Thursday, April 18, 2013

I Found It!

I have expressed my love-hate relationship with crochet.  I love the quickness, the way it can blend tricky variegated yarns, etc.  I hate the lack of standardization in patterns, books with not enough pictures, or just plain lacking the info I need.  I recently got a crochet book by the author of some very popular knitting books.  I really liked her knitting books, so I thought it would be a good crochet book.  Instead, I was told I was holding the hook the "wrong" way and must hold it the other way.  There were no photos, only b&w drawings.  I was trying to do a flat circle, and couldn't find info on when you join the round, where do you start the next round...

Last night I was at the library to learn about geo-caching.  We weren't going to go into the books, but Lucy needed some.  I wasn't going to go upstairs...but the book she wanted was up there.  Since I was up there, I might as well look at the books!  It's hard to pick a couple while keeping tabs on the family, but I grabbed one that had lots of photos.

"Crochet, Step by Step" by Sally Harding.  This is the perfect book (for me).  To start with, she shows two ways to hold the hook, and two ways to hold the yarn!  There are detailed photos, with writing on them to explain everything.  Simple yarns, simple photos, simple text.  Quite a few nice looking stitch patterns too, and i really like some of the edgings!  Of the patterns...I'm not a big fan of that part of the book.  The yarns are mostly Rowan, Sirdar, and Stylecraft, with a few common US substitutes listed.  The hats/baby sweater are not shown on humans, or even on wig heads.  The hats give size as "newborn", not as a measurement.  The section on sewing on buttons--the pictures show doing it on woven fabrics!  But I love that the hook sizes give the letter, number, and mm size!  Some of my hooks have one, but not the other.

I'm going to get started on one of the projects right now.  Although I need to get finishing that Teddy bear!!

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