Since I published my Baby Sea Turtle pattern two years ago, several people have attached the turtles to afghan squares or blankets showing the babies hatching on a beach and making their way to the sea. It’s such a sweet idea, as the turtles are quite flat, so they work well as an appliquéd element on a blanket or square.

About a week ago, one of these blankets went viral on Facebook and I’ve consequently had dozens of requests for a beach blanket to attach my baby sea turtles to, so I thought I’d modify my eyelet ripple crochet pattern into a ribbed ripple, to depict wavelets moving towards a beach. And here it is: Turtle Beach!

Note: The Baby Sea Turtle pattern is sold separately, here!

You can stitch Baby Sea Turtles to it, or just use it as a play mat or display background for turtles and other small aquatic amigurumi (like my Baby Cephalopods, perhaps!)

This is a Donationware pattern – my ribbed ripple stitch pattern, the basic pattern for a 10″ Turtle Beach square, and general instructions for making a Turtle Beach blanket are free for you to view on my website (links at the end of this post), but the PDF version includes lots of bonuses:

• Full patterns to make 3ft x 4ft Turtle Beach blankets with either 4 or 5 shades of yarn (yellow, white, and 2 or 3 blues)
• The modifications required to turn my Hatching Turtle (from the Baby Sea Turtle Collection pattern) into a Swimming Turtle that looks like the back half of its shell is submerged. (Now included in the Baby Sea Turtle Collection pattern instead.)
• Optional edging instructions to square off the rippled top and bottom edges, so you can use this as a beach-themed square in a larger blanket, or turn it into the front of a cushion cover, for example – and there are lots more applications.
• Any-size modification instructions, so you can make any size afghan square, a baby blanket, or even a huge blanket to fit a king-sized bed!

Both versions include the written stitch pattern, a charted stitch diagram, and suggestions for how to make the beach and sea colouring (and how to arrange the turtles).

You can also use the Ribbed Ripple stitch pattern with any other colourway if you don’t want a beachy blanket – a 2-row repeat in 2 or 3 colours would look amazing too. Here’s a small sample showing an alternate colourway and the bonus edging you’ll get in the PDF version:

I hope you’ll enjoy this pattern and that you’ll share what you’ve made with me, on Ravelry and/or on your favourite social media (tag me @PlanetJune to make sure I see it!)

We’re also running a Turtlemania CAL in the PlanetJune group on Ravelry from now until the end of April, and we’d love it if you’d join in if you’re making PlanetJune turtles, a Turtle Beach blanket, and/or a Wavy Stripes blanket from the Ribbed Ripple pattern!

Go to the free Ribbed Ripple stitch pattern >>

Go to the free Turtle Beach pattern/instructions >>

Go straight to buy the PDF version! >>

I really hope you’ll enjoy my latest crochet design – it makes me smile to see these cheery colourful pansy faces, and I hope they’ll give you a happy boost too! Depending on your climate, pansies can be among the earliest flowering plants in spring, but you don’t even need to wait that long to add colour to your day…

My Pansies pattern includes large and small baskets of realistic pansy plants, together with 4 different styles of pansy flowers, each available to crochet in all the pansy colours, giving you dozens of options!

You can customize the basket contents to mix and match the pansy flowers however you wish. The small basket includes 2 pansy plants, and the large basket has 8, for a riot of glorious colour.

This pattern also includes bonus instructions for making any of the pansy styles into an individual leaf-backed pansy flower (as shown at the start of this post) – perfect as a decorative pin, appliqué, gift topper or ornament.

The word pansy is derived from the French pensée (‘thought’) and there’s no better way to show someone you’re thinking of them than with a cheerful crocheted pansy.

Pattern Details

Don’t be phased by the apparent complexity of this pattern – I’ve put a lot of thought into making it easy and enjoyable for you to make:

• Although the pansy flower is a little more complex than my other flowers, it’s explained with written instructions, stage-by-stage photos, and right- and left-handed stitch diagrams. And once you’ve made a couple, they work up pretty quickly.
• Yes, the baskets have quite a lot of leaves, but I’ve come up with a clever construction method for them so you won’t be crocheting each leaf individually. It’s a lot faster than you’d think from looking at the finished result (shh, don’t tell!)
• The complete pattern includes 16 pages and dozens of photos for constructing the flowers and assembling the pansies in both sizes of basket, so I’ll walk you step-by-step through the whole process – no need to be intimidated. 🙂
• The pages with the crochet instructions for each of the three options (large pansy basket, small pansy basket, pansy pin/appliqué) are listed within the pattern, so, if desired, you can save paper and ink by printing only the pages required for your option, and read the assembly instructions on-screen only.

