If you have come here to teach yourself how to crochet, you are in luck. Crochet is an amazing craft that I learned two years ago when I was in a home-economics class. The teacher taught me how to chain and use single crochet, and I taught myself three other stitches, how to increase, how to decrease, seam together, pick a good type of yarn, read a good pattern, and even make a good pattern. Confused yet? Don't worry - it's not as hard as it sounds. You'll be learning how to do all of these things after you're finished with this book. Crochet is a dying art, as is knitting, and we need more people around to keep it alive. There are many benefits to crocheting and knitting. For one, you get to make something beautiful, even something as advanced as this. (P.S.: it's not hard to make.)

Second, crochet and knitting both have health benefits, such as being a relaxing yet productive activity, and stretching your hand muscles. This book is about crochet; however, I know how to knit as well, albeit only on a knitting loom - I find needle knitting to be very frustrating and difficult, so I don't do it. If you want me to turn this into a "how to crochet AND knit" manual, I'll do that later. You'll find that a lot of the advice I'll give about gauges and yarn works just as well for the concerned knitter as it does for the crocheter. I will say, though, that if you're on the fence about which craft to learn first, I recommend crochet. Most knitters - like me - learned to crochet because we wanted to add fancy embellishments to our projects that only crochet can offer. Crochet is also faster and it's easier to undo your mistakes in crochet than in knitting.