Sequence Knitting

When we were in Berlin last month we dropped by at Wollen Berlin. My eye fell on a particularly beautiful book: Sequence Knitting by Cecelia Campochiaro. I didn’t dare buying it by fear of having overweight luggage on the return flight, so I added it to my wish list. And guess what I found under the Christmas tree …

Cecelia Campochiaro has a Ph. D. in Chemistry and it shows: the book could easily have been the popularized version of a doctoral dissertation on knitting. The approach is very systematic and the book is well structured, starting with definitions and methodology, then elaborating every method in separate chapters.

Sequence knitting is nothing more than “knitting a sequence of stitches repeatedly using some kind of rule to create a fabric”. It’s easy knitting: you just repeat the same over and over, so you can watch TV or listen to your favourite book while knitting. There’s actually nothing new to sequence knitting. What is interesting about this book is the elaborate and systematic exploration of the myriads of possibilities that exist.

Even if the approach is almost scientific, it’s a very beautiful book with several knitwear examples, patterns and lots of illustrations. In the book one finds many sequences in an almost mathematical and easy to remember formula and an illustrative two-colour diagram. Thanks to the patterns and the many pictures it’s very inviting to start knitting right away!

To be short: this book is a must-have for every knitter, and in the library it goes on the shelve with the basic knitting bibles.