Fun with Clip Art - Easily Amused

I have always liked cutting out pictures and pasting them onto something else - I mean with real scissors and paste. I expect this started about in kindergarten. I love making valentines with paper doilies and stickers and ribbon. When copy machines came along (yes, I'm dating myself) things got even more fun. So you can bet I signed up right away when Dover Publications offered to send me little weekly samples of clip art for my computer. Woo Hoo! Junk mail I can get excited about.

But seriously, I am also grateful to Dover for keeping a few choice knitting books in print, and at very reasonable prices. These are classics.

• First and foremost: Mary Thomas's Knitting Book . Sometimes I think that everything published since is just commentary. This is the book that taught me to understand the structure of the knit stitch, the why of a technique as well as the how. OK, some of her history has since been shown to be a little fanciful, and some of the decorative illustrations are, shall we say, culturally insensitive. This is still a great book, as is the follow up Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns. The title of the second might be a little misleading. It isn't a collection of project patterns. It's a presentation of stitch patterns, again showing how they work, and why.

• Then there are Sheila McGregor's Traditional Fair Isle Knitting and Traditional Scandinavian Knitting. I fell in love with these books early in my knitting career. I was dismayed when they went out of print. I rejoiced when Dover re-issued them. Both books have good information on history, design and techniques. And tons of pattern charts.

• And Marion Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting and Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting. And Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitters Almanac.

NAYY, but I love Dover! Plus, did I mention all the clip art?