Laura Zukaite's book, Inspired Shawls: 15 Creative Patterns For Year-Round Knitting, is a new work being released by Dover Publications. It contains shawls with names reflecting South American locales and culture, such as Cartegena, Nazca, Cuzco, Ipanema, Copacabana, Geo Aztec, and Inca. There are definitely creative designs in this book that feature elements that make many of the shawls quite unique. The photographs are attractive and the instructions appear to be nicely laid out. There is a list of general abbreviations located at the back of the book, along with a US/UK needle conversion chart. If there are more unusual/special abbreviations specific for a pattern (e.g. Tw3B, which means, "twist 3 stitches to the back"), they appear near the beginning of the pattern after the materials and gauge are mentioned. Besides written instructions, several patterns have charts, especially for designs that feature lace or colourwork.
The shawls vary in size; some are large shawls and some are shawlettes. The shapes also vary; I found one crescent, three rectangular, four semi-circular, six triangular shawls and a ruana. The crescent shaped shawl, the Copacabana design, features several tiers of ruffles. Other designs, such as the Cartegena, feature lace. Colourwork is featured in the Cuzco, Geo Aztec, Inca, and Mayan (the ruana) designs. The Mayan shawl seems to showcase a variety of techniques and stitches; it contains star stitches, bobbles, slip stitches, garter stitch and Fair-isle. The La Paz and Puno shawls (the latter is featured on the book's cover) have embroidery, and tassels can be found on the Amazonas, Ipanema, and Geo Aztec shawls. The Ipanema design also has cables and a drawcord, in addition to the tassels. The Salento shawl is mainly in garter stitch. There is quite a variety of techniques and embellishments utilized in many of the designs. I peeked on Ravelry earlier today to see if any of the patterns from this book has been uploaded into the database there, but I haven't seen any yet.
The patterns and samples in the book use luxury yarn labels such as Artyarns (Ensemble, Silk Mohair, Silk Rhapsody), Madelinetosh (Merino, Chunky, Prairie), Plucky Knitter (Spiffy, Crew), Malabrigo (Silky Merino), Sweet Georgia (Superwash Sport), Miss Babs (Big Silk), Shalimar Yarns (Aerie, Breathless), Ancient Arts Yarns, and Hedgehog Fibers. These represent varying yarn weights ranging from lace to aran weight; however, most of the patterns seem to use sport/DK weight. Also, most of the patterns call for several skeins of yarn. However, if you do your research, you could probably substitute many of the yarns with more economical ones to recreate these shawls.
Out of the 15 designs, I would probably knit about ten of them, which would make this book a big candidate for joining my knitting library. In my opinion, I think that the difficulty level of most of the patterns in this book would be suitable for intermediate and experienced knitters, although there appear to be a few patterns that advanced beginners can take on.
Also, I would probably opt to buy a hard copy of this book rather than an e-book (unless it was a Kindle version). I had problems viewing the photographs of the book using the latest version of Adobe Digital Editions, and had to download an older version of ADE (4.0) in order to see them.
Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of Laura Zukaite's, "Inspired Shawls: 15 Creative Patterns For Year-Round Knitting," from NetGalley in exchange for a review. All opinions stated in the review are mine.
