Puncetto books

After getting lost in the mail, returned to sender and resent out, four books on Puncetto have finally arrived at Italian Needlecrafts.

Since these books are very hard to find and to purchase for those of us outside of Italy, I wanted to wait until they were available from a reliable website with PayPal options for payment before telling you about them. Many of you have asked for more about Puncetto needle lace and finally I can tell you something.

If you're wondering which one to start with, it should be this one, Puncetto Valsesiano, Manuale di Base by Anna Axerio:


It has the basics. While the text is in Italian, there are lots of step-by-step photos. I think the hardest part about making Puncetto needle lace is tension and keeping track of where you are.

I know I get lost in the counting all the time so my samples are definitely not worth showing you! I have watched my Mom knit and to avoid getting lost, she keeps a pad of paper and pencil beside her. She draws lines and other symbols to represent the number of stitches and which individual types of stitches she does per row when she's doing something particularly complicated. I am thinking that I might adopt this method at least until I get the hang of Puncetto.

The book has images of the symbols used in patterns, the different parts of the design, the basic stitches, how to add a new thread when you run out, how to start on the edge of fabric, how to start freestyle (like in the video here), then many patterns of varying difficulty and pictures of finished pieces, how to do arcs with picots similar to these that I showed you before:

... and finally how to insert Puncetto pieces into fabric.

At present, as far as I know there is no specific book in English on Puncetto needle lace. As mentioned in a previous post there are some pages in old needlework manuals (in English) which will help you out with the basics of the actual stitch but they don't have patterns or explain in detail how to build a design.

This book has everything you would need to make yourself many, many pieces of this beautiful needle lace. The other books listed at Italian Needlecrafts are specific to their subjects and explain with lots of diagrams and pictures how to execute more complicated (and delightful!) patterns. They do not however, have any instructions on the basics.