Beginner’s Delights
3. Intermediate Charmers
4. Graduate School

The In-Depth Look:

Another how-to knitting book? Is that necessary?

The author writes in the introduction, “In times past there was always an older generation of very experienced knitters on hand to help the novices. As that is not always the case in our very busy and technologically-saturated world, this Knitting School collection is designed to teach you to knit or to encourage you to return to knitting and to help you refine your skills.”

Well, I certainly can’t argue with that.

The book starts at the very beginning, with descriptions of different needles and yarn, a list of things you should carry in your knitting bag, through knitting, purling, increasing, decreasing, and all the usual suspects right through cables and color stranding.

Along the way, there are some handy tips, and good, basic information. It’s not the most thorough book I’ve seen. Instructions tend to be a decent illustration and a sentence or so of explanation. They’re good explanations, but I can’t really say how effective they are to explain a brand-new technique to someone who’s never tried it before. (It’s often the hardest part of reviewing basic knitting books, since I already know the basics, it’s hard to mentally go back to when I didn’t.)

In addition to the basic knitting instruction, there are patterns along the way, carefully matched to the skill level along the way. The very first project is a garter stitch puppet, then there are sweaters, hats, wraps, until we end with a lacy tank top.

All in all, Jil Eaton has put her experience from Knit Simple‘s “Ask Jil” column to good use. She already knows the questions people are likely to ask and tries to answer them for you.

This book is available at Amazon.com.

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This review copy was kindly donated by Crown Publishing. Thank you!