Big Yarn, Beautiful Lace Knits

Barbara Benson is the author of Mosaic & Lace Knits, and the yarn director for Malabrigo Yarns. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and her designs have been published in Interweave Knits, Twist Collective, Knitscene, and Knit Now magazines. She also shares video tutorials on knitting techniques on her popular YouTube channel WatchBarbaraKnit.

With big colourful pictures, and simple useful ‘how to' sections explaining what lace is, how to read a chart and some basic lace techniques, this book sets the scene beautifully. There are 20 patterns, all of them beautifully photographed. Unusually there are patterns for men and women in the same book. There are lots of different projects from hats, mitts and scarves through to shawls and a poncho.Lace knitting is usually linked to fine-weight yarns, but applying this technique to bulky yarns makes this a great way to try lace knitting. Often in a book like this I will find one or maybe two patterns that I’d like to try, but in this publication, there are lots I’d like to make. Surprisingly, the larger garments are the ones I’m drawn to, including a poncho and an open front vestThe photography is well done, with multiple pictures of the same item from different angles, making it easier to choose which items you really want to make. Overall, this is a book I’d buy for myself. My only negative comment is the colour used on the abbreviations page makes it harder to read, when the idea was probably to make it easier.