Crochet book review: How to Crochet

There are so many crochet books out there that it's often hard to decide which ones are "must haves" and which ones are "don't needs". We thought it would be fun to provide reviews of crochet books - with the idea that it might help someone decide whether or not the book belongs on their shelf!

Book: How to Crochet: Learn the Basic Stitches and Techniques
Author: Sara Delaney.
Publisher: Storey Publishing (2014)
ISBN-13: 978-1612123929


General description:
This book is exactly described by the subtitle; it really is an instruction book of basic crochet techniques.Through text and diagrams, it takes a complete beginner through learning a good solid set of basic stitches and techniques.


What I liked about this book:
There were a lot of things I liked about this book.

One thing in particular was the way the author talked about basic stitches, chapter 4 of the book. In a lot of crochet books, the author will just describe or show how to do a particular stitch but never show what a swatch looks like made of the stitch. This author wants you to learn how to "read" the swatch of crochet fabric you've created so she includes a section on analyzing each stitch. I can't tell you how many times I have seen beginners become frustrated because they can't figure out what stitch they have made. Now I know what book to recommend to help!

Another thing I liked about this book is that it includes a whole chapter on how to read crochet
patterns, and even has some practice exercises. I am absolutely certain that the author must have a lot of practical experience teaching other people to crochet because this is a common frustration for many crocheters (and not just beginners!).




What I disliked about this book:
There really wasn't anything major I disliked about the book. The other minor thing I noticed was that in discussing how to make flat circles, the author used more stitches per round for sc and hdc than I have commonly seen - but that is the only thing I found that I disagreed with.

Overall recommendation:
I would definitely recommend this for beginners or for anyone who needs a good refresher reference book on crochet basics.

Thanks for the review Maxine. CTC members, if you have a book you'd like to review, use the format in this post as a guideline and send your review to ctclist@gmail.com. We'll schedule it for an upcoming blog post and you'll get extra raffle tickets in return!