Maker Crafts: Hooked

I have been meaning to talk about my new book, Hooked for a while, but life has been getting in the way! Anyway, apologies for the delay, but here is a little preview of the loveliness inside, along with some of the work in progress sketches which I made while writing it.  
 
The book is for absolute beginners and the aesthetic is inspired by simple, modern, Scandinavian-style design and colours. I began by creating a mood board with inspirational images of the type of projects I wanted to include, along with the desired colour palette. 

  The designs needed to take into consideration the things I have learned from many years teaching people how to crochet – I wanted the range of patterns to be achievable for a beginner but also to appeal to more advanced crocheters, which I hope I have achieved. From there, I came up with some sketches and yarn swatches for the final designs in the colours and yarns I hoped to use. Using these sketches and swatches as a guide, I began making the projects. I usually design as I go rather than writing the pattern first, as this helps the project to evolve as you make it, allowing for unforeseen design problems or textures/stitches/colours that aren’t working. After ripping back and beginning again a few times, each project usually then progresses quite quickly and once complete, I can write up my hand scrawled notes into simple, clearly written patterns with as many tips for beginners as I can fit in.  
 Possibly my favourite project is the gadget cosies, as they are so very simple to make but the strong chunky stitch definition, simple double crochet stitch and the bold stripe of bright colour as a contrast to the neutral base really appeals to me. Plus they are very practical, so it is a good all rounder!

The how to crochet guide included everything you need to begin, but also to become a confident, competent crocheter. The three pattern chapters evolve in order of difficulty, beginning with Getting Started, moving to Growing in Confidence and finally, Hooked on Crochet!

There is another book in the series, Stitched! by the very talented Ros Badger, which is just as lovely, so I do urge all you budding sewists out there to check that out, too.  I am very proud of this book and I hope you will love it as much as I do, as well as finding it incredibly useful on your crochet journey.  The publisher, Parragon, have given me two copies of the book to giveaway!* If you want to be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is leave me a comment below, and if you want an extra entry, pop over to my Instagram account and leave a comment on the Hooked competition post. Good luck!

* Competition closes at midnight on Wednesday 30th November.  Prizes are as offered and are non-transferable, non-refundable, non-changeable. No cash alternatives are available. Only one entry for website and one for Instagram is permitted per person and the editor's decision is final. Entries received after the closing date of the promotion will not be considered. No responsibility is taken for entries lost or delayed, by way of technical errors including malfunctions via the website. The winner will be drawn at random. No correspondence will be entered into. The winner will be notified within 28 days of the closing date. Unless specified otherwise, if a prize remains unclaimed for six months it will not be awarded, provided reasonable attempts have been made to contact the winner using the contact details supplied.