Crochet Workshop - Erika Knight

So for my 'Coming Home' post (i.e. I've been away from the blog quite a bit due to numerous horrible things which I won't go into) I decided to do something a little bit different. This is post one of my exploration of Erika Knight's new book Crochet Workshop! It's such a fantastic book that it really warrants something more than a single post saying how awesome it is - so I'm going to be reviewing it over a series of posts and updating you on the progress of my first project, a laptop cover.Firstly, as you can see from the slight curl of the cover, this book has already been much loved, despite having had it only a month. After teaching myself a little crochet by making some traditional granny squares, this book has certainly provided the next step to exploring crochet. It's very well laid-out, providing variations on squares, detailed explanations of how to make each form of stitch, and then splitting the projects by difficulty.

My favourite part of the project pages is the small 'What you will learn' section as I quite like to know what I'm practising and it's always good to know what the techniques can be used for in future. Ever the student, I like having a set of learning objectives when discovering something new!

Anyway, my first project from it is the laptop cover. I decided against using the grey coloured wool and went for a lovely, vibrant pink that I had in my stash from making granny squares. So far, I've only done the first two rows, after completely messing up  once before I got to the next stage. (See above) So I've started again and it's going a lot smoother now! I'm learning to increase and decrease, practising my double crochet and turning. Best of all, I'm enjoying it! It's a fun little project and I'll have something useful at the end of it. Once it's done, I'll need to find myself a brightly coloured zip to sew on. 


I'll tell you more about the project as it progresses, with plenty of photos, and probably some amusing screw-ups. So far, all I can say is, if you want to learn to crochet - buy this book, it's awesome! (Big 'Thank you!' to the wonderful people at Quadrille who sent me my copy).