If you’ve been knitting for more than a few hours, chances are you’ve heard of Barbara Walker. If you haven’t, don’t worry, you will. I can guarantee you that she will become a fairly large influence on your knitting – even if you don’t realize it. Barbara is responsible for the compilation of thousands of knitting stitches (a lot of which she invented herself) in the form of four treasuries. To say these treasuries are a must have in any knitting book library is an understatement. As a mater of fact, no library is complete without them. Unfortunately, these books are becoming harder and harder to find (especially the first two) and can be quite pricy when you do find them. Enter Stitch Heaven.
I was recently asked to review a new product by Stitch Heaven, the company that created the Art of Knitting DVDs. They are in the process of bringing the treasuries into the digital age through a series of knitting eVbooks. These are ebooks with video embedded into them to show you how to create the beautiful stitches featured. The great thing about these video ebooks is that they have stitch-a-longs – real time video of an expert knitter creating the stitches along side with you. As on reader put it –
Five Stars!!!
by Elliot Holland
Ok, this eVbook is amazing. First you get a little bit of history about the stitch in each chapter, then a video to stitch along to. Its exactly what I need while I learn to knit because I’m a beginner. This is like having my own personal knitting teacher with me all the time. I can pause the video while I finish the row and I can always go back if I forget the stitch. This is a remarkable tool for any knitter out there. I feel like I can knit anything now!!! 🙂
I reviewed the stitches in the DVD and was very impressed by the quality of the video and instruction. As advertised, expert knitters take you through each stitch on your way to creating beautiful stitch patterns. You might think that these are only for beginners, but not so. Each stitch pattern comes with the written instruction for the entire pattern, and a chart so you can follow along that way if you prefer. As an advanced knitter, you can simply use the chart or written instruction and go, but it’s great to have the actual video there as well just in case you make a mistake or want to compare your results. With this layout, beginners can learn how to use charts as well, and will soon come to realize what a great time saving method this is. The evbooks are available for download from the iTunes store – clicking on the picture above will take you to it.
Thanks to social media, the stitch-a-longs are available for download onto your ipad, iphone, tablet, or personal computer through itunes. So now you can get your digital stitch library collection started!
Hugzzz 😎