Crochet Tips & Tricks

Crochet Tips & Tricks

Lily Chin's new book, Crochet Tips & Tricks is chock full of information that any crocheter will find useful.  Lily is not only an expert designer, her teaching experience is so extensive that she knows just what issues are on the crocheter's  mind.  In this book Lily addresses everything from basic stuff about hooks, fibers and how to hold yarn while working, to nagging issues like dropped, joining, blocking, matching up edges for seaming, and much more.  The advice is always practical and specific, leaving nothing to chance, with good illustrations, and Lily's sense of humor comes through on every page.

There are excellent pages on finishing and seaming techniques, and extensive material on how to correct mistakes, even how to do major surgery on a piece.  Lily has some innovative solutions to problems, for example, how to end off a spiral with no bump.  One or two places in the book appear to be pasted in from a knitting book (where needles are referred to instead of hooks) and I did find some tricky things not answered.  For example, there is a page about finding the center of a ball of yarn, something we've all struggled with.  It describes exactly how to put your fingers into the ball and search for the end, and then says, "you should be able to pull out just a pinch of yarn."  Yeah, right -- shoulda woulda coulda.  What about all the times when you get a big glob of yarn instead of a pinch -- what then?  Come on Lily, don't hold out on me!

Of course, if Lily hasn't answered the question there probably is no good answer.  That's how confident I feel about Lily's advice, and therefore I strongly recommend this book for anyone who wants the definitive book on crochet technique. Though I feel my crochet knowledge is pretty solid, I always learn something new from Lily.