Launch Discount

Although I always offer discounts for shopping directly from PlanetJune, to spread the joy even further, I’m offering an additional 10% discount for one week only. Just enter code HAPPY at checkout by next Monday, 22nd February 2016, and the extra discount will be applied.

Buy the pattern here in my shop. Or, if you’re not ready to buy just yet, please heart or queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it:

Promise of Spring CAL

And finally, to brighten your cold February days (or possibly your hot and dry days for us southern hemispherers…), join us in the PlanetJune group on Ravelry to crochet pansies and other happy PlanetJune plants and flowers.

This CAL runs from now until the end of March, so you should have plenty of time to make even the most ambitious crocheted floral arrangement. I hope you’ll join us and share in the colourful botanical joy!

It’s hard to come up with a new Christmas design – with thousands of patterns to compete with, it’s not easy to think of something original that hasn’t been done before, but I’m confident that my Snow Stars are a completely new concept!

This pattern collection is really three patterns in one:

• An amazing one-piece, no-sew, seamless amigurumi star
• Three quick and easy crocheted snowflakes
• A set of beautiful Christmas decorations

The Star

I’ve spent the last couple of years playing around with prototypes for a one-piece crocheted star that’s smooth and lovely all over, with no sewing at all required, and I finally figured it out. It’s truly magical how it comes together; while you crochet it looks like it’ll never work, but as you start to add the stuffing it magically turns into a plump adorable star before your eyes. And all with little more than single crochet stitches! I hope you’ll be as excited to try this technique as I am to have invented it.

(And, as a bonus, my star also makes a lovely seamless one-piece baby toy. Embroider features to make it truly baby-safe, or, for a child past teething age, you can insert standard animal eyes before you stuff and close the star.)

The Snowflakes

With the star design complete, I’ve spent the last few weeks crocheting endless snowflakes, tweaking my designs until I developed a set of three that met all my criteria:

• Pretty and well-balanced designs
• All completely different but complementary
• Sized to fit perfectly on the star when made with the same yarn
• Not too chunky, even in worsted weight yarn

I’m really happy with the results! And, as the snowflakes are small even with heavy yarn, when you size them down with crochet cotton and a small hook, you end up with most adorably tiny snowflakes! (My thread samples pictured above are just over 2″ diameter with size 10 thread and a B US/2.25mm hook) – and you could go even smaller if your hands don’t mind tiny hooks.)

These perfectly formed beauties only take minutes to complete, and would be perfect as gift-toppers, to accent your Christmas place-settings, or anywhere else a tiny wintery decoration is needed – and the pattern includes stiffening instructions so your flakes won’t droop.

The Snow Stars

Put it all together, and you have a dazzling and completely original tree ornament. All the snowflakes fit perfectly on the star, and the star forms a colourful backdrop to each snowflake. Make your stars in any colour to match your Christmas decor, then add your favourite snowflake design! Instructions for adding a hanging loop are included in the pattern, so you can easily add your Snow Stars to your tree or to a garland.

The Pattern

Snow Star Ornaments is a detailed 10-page pattern. In addition to the written crochet pattern instructions, it includes right- and left-handed stitch diagrams for all three snowflakes, and lots of photo tutorials (for the special stitch used, stuffing and assembling the star and ornaments, stiffening the snowflakes, and adding an optional hanging loop).

But I’ve also laid it out to be print friendly: if you’d like to print it out, you can save paper and ink by printing just 3 pages:

1. The star crochet pattern
2. The snowflake written instructions
3. The page with the appropriate snowflake stitch diagrams for you (right- or left-handed)

The Crochet-Along

As you may know, we’re hosting a Christmas CAL in the PlanetJune Ravelry group – you can join in by making any PlanetJune Christmas-themed patterns (including this one!) and posting a photo to the CAL thread. If you’d like to join the CAL by making Snow Star Ornaments, click through to the CAL thread and take advantage of the CAL discount for this pattern.

