Successful Lace Knitting: Celebrating the Work of Dorothy Reade

I had never heard of Dorothy Reade before I bought this book. I have been a convert to charted lace recently, mostly down to the number of errors in written patterns in books and magazines so I thought I would buy this book to learn about the development of charted lace & to get some nice patterns. The photo's of the original bits of knitted lace that are supposed to be so treasured by her daughter seem to have been demolished by moths in some photos, others where I liked the basic pattern on the original, like the wall hanging with the cats on it, I thought were unimpressive as the pattern clearly went wrong somewhere & the point where the patterns met in the middle is all out of kilter. So based on this ladies developments of some slightly iffy lace patterns that show promise but don't look impressive in the photos in the book, they have used some of these charts she developed to make some garments that are meant to be current. Dorothy Read was an excellent spinner, she produced cobweb fine wool from fleece and one pattern is based on this wool, not very helpful, others are just not that good. there is a horrible jumper with a strange split up the front in a cheap yucky yellow wool, a strange multi-coloured shawl, and the cat pattern that showed promise is incorporated into a thick & rather basic jumper that looks like your gran knitted it. There are one or 2 acceptable patterns but none of them are great, a cardigan with a strange stripe down the back, the blue one on the cove that just does not lie right once completed and a pretty blanket. For the cost of this you could buy a short subscription to a knitting magazine that would have as many patterns as this in each edition & you would have more chance of finding stuff you liked. The useful bits of info about the difference between ssk & k2tog etc could probably all be googled the rest of it isn't worth having in my opinion, the odd lace pattern might be worth incorporating into your own design, or into a generic but whether that is worth the price of this book - I doubt it

This book has some very nice patterns and it was fascinating to read all about Dorothy Reade and her work with lace.

There are loads of patterns in the book based on Dorothy Reade's work, all by different designers. I enjoyed reading as a history book actually.

this is nice for my bisnes and my good frends for look for patterns my freand love it so muts

I bought this book sight unseen which was a mistake. The introductory chapter on Dorothy Reade is excellent. The patterns are to my eye, very very basic. I am a fair to middling lace knitter, no expert. There is nothing here I'd suggest to anyone who has any lace skills. I do think it would be an encouraging book to give beginners who fear lace work. While some of the patterns are classic and simple there is one that is tremendously ugly (Cherry tree (?) shawl....a mess of color and variegated yarn with a lace medallion and fringe. Ugh.). I allow every book an ugly pattern so I'd not rate the book only on that.Lace charts made lacework much easier for most of us and the book does a good job exploring the history of lace patterns. In the beginning, there are some photos of lovely lacework by Dorothy Reade. I particularly liked a circular motif in one photo. Sadly, nothing like that is in the book's patterns. I'll not keep this book but will probably gift it to a beginner.