Crochet Pretty is now available in iBooks

10 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by Natasja in My book, My crochet, Pattern

Tags

crochet, crochet book, crochet ibook, crochet pattern, iBook, ipad, self publishing

Crochet Pretty book cover

This is my crochet ebook! I am so, so, so excited to say that I’ve published a crochet book and it’s ready for you to buy for £4.99 / $7.99 over in the Apple iBooks store!!! Just click here.

The ten accessories that I designed for this book are the drawstring pouch that you see on the cover, a pair of beaded earrings, two pairs of wrist warmers, a scarf, a wrap, flowery ring, necklace, brooch and a headband. The accessories are really pretty, colourful and easy to make.

Crochet Pretty iBook projects on chair

I loved every minute of writing this book. Everything about it was amazing, thrilling, exciting and so rewarding. It’s such a blessing to be alive in the 21st century where you can publish your own books, and not just any book, a book with five instructional videos, and an interactive quiz built in!

Unfortunately Apple are the only ebook publishers who support such an interactive book, so Crochet Pretty is only available on iPad and Mac. (You won’t be able to purchase Crochet Pretty on Amazon for instance.)

If you are as excited as I am and want to buy my iBook, you have to hop on over to this page on iTunes. If you already have iBooks installed on your iPad, just go ahead and click on the link.

If you don’t have iBooks installed yet, follow these steps to buy Crochet Pretty:

1. Download the iBooks app from the App store for free.

2. Once it’s downloaded tap the “Store” button in the top left corner of the iBooks app.

3. Search for Crochet Pretty in the top-right corner search box.

4. When you tap on the book title you will see screenshots of the book and you can download a sample of the book. Do this by tapping the “Get Sample” button.

5. When you are ready to purchase the book, tap the price. The button will turn green and read “Buy Book”. Tap it again to purchase the book with your iTunes account and password.

6. Crochet Pretty will start to download as soon as you’ve entered your iTunes account password. Once it’s finished, it will appear as a title on our bookshelf in the iBook app.

These screenshots give you an idea of what to expect from the book.

Zig Zag Wrist Warmers

Beadazzling Earrings

The first “page” of the book is a short video to show readers how to navigate through my book. Crochet Pretty is a different kind of book with features that not everyone would be familiar with, so I thought I needed to show off those features a bit. Luckily the video isn’t just inside the book – I uploaded it to YouTube too, so everyone can watch it. In the video you see the first three patterns of the book – it’s a nice sneak peek into my book 😉

When you’ve bought my book I would love, love, love to get your feedback. Please leave me star ratings and reviews on iBooks. I plan on writing at least three more crochet books with iBooks, so your feedback on the first one is crucial.

I hope you are as excited as I am about Crochet Pretty – Ten Accessories To Make You Feel Pretty.

Granny square bunting with the help of great books

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Natasja in Book reviews, My crochet

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

book review, crochet, crochet book, crochet bunting, triangle granny square

A friend at work recently asked me to make crochet bunting for her garden. There’s a lot of patterns around for crochet bunting but they are either to frilly or to plain for me. What I wanted was a basic triangle that could be made with at least four colours. Something like a granny square, but not square. I found the perfect solution in Crochet (DK), a hard cover book by DK. The book was sent to me by the publishers to review a couple of months ago. I’m ashamed that it took me so long to do the review, but in my defence I don’t want to review a book unless I could use of the book’s patterns. The bunting order was the perfect opportunity to do my review, so here it is.

Crochet (DK) is a step-by-step guide with clear photographic technique instructions and over 80 crochet designs. Beginners wishing to learn how to crochet will find all the stitches and techniques twinned with beautiful projects to build up confidence, whilst experienced crocheters can choose between classic and modern crochet makes. Projects cover items for the home, to wear, toys and bags. The book also contains handy info on crochet terms, symbols and abbreviations and teaches how to follow crochet patterns.

The projects are beautifully photographed and you will love the big A4 pages of prettiness.

Crochet (DK) can easily become the crochet go-to compendium. The book really teaches everything there is to know about crochet, has beautiful projects to make and the photography and styling is just lovely.

DK also sent me a copy of A Little Course In Crochet. It’s part of a popular series of learning guides from DK that explain everything and assume nothing.

The two books are very similar, with A Little Course In Crochet being a more concise version of Crochet using the same photos and teaching the same techniques and stitches, only in a smaller format.

Don’t think that the smaller book is any less useful, or not worth buying. It’s just as beautifully laid out and teaches you almost everything that Crochet does, just with less projects and less of the “fancy” crochet techniques like broomstick or Tunisian crochet for instance. DK managed to squeeze in everything you need to know into a smaller book by writing a lot of the instructions on the photo itself, as opposed to writing it out as text next to the photo like in Crochet. You can see this in the example below for fastening off stitches. (I laid A Little Course In Crochet on top of Crochet.)

Fastening off

Just like Crochet the project photos also fill a whole page, so it’s just as visually pleasing.

project basket

I feel very grateful that DK sent me these two beautiful books. I won’t ever have to buy an instructional crochet book ever again. If I had to pick which one I prefer, I would say bigger is better, and go for Crochet. It’s just so beautiful to page through and there are quite a few projects that I would want to get my hooks into. If you want to know all about crochet, you may as well get the book that really teaches absolutely everything.

As for my granny bunting, I made it by combining the Party Bunting pattern with the triangle granny from the Tools & Techniques section.

Party Bunting pattern

Granny square triangle

This string of seven bunting flags will be given to my work colleague tomorrow. She asked for “easter colours” so I used a combination of Vinnis Nikkim and Stylecraft Cotton Classique. I enjoyed making these bunting flags and found it very easy to follow the patterns in Crochet.

IMG_7111 Granny square bunting IMG_7118 granny bunting flags

Crochet is currently on sale on Amazon for £15 (RRP £25), and A Little Course In Crochet is £4 on Amazon (RRP £9.99).

*These books were sent to me by the publisher. I did not receive payment for doing the reviews. The opinions are my own. There are affiliate links in this post, which help me run my blog.