If you’d like to buy the pattern, you can find it here in my shop (but don’t forget to grab the CAL discount code first!). If you’re not ready to buy just yet, please heart or queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it:

I hope you’ll enjoy my Snow Star Ornaments! And I hope it’s not too early to say Happy Christmas (or seasonal holiday of your choice) 🙂

If you’ve been bitten by the shawl-crocheting bug, it can be easy to build up quite a collection! As part of the Accessories CAL (in the PlanetJune Ravelry group), I thought now would be a good time to discuss how you store your shawls. I used to hang mine in my closet, but I quickly ran out of hanging space, and now I prefer to keep them all neatly folded in a plastic storage box.

Triangular shawls, in particular, can be a bit tricky to fold for storage, so here’s my method to turn any size and style of triangular shawl into a tidy rectangle.

Step 1: Hold your shawl with the point facing down:

Step 2: Bring the top left corner across to the top right corner:

Step 3: Bring the bottom point up to the top left corner:

Step 4: Bring the top right point across to the top left corner:

And that’s it: a perfect rectangle. If your shawl is large, you may want to fold it in half again before you store it (but I think you can figure out how to do that without a photo…)

So now you can go from this:

to this tidy little stack of crocheted loveliness!

And – in case you’d like to make a few more shawls so you can practice your folding technique – you can find all my shawl patterns here 😉

With the new PlanetJune Accessories CAL starting, I thought it was about time to show you these wristwarmers I made from the Front-and-Back Wristwarmers pattern in my book, Idiot’s Guides: Crochet.

They look lovely in person, but I’ve had real trouble photographing them! Because they’re such a rich, deep brown, they look like a solid mass in photos, and you can’t see the gorgeous stitch texture. But I think they deserve to be seen, so please forgive my over-exposed hands in these photos – let’s call them ‘arty’ shots 😉

I made them in a stretch yarn (Elle Stretch) that’s much finer than the yarn I used for the book samples, so I expected to have to use the large size instructions even though I have small hands, but the stretch in the yarn compensated for that, giving me a nice snug – but not tight – fit.

Don’t they fit me well?

Maybe you didn’t think my book IG: Crochet was for you, because you’re way past the beginner stage of crochet? If you enjoy making accessories crochet pattern, that’s definitely not the case! I arranged the included patterns at the end of the book in approximate order of difficulty, and there are some lovely – and a little more advanced – accessories at the end of the pattern section, including the stunning Double Diagonals Shawl (skills: crocheting lace, reading a chart), and the matching Front-and-Back Hat and Fingerless Mitts set (skills: post stitches, working into front/back loop only, making accessories to fit):

IG: Crochet patterns – arranged in approximate order of difficulty from basic (top) to a little more challenging (bottom). All the techniques you’ll need to make all these patterns are explained in full, with detailed step-by-step photo tutorials, in the book.

If you’d like more info on the book, please see my main Idiot’s Guides: Crochet page, which includes links to the week of posts I wrote to explain the book’s contents in detail.

And if you’re making any projects from the book before the end of the year (or any PlanetJune Accessories patterns), join the Accessories CAL in my Ravelry group and show us what’s on your hook – we’d love to see what you’re crocheting…

Today I’m adding two new shawl designs to my PlanetJune Accessories range. Although they sound very similar on the surface – both are triangular shawls, worked from the bottom up – they are actually a study in contrasts. One is restrained, elegant, warm and textured:

The other is an extra-wide, shallow triangle – bold, lacy and flamboyant:

Both are fun to crochet, and come with options to extend their value! Ready to meet them?

Cozy Mesh Triangular Shawl

I designed the Cozy Mesh stitch pattern to feel like a comforting hug around your shoulders – this is not a gauzy, feather-light wisp of a shawl; it has a little weight built into the gorgeous stitch pattern. The texture and lace are built on a small scale, to give a warm, substantial fabric with no gaping holes, while still allowing the fabric to drape and flow beautifully without a hint of stiffness.

With a single 50g skein of fingering-weight yarn, you can crochet a kerchief-style mini-shawl to keep your neck warm and fit neatly into the gap above the collar of your jacket or v-neck sweater (like the blue sample, below, left). With just two 50g skeins, you can make a useful everyday-sized shawl (like the purple sample above).

The bottom-up construction means you can keep crocheting until your shawl is the desired size (or you run out of yarn). The unfussy edging is built directly into the shawl, so you don’t even need to keep any yarn back for later.

Rav link for Cozy Mesh:

Palm Leaves Triangular Shawl

Palm Leaves is a shallow triangular shawl with a large, bold, stitch pattern. The extra-tall stitches work up into eye-catching oversized lace that makes an impact! A complementary edging anchors the dramatic main pattern without competing with it. Snuggled up around your neck, this shawl will keep you warm and cosy, or wear it across your shoulders to reveal the beautiful open lace pattern.

