Getting started in any hobby can be daunting, and a good book you can refer back to speeds up the whole process. Even experienced knitters use them.
With so much available free online, it is worth being clear about which books earn their place.
Reference beats patterns
Patterns are freely available in enormous numbers. Clear explanation of how techniques work is much rarer.
So the book to buy is a technique reference rather than a collection of patterns. It is what you reach for when a pattern uses something unfamiliar, or when something has gone wrong and you need to understand rather than follow.
Patterns date. Techniques do not, which makes a reference book a far better purchase per year of use.
The three kinds worth owning
A technique reference. Photographed step by step: casting on and off, increases and decreases, seaming, blocking, fixing mistakes, reading charts. This is the essential one.
A stitch dictionary. A few hundred stitch patterns with swatch photographs. Once you can substitute one stitch pattern for another, every plain pattern you own becomes several.
A garment construction book, if you want to make clothes. Fitting is a real subject, and it is the difference between garments that look homemade and garments that look made.
What to look for
Good photographs, taken in light-coloured smooth yarn. A technique photographed in dark or fuzzy yarn is useless – you cannot see what the hands are doing. This is the commonest failing in craft books and worth checking before buying.
A clear index. A reference you cannot search quickly is one you will not use.
The convention it uses. US and UK terminology differ, and it is worth knowing which you are reading.
Books versus video
They do different jobs and it is not a competition.
Video is better for learning a movement, because you can watch hands. A book is better for reference, because you can find a specific thing quickly, mark the page, and keep it open beside the work.
Most knitters use both.
Secondhand
Craft books are frequently excellent value used. The techniques have not changed, and older books often explain them more thoroughly than modern ones, which tend to assume you will look up a video.
What dates is the styling and the yarn brands, not the instructions.
