Textured Crochet

Textured Crochet

The upsurge in demand for crochet books has made it possible for many talented fiber artists to present their imaginative revision of crochet traditions. In Textured Crochet, Helen Jordan explores dimension, organizing her work around several “families” of stitches, including Irish-style, post stitches, long trebles, Aran-style, and several more. Within these are subsections, where she has “taken an idea and ‘played’ with it, coaxing out all its' variations in order to introduce you to different techniques and their possibilities. She has indeed coaxed to excellent effect. One subsection called “Wedges” uses stitches of graduated heights as post stitches to create lovely looks I’ve not seen before. Another called “Curlicues” has all kinds of fabulous creatures emerging from a background. Many common stitches like bobbles and puffs appear in several sections, so that ideas double back and expand even further. Other favorites of mine are “Faux Bullions,” and “Stylized Ripples.” There are no projects in the book, which is fine by me as it encourages one to meet the challenge of creating a project of one’s own. Recently I’ve been playing with cables myself, and was pleased to see Helen fooling with similar ideas and getting very different results than mine. Crochet is endless, isn’t it?