Needles and Books

After a great trip up to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, I was lucky to get some brilliant books and patterns, and this inspired me to share some of these with all of you, as well as some of my favourtie books already in my bookcase. Knitting is one of the biggest parts of my life, I love to share my knits with my family and friends all over the world and it has brought me endless hours of fun and peace and destressing.So here are my hot picks for the christmas list of any knitter.

Now most of you probably know me as a toy knitter, and that would be accurate. I love to knit toys, and create a character every time, from my little frogs to the biggest Ark!! So at the show, I couldnt resist this book of Dinosaurs.

Tina Barrett has created this brilliant collection of fun dinosaurs to knit. They are all knit flat too and are so fun and cute. Each dinosaur comes with facts too so the book is great to use with children, learning about their dinosaurs. The first ones I have knit will also be off to Year 2, with special cards so they can learn all about their new friends. I love this book, great pictures and very easy to follow and knit patterns. I even learnt something new about jointing toys from this book.

I personally cannot live without Jean Greenhowe, and I know many toy knitters feel the same. She has been designing for many years, and toys from my childhood were knit from her patterns, and now I am knitting those same patterns. I love the christmas ones, especially this one as I have knitted the nativity from this one.

I have nearly all the books she has published, and her website is a great resource too, with some brilliant free patterns to get you started.

The 'twenty to make' series of books from Search Press are a brilliant series of craft books from all over the crafting world, including sugarcraft, papercraft, crochet and knitting of course, sewing and jewellery making. I have a few of these books and I love them. My favourites include the christmas knitting and knitted flowers, but there are so many to choose from, baby booties, egg cosies, mug cosies, aliens, food, cake and many more.

So here are just a few of my favourite books for knitting, and ones refer to for a lot of my toy knitting needs. They have taught me so much along with the amazing Ravelry so I am forever in debt!!!