I read this book as part of the "YA of the 80's & 90's challenge".

A short book, pleasantly Nancy Drew-like. No real surprises or thrills, but it's just such a classic Nancy Drew tale. She gets herself into situations that anyone else would avoid, and solves the case in the end. A quick, not terribly compelling read.

This is a book with 3 shorter novels within, that are loosely related. I'm not sure why it took me so long to read this book, but once I started I did read it quickly. I'm not a big romance fan, but I greatly enjoyed the light romances within. My favorite by far was "A Marriage of the Heart", I got wrapped up within the characters & wanted to know what happened next to them.

I would have liked to have seen a little bit more negative things happening in the book - everything just seemed a little bit too perfect & happy. Even something that should have been negative, all the characters just happily accepted reality as "God's will" and quickly moved on with their lives. The stories would have been more realistic to me, if we could have felt some pain coming from the characters, even for a short while.

This is a wonderful book about Adrienne's tale in knitting an Alice Starmore sweater, the holy grail of knitting. Though Adrienne does try to explain some knitting things to the muggles, aka non-knitters, it's obvious that only other crafters will really understand what it takes, and why, we would undertake a project such as this. She does a great job of explaining everything that goes into making a project of this size - from the little things like getting an audible subscription so she has something to knit to, from the larger things like finding substitute yarn.

Along the way, Adrienne is lucky enough to do a lot of traveling & meets lots of other knitters, including Ann & Kaye from Mason Dixon knitting, who are among my personal knitting favorites. She also gets into some history behind both Starmore & fair isle knitting, the latter which I was familiar with & the former I was not.

In the end, the result is something that probably wouldn't surprise any knitters & is something we've all gone through with any knitting or crocheting project near & dear to our hearts.

I may or may not have received a review copy for free - I have no memories of receiving or buying this book, & there are no price stickers on it anywhere.

I don't normally read reviews of a book before I review it myself, because I don't want to taint my own impressions of a book, but i admit I did so in this case & I was rather surprised to see nothing but very positive, glowing comments about the book. Not that I had anything overly negative about the book; I did enjoy reading Johnston's adventures, but sections were written poorly, there was a lack of editing more obvious in some places then in others, and all in all, the whole thing lacked realism. Not any individual 'adventure' mind, but all in all, that all of these adventures could actually happen to one person, who has not come apart at the seams & is still perfectly sane. I'm not saying I don't believe the author, as in this case I do happen to believe in her tales & she has no reason to lie, I'm just pointing out that all of these adventures just seem a little fantastical, but that's because absolutely nothing of any interest has happened to me.

I received a review copy from the author.

All in all, I did enjoy this book but I do definitely have some thoughts.

1. The beginning was very slow - character & world development, and all that. It's an understandable part of any book, but I really struggled with the first quarter of the book to the point where I put it down with no intention of picking it up again.

2. Loved the ending - there were a lot of twists & turns at the end & I actually was a little surprised by the ending.

3. There are a lot of characters, & I really felt like with all the time spent getting the story going, none of them really felt very "real" to me with the exception of Angela & Jackson, the two main characters & the only two with romantic involvement. Considering this is supposed to be the start of a series, I would have really liked to be more involved with the characters. There is a lot of back story shared, which is nice, but like I said, none of them ended up feeling very "real" to me.

4. That being said, I only give the book 4 stars because I never fell in love with any of the characters & all in all, the book moved a little slow for my tastes.


I received a review copy for free from netlibrary.com & as such, there were quite a few formatting issues which I assumed was cleaned up in the final copy.

Being an amateur historian, the Holocaust is one of the things that fascinates & scares me. 60 years have pasted & my mind still can't wrap around the facts of the Holocaust, that humans could inflict such pain & horror on other animals, let alone on other humans.

My main thought throughout the book was how incredibly lucky Blatt was. Repeatedly, throughout the book, in sections on every page, he chose left or right, up or down, go or stay, raise his hand or not, steal some bread or not, and every time he chose the right path. In each one of those cases, in every single case, if he had chosen wrong, he would have been dead. I'm not being melodramtic; Blatt illustrated over & over again that with his recreations of past events.

As always, I'm a little skeptic, but even if half of his choices are true, then my God, how did this person survive? How did anyone survive? As so many people have asked before, why did the Jews not fight back? I think Blatt in his autobiography/memoirs, explain this better then any book I've read before.

I bought this book as part of a book lot about the Holocaust at a field auction.

From the very first page, I struggled with reading this book. I could not get into the characters, I found the storyline very jumpy, and some plot details were just plain wrong. Going to a bookstore, and acting like this is a casual event? Books were extremely rare & very expensive and bookstores (by themselves) were limited to larger cities such as Boston & Philadelphia. Details like that, in what is supposed to be a historical fiction book, bugs me. It's one thing to change the facts to add more drama to the story - such as "The Other Boleyn Girl" and another thing to just simplify facts to the point where the retelling is just wrong.

It's a story with an interesting plot, and has its exciting moments to be sure. All in all, it's worth reading, but I wouldn't line up to buy the first copy, either.

I'm a big fan of seamless knitting, especially top down knitting, & I'm definitely a Barbara Walker fan as well. I got this book out of the library after seeing some of the projects people made on Ravelry, because I've been itching for a new top down project.

There are some gorgeous, but impractical projects in the book - Jill's dress comes immediately to mind. I love the simple, classic lines, one color, in a multitude of sizes from 32" to 51" (finished measurements). But... the fact remains, how many people are going to actually knit a dress, at 5 sts/inch, using a beautiful, but expensive yarn? As a knitter, I definitely know that it's more often about the process then the finished object, but in the case of a dress... I do think it's going to be a lot about the finished object. A quick google search yields me an average price of $9/skein - which isn't too bad, really, but you need 10 skeins for the smallest size, yielding a dress of $90. In my size, however, that quickly jumps to almost $110. Of course you can always sub yarns, but this is a dress after all... Considering I buy my dresses at the thrift store, I won't be making this anytime soon, no matter how gorgeous I think it is.

I also really like the Blueberry Cardigan, that calls for Blue Sky Alpaca Silk, that averages $13/skein. I love the stitches used in this, but I'd personally mod the cardigan so much, my finished object would bear little with the original.

Looking for a smaller project? There's a cute hat, Mulberry Hat, that I really like... but there are a dozen very similiar, free hats available online (ditto the Pigeon hat).

My conclusion? If this technique is new to you &/or you don't have any other top down books in your library, then it's definitely worth buying for the infomation, but if you are already familiar with top down knitting... get the book from the library.

I love lace, both knitting lace & crocheting lace. I'm a big fan of bright, bold, color, too, but there's just something about lace that makes my heart beat a little faster.

This was a new to me book, that I randomly found searching through the online interlibrary loan system. Having never heard of it, I immediately had to request it. Apparantly I'm not alone in this; this book or any projects found in it are not to be found on Ravelry.

If you've never knit lace before, there's a good primer in the beginning. Having knit some lace, other than flipping through & looking at the clear, close up photos, I skipped that section & got right to the meat of the book - various lace stitches, with some projects thrown in for good measure. There's a plain, short sleeved lace tee that I liked, using an arrowhead design, but it's not anything any good knitter couldn't figure out on his or her own.

There's a few edging patterns at the end of the book, but they aren't anything new to me or terribly exciting.

All in all... I give the book 3 stars because it's laid out very well, the photos are great, the instructions look very clear, but there's nothing very new here. Of course, it is called the Very Easy Guide to Lace Knitting, and that's exactly what's here.