This book seems to be part of a series called "The Knitter's Bible," the idea of which intrigues me, even though I don't think I've seen any other books from this series.  I shall have to look more closely at the bookstore!  I like sets of things; knitting books especially.

Knitted Accessories is a deceptively slim volume, only 128 pages from cover to cover.  And yet, it manages to include a ton of odd and useful bits of information.  For example, it has a Troubleshooting section at the back with helpful instructions for more than just the usual "here's how you drop back a stitch to fix a problem."  Among other things, it gives you an illustration and a paragraph of text on how to unravel (tink, or frog) an entire row of knitting.  Information which I could desperately have used when I was a beginning knitter!

It also spends a blessedly short time with the beginning-beginning stuff, which every knitting book feels compelled to include.  Knitted Accessories manages to elevate this first section by explaining, for example, how to measure gauge with novelty and textured yarn.  It also gives a useful explanation for the difference between "striped" and "self-striping" yarn - another thing which puzzled me as a beginning knitter.  

One odd and difficult thing about Knitted Accessories is that it seems to be bizarrely coy about the yarn choices for its patterns.  The Seed Stitch Beret uses two 50-gram balls of "light-weight (DK) wool/cashmere mix yarn in claret red."  The In A Twist wristwarmers specify two 50-gram balls of "medium-weight (aran) wool/cashmere mix yarn in dark purple."  

A long time after I bought the book, I was flipping through it when I stumbled across an explanatory page at the very back (page 125) called "Yarns Used."  This page lists all of the specific yarns (including brand names) which were used in the patterns.  

I have never seen a knitting book do this before, but then again, this book was originally published in England and maybe that's how they do things over there.  (??)  Anyway, in case you were wondering, the Seed Stitch Beret's yarn is Rowan Classic Cashsoft DK, and In A Twist uses Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.  (Did you guess correctly?)

As for the patterns, these are relatively standard fare - fingerless gloves, scarves, a ridiculously huge cabled poncho, hats, and so forth.  What I do like is that Crompton encourages the use of different yarns to achieve different effects.  Several of the patterns are shown knit up in completely different yarns, which gives each garment a completely different look.  Which seems obvious when you say it like that, but a surprising number of knitters never venture "off the map" by experimenting with another yarn.  So I'm glad to see it.

The last section, with the aforementioned techniques, is where Knitted Accessories really shines.  It includes detailed information for all of the (somewhat challenging to the beginner) techniques used in the patterns.  This includes knitting in the round (a perennial beginner challenge), cables, knitting with beads, adding embroidery, and more.  Truly useful!

One thing that I noticed, flipping through the book, is that the models have a different ethnic balance compared to a lot of knitting books.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but they're not all white girls.  There's a black and an asian model, as well, and the two of them make up about half of the photos.  (In my extremely unscientific count.)  Definitely something I'll have to keep my eye out for, in future reviews!