Book Review: Bare Hand Knitting October 01 2019
Bare Hand Knitting — Tool Free Knitting at Its Finest
Aleshanee Aikin does not think as ordinary people do. She is multi-lingual, interested in everything, and endlessly busy with her creative hands. In her new book, Bare Hand Knitting, Tool Free Knitting at Its Finest, she applies these remarkably different ways of thinking to teach us a technique known mostly by Waldorf kindergarten teachers: finger knitting.
Aleshanee, however, goes farther than the usual finger knitting to include the whole hand — both of our entire hands, actually. Without any tools excepting hands and yarn, we can make dolls’ clothing, furniture for gnome houses, horse bridles for our imaginary horses, hats, scarves, table dressings, juggling balls, and more — so very much more.
In our age when surgeons are worried about the lack of manual dexterity in rising young surgeons, when abundant brain research indicates that how we use our hands can support intelligence, when thumbs are the busiest digits with texting, and plastic keys on computers define our remarkable sensory tools of touch, here is a technique, a brilliant idea, of how to let all the fingers have a sensory splash beyond our wildest dreams!
The book, with the imaginative insight of Elizabeth Auer, the illustrator who makes every step clear as sunshine with her marvelous illustrations, leads us with carefully defined, one-step-at-a-time descriptions of how to achieve great things by hand, with hands. Bare Hand Knitting is a book you want to read with techniques you want to learn!
If you wish for something to do (that needs no screen, no electronics) to take your mind off everything for a little while, here’s your answer. Relax with your bare hands with Bare Hand Knitting!