book review

Well, its been a tough week in knitting land. Last week I cast on for a lace scarf using one of my fingering wieght hand dyed yarns using the book Lavish Lace. The book was published in 2004 but the production values are straight out of the eighties, even the models hair and poses are dated. I kept getting stuck on row 7 of the pattern and after the 5th time of ripping it out and starting over, I realized maybe it wasn't me. I carefully counted the chart and low and behold, the section that should have had 11 stitches needed 12 stitches to complete the pattern as charted. Huh? So after 36 years of knitting I was forced to do the unthinkable. I called the publisher to see if there was a correction on the page. It seemed possible because there are several published corrections for this book. Well, they had someone call me back. While she was prompt and pleasant, her advice mystifies me. She claims that it is common practice among lace knitters to have to remove a marker and borrow a stitch from another segment. Now unfortunately this common practice is described nowhere in this book. I went back and tried to find a stitch to borrow and damned if she was not completely full of crap. There is no extra stich anywhere in the row to be borrowed. Well, there is a week of my life I will never get back. I ripped the entire thing out and started a chevron pattern scarf out of the yarn, it looks great and no searching for the missing stitch. In summation, the book is not even capable of being a door stopper. I would give it away but I don't want to frustrate any of the other knitters that I know. I will post the scarf in progress when DH returns with the laptop.