Both my samples are worked in DK weight yarn, making a change from the lighter weight of most shawls. A yarn with long, slow colour changes will be highlighted beautifully in this shawl, as shown in my variegated sample (above), but it’s still equally irresistible in a solid shade (below).

Again, you can keep crocheting until the shawl is the size you want, and then add the border. I’ve offered two options for the border: a deeper edging (shown in the variegated sample) if you have plenty of yarn remaining, and a shallower version (shown in the terracotta sample) if you want a less dramatic border, or are concerned that you may not have enough yarn to complete the whole edging.

Rav link for Palm Leaves:

Launch Discounts

Links to buy: You can buy the Cozy Mesh and Palm Leaves shawl patterns individually from my shop, or as part of a Custom Set of any 3 PlanetJune Accessories patterns for a special price.

But, to celebrate the launch, I have two special offers, for this week only:

• Buy either of the new shawl patterns and save 10% (code: SHAWL1)
• Buy both new shawl patterns and save 20% on each (code: SHAWL2)

Just add the shawl(s) to your shopping cart, and enter the appropriate code in the Discount box at checkout to receive your automatic discount! Valid until next Tuesday, 10 November. (Please note: you must have both shawls in your shopping cart at once to get the 20% discount on both.)

Crochet-Along

If you’re making one of these shawls this year, please join us for the Accessories CAL in the PlanetJune Ravelry group and let us know right away which shawl you’re planning to make first and what yarn you’ll be using! I can’t wait to see which colours you choose…

When I made my commissioned Sloth design, I had to decide between the two types of Sloth: Two-Toed and Three-Toed. I decided to go with the Three-Toed for my design, but I secretly wished I had time to make a Two-Toed as well…

Although my crocheted sloths don’t have any toes, the markings and nose shape of each type of sloth makes them look very different, although their basic body shapes are the same. This means we have an excellent candidate for a new Expansion Pack, to convert the standard Three-Toed Sloth into a Two-Toed Sloth:

If you aren’t too familiar with sloths – they are very strange creatures! – I refer you to my Sloth Fun Facts from my original Sloth blog post 🙂

Just like my original Sloth, the Two-Toed has jointed limbs and feet that clip together so he can hang around:

And I have to admit it – this is the real reason I always wanted to make two sloths: when you have two sloths (a matched set, or one of each), your sloths can hug each other:

Awww! Cutest thing ever?

My Two-Toed Sloth uses a special technique to give him nostrils crocheted right into his muzzle – it’s subtle, but gives a nice effect that doesn’t rely on embroidery or any other embellishment techniques. As with the original Sloth, there are only 6 pieces to crochet, and the jointed limbs mean you only have one piece to sew on at the end – very satisfying!

What is an Expansion Pack?

• An Expansion Pack is an add-on to an existing PlanetJune pattern.
• The Expansion Pack lets you modify or add to the original pattern to create something else.
• You cannot use the Expansion Pack alone – you must also purchase the original pattern in order to be able to complete the pictured items in the Expansion Pack pattern.

You can buy the Two-Toed Sloth Expansion Pack for only $2.50 individually from the shop, or, if you haven’t yet bought the (three-toed) Sloth pattern, you can buy the multipack of both sloths, and save 50c on the pair.

Launch Discount

If you’ve already bought the original Sloth, you won’t be able to save that 50c. But, for 7 days only, add the Two-Toed Sloth Expansion Pack pattern to your shopping cart, together with anything else (totalling $5 or more), then use the code SLOTHLOVE at checkout and you’ll still get your discount! (Valid until next Tuesday: 13th October 2015.)

Note: If you don’t need anything else right now, this also applies to Gift Certificate purchases, so you can pick up a $5 gift certificate now, get your discount, and have $5 in your PlanetJune account ready for your next purchase, or to send to a crocheting friend!

I’m so happy to finally have a complete set of sloths. If you’re not ready to make your Sloth family just yet, don’t forget to heart and queue them on Ravelry so you don’t forget about them:

Three-Toed Sloth (original): 

Two-Toed Sloth (new):

What do you think? Aren’t hugging amigurumi sloths just the cutest thing?!

