TITLE: What are the "correct" references for the Vassiliev invariant?
QUESTION [7 upvotes]: Is there a good survey paper which describes the general ideas of
Vassiliev's invariant? I am not an expert on knot theory, many references are too technical for me.
Could Vassiliev's invariants be defined for general embeddings (rather than knot theory)? What are the useful references?
Thanks.

REPLY [2 votes]: Along with the references provided already, I think many people like New points of view in knot theory by Joan Birman. She gives a good explanation of the connections between these finite type invariants and knot polynomials.