Treasury on Etsy of the Cutest Glass Animal Beads…

I am the biggest fan of etsy. Disclaimer…I sell on etsy. I love it because it’s a fabulous forum for handmade artists to sell their wares. You create your own store that you stock and sell out of. If you haven’t gone there you need to, as a buyer or seller.

One of the cool things you can do on etsy is put together treasuries of your favorite items. A treasury is a section on the web site that profiles the favorite items of the different sellers. There can be anywhere from 333-600+ treasuries at any given time. New treasuries can’t be added until the list drops below 333. I just put one together that profiles glass bead makers (my people). All cute critters. Little animal beads made of glass that made me smile. They made me laugh. They made me want to get on the torch. Let me know what you think of them. I’ve posted a few of them here.

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Stitch dictionaries are a fun way to learn new-to-you knitting stitch patterns or to take a deep dive into a particular technique. Debbie Tomkies offers 100 cable stitch designs and thoughts on how to incorporate them into projects in her Cable Knitting Stitch Dictionary.

Each stitch pattern is shown in a large swatch photo and with written and charted instructions. Any special stitches are included on the page. The stitches are rated on a difficulty scale of 1 to 3, and the pattern notes also indicate how many extra stitches you should add to a project if you’re going to work this cable (since cables pull the fabric closer together you need to compensate for that) as well as how many stitches and rows are in the repeat if you want to design a project yourself.

The cables are arranged into sections: classic cables, combinations, all-over panels, creative cables, motifs and panels and cabled edges and borders.

It’s fun to flip through the designs to think about projects you can add a single cable or two to or make with an allover cabled design. Or you could make swatches of different cables and sew them together into a pillow cover or a throw.

At the back of the book there’s a section on general cable knitting techniques, reading charts, working swatches and avoiding errors (though it mentions working the wrong number of rows between cable turns, it doesn’t share how to count rows between cables to avoid this mistake).

It also talks about how to design your own cables, combine cables in a project, choose the right yarn and needles and determine how many more stitches you need to cast on when working cables instead of stockinette stitch. There’s also a glossary of symbols and abbreviations you may find in cable knitting and other patterns.

The book provides a good overview of things you can do with cables, as well as some fun things you might not have tried like infinity cables and horizontal cables. It’s a great book for a designer who likes to work with cables or a knitter who wants to play with different stitches in their projects.

About the book: 176 pages, paperback, 100 stitch patterns. Published 2024 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $26.99.

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