Let’s get this out of the way first: I received a digital copy of these books to review. But I’m not being compensated for this review in any other way, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

I have two books to review today! Both are Tunisian crochet books by Kim Guzman, and I really see them as a complementary set, so I thought I’d review them together. Both are published by LeisureArts, and they are:

• Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Tunisian Crochet (I’ll call it the Beginner’s Guide)
• Tunisian Crochet Stitch Guide (I’ll call it the Stitch Guide)

Let’s start off with a look at each:

Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Tunisian Crochet

In this book, Kim walks you step by step through all the basic techniques for Tunisian crochet, with clear step-by-step photo illustrations. The first section packs a lot of valuable information into 10 pages: Tunisian hook info, all the common basic stitches, increasing and decreasing, changing colour and changing yarn, and seaming.

The remainder of the book is devoted to a selection of patterns to help you apply and practice your new knowledge and skills. This section includes 9 patterns, ranging from a very basic hat, through a blanket, fingerless mitts, and wearables (all for ladies: a ruana and two vests). The Drop Stitch Cowl (pictured above) and the Felted Duffel bag are my favourites of the included patterns. All the patterns include full written instructions (with the exception of the blanket, which is charted) and include schematics, where appropriate, for sizing.

Tunisian Crochet Stitch Guide

With this book, Kim has developed more stitch patterns than I imagined existed for Tunisian Crochet! The book includes 61 stitch patterns split over 4 chapters: Learning Charts (14 basic stitches), Typical Stitches (17 patterns), Color Stitches (12 patterns), and Lace Stitches (18 patterns).

Each stitch pattern is charted, with a helpful key given on the same page as each chart. No prior knowledge of Tunisian crochet charts is needed, as the first chapter walks you through each stitch with both the chart and full accompanying text instructions (as pictured in Stitch 1 and Stitch 2, above). The book ends with a brief reference section for all the included basic stitches.

My Experience

The Stitch Guide is a crochet stitch dictionary, but purely for Tunisian crochet stitch patterns. The best way to test a stitch dictionary is to test a variety of the stitch patterns, so I bought some co-ordinating yarns and starting working through the book from the beginning, making a swatch for each stitch pattern. I’d only ever used the basic Tunisian stitches before, so this was new ground for me. And I haven’t done any Tunisian crochet since 2010, so the Beginner’s Guide came in very handy as a refresher for the basic techniques.

Kim is a true expert in Tunisian crochet and I was looking forward to expanding my skills in this form of crochet. Working through the Stitch Guide (with the Beginner’s Guide as a backup) was a great way to learn more about Tunisian crochet: I discovered that some Tunisian stitches bias heavily (I ended up with a very slanted parallelogram instead of a square with some of the stitches) and others curl, a little or a lot. Some stitches were easy and enjoyable to work, and others I found awkward and had to grit my teeth and force myself to complete the square. Some gave me a thick, dense fabric (as I had expected), others were pretty and lacy, but my favourites were thin and relatively solid, with nice drape – I can definitely imagine using some of these for a future project.

A selection of my swatches – some biased, some curled, some neither, some both!

All this is such valuable information to have before starting a project! Designing is so much more than choosing a pretty stitch pattern from a book – you have to know how the fabric will behave and whether it’s a good fit for the project you have in mind. A wonderful stitch for a thick afghan would probably be disastrous in a sweater. So, if you’re planning to use this (or any other) stitch dictionary, I definitely recommend you make a swatch before you embark on the full project – even if you don’t care about gauge, you still need it to discover the characteristics of the fabric you’re about to create!

I made 32 different 3.75″ squares while testing out these books. I wasn’t sure at first what I was going to do with them, but I decided to make a sampler cushion cover. I only have one Tunisian hook and I was making very small squares, so I couldn’t vary the gauge. Instead, I modified some of the larger stitch patterns so I could create the same size of square each time. Once I had enough squares, I pinned them all to the same dimensions and steam blocked them to reduce the curling and biasing. This made it much easier to crochet all the squares together to form the two sides of the cushion cover.

I kept a key of the stitch patterns I used, so I can use my cushion as a reference 🙂

I made a cushion pad to fit the cover, using fabric from an old (clean) bed sheet and some stuffing. I tufted the cushion to keep the stuffing from sinking to one side of the cushion and to keep it from puffing up in the middle, to better show off my squares.

And then I crocheted the front and back of the cushion together around their edges, inserting the cushion before I crocheted the final edge. Here’s the result – a lovely Tunisian crochet sampler cushion – isn’t it yummy? It’s like a chocolate box of Tunisian crochet!

