Review: Lacks Diagrams or Illustrations
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 28, 2014
While this book might help those who learned to crochet at one time and are now trying to get back into it as a refresher, a real beginner would have a lot of difficulty learning from scratch with this book.There are absolutely no diagrams, photographs, or illustrations for the stitches and techniques described. Yes, there are step by step discussions of the tools, basic stitches, materials, and patterns, but unless you can visualize each of the "12 Easy Steps" as they are described in the text, you will have a difficult time learning. Providing illustrations of how each stitch is to be formed and what the finished product should look like would have made the instructions much clearer.The book starts off with several chapters on an introduction to crochet, the affordability of the hobby, and the required tools and fibers to use. It continues into the aforementioned 12 Steps and a brief chapter which gives an overview of more complex crochet stitches. Somehow the author considers turning at the end of each row to be a complex stitch rather than a necessary skill to know in order to complete most projects.The last part of the book is an excerpt of another book by the author dealing with weight loss.Oddly enough, the photograph on the cover of the book shows knitting on circular needles rather than a crochet project. It was a poor selection especially since there are no photographs of crochet in the book at all.Not recommended.Update: 14 July 2014I notice that the cover photograph has been changed. Unless there has also been a major rewrite of the contents and the addition of much-needed illustrations of the crocheting process, the change of cover does not change my original rating.