Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby is such a beautiful book, in history and photographs, that you may find yourself whiling away hours just looking at it. Once you can pull yourself out of it, however, you'll have to decide which of the many lovely projects you'll tackle first.

Ms. Sowerby does her homework in presenting background on the patterns and the women who provided them, or just the framework of them. She educates the reader on how patterns were written in those Victorian days and why the author's real name may not appear with her work. Ms. Sowerby also tells how pattern copying was a somewhat common practice (common enough to necessitate warnings against it by some pattern writers). If you love reading about history, especially as it relates to the patterns we use even today, you'll enjoy this book. If you also love to knit lace, this book is a must-have.

Next, the patterns. They're numerous and simply breathtaking. If you have experience knitting shawls or working with laceweight or fingering yarns, you know that those projects stick with you for a long time. If you knit each of the 35+ patterns in this book, you'd be busy for years and years--and happily so.

The difference in yarn weights is discussed as well as many types of borders. The reader is instructed how to knit a border onto the different shawls or scarves, how to read charts, and how to block lace. For even simple scarves, a chart is necessary; otherwise, the pattern could easily take up pages and pages if it were written out.

There's an array of difficulty levels present. Easier projects tend to be toward the front of the book, but even the simplest patterns are gorgeous creations.

Sometimes, knitters think that shawls don't suit them. But with the large selection of patterns, there's probably at least one project that suits each knitter. Even if you don't want to knit a shawl for yourself, you can always knit one for someone else. After all the time and effort involved, however, you may just decide to keep this work-of-art for yourself.

Victorian Lace Today isn't just an instruction manual and brief history of a particularly proficient era in knitting; it's also a handsome, coffee table book that would interest many people, those who knit as well as those who don't. At the very least, it would be a useful, beautiful addition to any knitter's library.