MORE Crafty Bounty!

Heather brought me this book at Church of Craft, with the warning: “You can’t give it back to me.”

Like I would! This is an awesome early craft book on so many levels. I love the cover, and the illustrations are charming throughout.

Look closer at the title, though. Heather and I wondered: what prompts a title change like that? Did people not understand what “knitting without needles” meant? Was macrame hot enough in 1963 that Marketing decided to capitalize on it?

There are a number of interesting, maybe even unfathomable projects in here. This hat amazes me. You basically take a skein of yarn, knot it at one end, fan all the loose strands out over your head and tie them to a ring of elastic. WOW.

. . . In the same vein, we have this turban. I could not love the opening paragraph more.

Let me back up a little and say, the concept of knitting without needles is, in itself, pretty interesting. I really do love the way craft books of this era would experiment with the unknown. I find myself wishing for a bit more of this spirit of exploration in the current craft book scene. But you’ve heard this rant before….

This book also has some real gem-ideas. I’ll be trying the Pencil Flowers soon, and showing you the results. And I like the project where you add hand-knotted fringe to store-bought placemats. There are also good instructions for building your own Weave-It loom, which is something I’m juuuuust starting to obsess over.

And then there’s this! Highly useful.

If you want to score your own copy, I found several online.

Thank you, Heather! This rocks.