Customer Reviews

Crochet Blocks in a Box: 50 Great Designs at Your Fingertips

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I think of crocheted blocks as something usually worked from the center out, but that's too narrow a definition here. 21 of these are just stitch patterns that are worked in rows into a square shape. Many of them are pretty boring. Some have beaded accents.

Eight are filet type squares, most not very special but one is a nice heart design.

The best are two animal heads, one a cat, the other a dog, worked in single crochet from a chart. There is an accompanying "rear end" view to use with either, which doesn't look much like the posterior of any cat or dog of my acquaintance. The dog has a pearl color and the cat has a bell. There is also a wierd looking rooster, said to be a motif from a folk painting.

There is a nice log cabin house, worked in sc rows; and several flowers that aren't too bad. Several of the motifs have huge openings in the design, making them unsuitable for afghans, and others have strange
corners that are big loops with no obvious purpose.

One block has me completely baffled. Called "Inspired Plumbing," it has vertical rows of stitches alternating with vertical rows of metallic silver yarn (I guess these are supposed to be plumbing pipes), and you are to decorate it with inserted metal washers which you must buy from a plumbing department. Maybe it's an English thing.

The concept of the individual cards is a good one, they are a nice sturdy weight and the photography is
good. The best thing about it is a nice little booklet on crochet basics, how to read the patterns, designing
afghans, color, etc. The package design is excellent. This was published originally in England, and maybe the English look at design differently than we do, but I was not impressed.

The box has 50 individual cards that each have a clear color photo of each crochet block and instructions on the back. The cards themselves are made of nice heavy stock. There are a wide variety of designs. I'm no expert, so I like being able to practice the different stitches. Each card is like a crochet lesson. Some I just made a single block for a wash or dishcloth. But you can mix and match the blocks to form an afghan. I love that I can just throw a card, some yarn and a needle in my bag and go. No bulky crochet book to lug around.