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.)

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

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.

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.

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.