Some people are just shawl people. They love to knit them and wear them and give them as gifts (it is a project you can make for anyone and know it will fit, after all).
If you’re one of those people who can’t get enough shawls, you’ll love 50 Knitted Wraps and Shawls by Marisa Nöldeke.
I will say from the start that I’m not that much of a shawl person. I’ve knit a few and I wear them sometimes but I don’t feel a burning need for more of them. And I felt a little overwhelmed by this book because there are just so many options.
It feels like Nöldeke tried to come up with as many different variations as she could in terms of construction, techniques, use of color, size and shape. Which is of course a great thing, because it gives the knitter lots of options. But it’s also hard to summarize a book like that because there are so many different options.
The “knitting basics” section at the beginning of the books shows a bit of what readers can expect. Where a lot of knitting books cover the basics like how to cast on and bind off, knit and purl and perform basic increases and decreases in this sort of section, this book’s basics section starts with a lesson in provisional cast on and goes on to include things like how to increase and decrease in brioche, double knitting and three different bind offs, among other things.
It’s great to have a reference for all these things but I don’t know if I’d call them basic.
After that the book delves into the 50 patterns, with no organization in terms of construction, techniques used or skill level, which encourages you to flip through to see what you like. Patterns are rated on a scale of one to three, and by my count there are 15 rated one, 19 rated two and 16 rated three.
About half of the patterns are shown on the original German book’s Ravelry page, which will give you some idea of the range and style of the patterns. There are stripes, cables, double knitting, mosaic, brioche, dropped stitches, lace and textured stitches. Many of the patterns are triangles of various shapes, as well as rectangles and part circles.
The project on the cover is worked in two colors of mohair yarn, with slipped stitches to form the colorwork. It’s a triangular shawl made of striped triangles.
There are a lot of really pretty shawls here, and if shawls are a genre you like to work in you will definitely find lots of fun stuff to try here. Even as a knitter who doesn’t make a lot of shawls, I’m a little tempted to relearn double knitting to make one of the two-color diamond triangular shawls found here.
About the book: 168 pages, hardcover, 50 patterns. Published 2020 by Stackpole Books. Suggested retail 29.95.
