Others say...

"I lurves it, I do!"
Shannon Okey, Spin to Knit: The Knitters' Guide to Making Yarn (Interweave, 2006)

Shannon Okey's back, and this time she's going to teach you how to make your own yarn instead of buying the stuff all the time. It is cost-effective? I've no earthly idea! But this is not the kind of project one undertakes for the cost-effectiveness of it. Okey addresses, both directly and indirectly, some advantages of spinning your own yarn, then tells you how those advantages (some of which start off, by the way, as disadvantages, such as overtwisting) can be used in your knitting.

I'll tell you what really gets me about Shannon's books-- and I understand that most folks probably won't get this, as I've known her for well over a decade at this point-- is how personal they are. Not just personal in the sense that her diction is informal, as if you were both running around the kitchen preparing a Thenksgiving dinner whilst talking about really stupid B-movies, but in the sense that certain word choices or manners of speech will come out. It's like talking to someone you've known for a while and seeing a particular body-language marker that person uses, and that you associate with that person. (The first thing that comes to mind: David Caruso's habit of drawing his syllables out.) Every once in a while I'll be reading one of her books and say "that's Shannon." Even if I hadn't known it was her, I'd know. And that's a rare, rare thing, in nonfiction especially.

This is balanced somewhat by something else that occurs precisely because I'm not the target audience for this book: I haven't knitted in a lot longer a time than I've known Shannon, and the closest I've gotten to spinning my own yarn is from petting it while it's still on the sheep. So every once in a while, I wished for a little more detail on a particular step in a procedure. Not a huge amount, mind you-- there are no places where I looked at step 9 and then at step 10 and didn't see how we got from one to the other. More cases of "okay, hold your hand with your thumb cocked thirty degrees? Or forty-five?"(Not an actual example from the book)

(Though I admit, I am still trying to figure out how on earth you keep a drop spindle spinning. It seems like a very small step from drop spindle to perpetual motion machine.)

Anyway, the short answer, though I've probably already overshot anything resembling "short" by three hundred words: if you're interested in the subject matter, even in an armchair-quarterback sense, it's worth your time. I mean, it's probably worth your time for dishwasher dyeing alone, but if I got into that, we'd be here all afternoon. It's short, it's practical, it's informative, it's fun, and it's Shannon. Though the last is redundant, she's always like that. (Well, okay, she's not THAT short.) *** ½


"Spin to Knit"
This is a wonderful book for people that are new to spinning. this helps you understand how to spin hand spun yarn for a certain project. I have always been a spinner that sees a project, goes and spins the yarn for that project and then knits it. I don't buy commercial yarns, I always create my own. This is a very nice book with easy and harder knitting projects for all. And it helps that some of my yarn was featured in one of the projects!

"New Spinners"
I would definitely recommend this book for beginning spinners. I've been handspinning yarn for twenty years, & it seems like your always learning something new. This book is easy to read, and the pictures are great.

"Great for a newbie spinner"
I'd been spinning with a drop spindle for a couple of years without really understanding what I've been doing, when finally something clicked and I started getting obsessed. I bought a spinning wheel and started complementing my yarn stash with roving, and as soon as it came out, I bought "Spin to Knit." This book is great -- Okey's instructions are clear, and the patterns are a great inspirational jumping-off point (I particularly like the yoked sweaters which combine simple solid handspun with a yoke of self-striping Noro yarns). The other day I successfuly Andean-plied some leftover singles using the instructions in STK, and I feel like I really understand the technique now. If you're already more advanced, you may want the book just for the inspiration in the patterns and the profiles of different spinner/designers, but you should probably flip through the book before buying to see if it appeals to you. If you are, like me, relatively new to the world of spinning and you want to understand how it all "works," this book is perfect for you and you should order it -- and some more fiber -- ASAP.

"Spin to Knit: The Knitter's Guid to Making Yarn"
Great book for new spinners. Not too technical. Spinning is a hobby that requires time and perserverance. This book encourages you to keep going and success will be yours. Of all the spinning books I have purchased, this is the most inspiring. Has projects for your newly spun yarn. Some projects are a little funky but if you're spinning you must be a little different!