Yes, those twisted swatches I showed you above turned into these gorgeous squares once they were blocked and edged.

And my cushion is completely reversible, with all different stitch patterns on the back – I think I may like this side even more:

In case you’re trying to match these with the ‘key’ picture above, I accidentally photographed my cushion upside down in both these photos…

I found it fascinating to try such a variety of Tunisian crochet stitch patterns, and I only tried just over half the included patterns (32 out of 61)! Colourwork adds another unique dimension to Tunisian crochet, and there are 12 two- or three-colour patterns, plus 16 more lace patterns and the heart motif pattern (#27) that was too large for me to include in my cushion, so there’s still plenty left to explore in the Stitch Guide.

Peeves

• I would have appreciated some additional guidance in both books on how to make the last stitch of each row; the Beginner’s Guide explains how to make the last stitch differently for a tss, but doesn’t explain how that translates into the other stitches, and I had to consult Kim’s YouTube videos for additional help. The Stitch Guide doesn’t make any mention of the last stitch of the row being any different. I would have loved it if the instructions for each stitch explained the way to form the final stitch of each row, and that was also reflected in the chart (for example, in Kim’s video, she shows that the last stitch of the row in twisted simple stitch is not twisted, but the chart and instructions in the guide don’t explain that). I now think that the final stitch is always made in one of two ways: knitwise (from the front) or purlwise (from the back), but I’m not 100% sure on that, as neither book explained it, and none of the charts show the last stitches worked differently.
• After I completed Chapter 1 of the Stitch Guide, I was surprised to find that the remaining stitch patterns are all only charted, with no text instructions. This makes sense, as the later patterns are more complex and would take a lot of space to write out, but I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else, and it’s important: Tunisian charts look very different to standard crochet charts. After trying every stitch pattern in Chapter 1, I understood the charts by the time I no longer had the text for backup, but if you bought the book and wanted to jump in with a Chapter 2 pattern, you’d have to learn how to read the chart first! (The book does include a page on how to read charts, and a master list of all the symbols used.)
• I also noticed a couple of errors regarding the swatch photos: the swatch for Stitch 23 shows a different pattern to the chart (there’s a 2-row repeat in the swatch and a 1-row repeat in the instructions and chart – I believe they are missing a row of tss that separates each pattern row in the swatch); and the swatch for Stitch 26 has been photographed turned both sideways and back to front! But I highly recommend you make your own swatch before jumping into a project using any of these stitches anyway, as the results are often much more beautiful in reality than you can tell from the swatch photo.
• The stitch instructions in the Stitch Guide are all in a section at the end of the book. This makes sense given the amount of repetition that would be needed otherwise, and it keeps the book nice and compact. As I have the ebook version, though, I found this a bit unwieldy in practice – I can tell you that flipping to the back of a paper book for a reminder of a stitch is far easier than trying to ‘flip about’ within a PDF ebook! It’d be nice to see future ebooks using internal hyperlinks (and a ‘back’ button) for this sort of thing; paper books still do some things better at the moment.

Final Thoughts

If you’re new to Tunisian crochet, I’d recommend the Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Tunisian Crochet as a good way to learn the basics, and a handy reference to keep around. You can practice your stitches and gain confidence by following the included patterns, and build your skills while you crochet a variety of projects such as a hat, a cowl, fingerless mitts or a baby blanket. Although I probably won’t be making any of the included patterns myself, the 10-page reference section at the start of the book still makes it a must-have for my collection.

If you already have some experience with the basic Tunisian stitches and are looking for a bit of variety, the Tunisian Crochet Stitch Guide is an excellent resource to add to your collection. While it does include instructions for each of the basic stitches used to form the various stitch patterns, they are brief reminders, not step-by-step instructions, so I wouldn’t recommend this as your first beginner’s book. Also, don’t buy this book if you’re looking for interesting project patterns, as it’s solely a stitch dictionary (although Kim does mention that you can make a scarf using any of the stitch patterns). But the stitches are varied and some are very unusual – I’ve learnt a huge amount about Tunisian crochet through this book, and discovered some lovely stitches!

These two books complement each other perfectly, as, once you’ve thoroughly learnt the basics from the Beginner’s Guide, you’ll be ready to try out the exciting new stitch patterns in the Stitch Guide. I’ll definitely be keeping both books in my library.