Knitting Loves Crochet: 22 Stylish Designs to Hook Up Your Knitting with a Touch of Crochet [Paperback]

Candi Jensen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2006

Never have knitting and crochet played so well together as they do in Candi Jensen's charming projects, designed to highlight everything you love about each craft. Sweet clusters of cherries gather on a child's cardigan, sueded granny squares add panache to Fido's sweater, and whimsical crocheted flowers put just the right flair in hats, scarves, bags, and pillows. Put your knitting needles and your favorite hook to work stitching up possibilities you never knew existed!

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Knit and crochet designer Candi Jensen has a mission — to show today’s trendy, young knitters just how much fun a little crochet can be. Crocheting can mimic lace. It can give a knit sweater pretty edging unachievable with knitting needles. Crocheted flowers and bobbles lend texture and interest to a flat surface. To get her message out, Jensen has written Knitting Loves Crochet, brimming with designs to make believers out of the knitting only crowd who still associate crocheting with doilies and dowdy tissue box covers.

Crochet works exceptionally well as edging or trim, and Jensen explores that match-up to its fullest, with patterns for chic knit cardigans edged with lacy crochet; a stunning, fitted tank finished with a paler shade of crochet on the top and bottom; and placemats, napkin rings, and washcloths trimmed with delicate crocheted color.

Jensen goes on to explore the creative possibilities of crocheted insets and motifs — granny squares in dog sweaters, flowers on a felted purse and fingerless gloves with beaded crochet wrist trim. The possibilities are endless when it comes to mixing these two versatile crafts. Knitting meets crochet — it’s the exciting next step for the knitting enthusiast.

About the Author

Candi Jensen has been a craft and needlepoint designer for more than 25 years. She is widely published in national magazines including Vogue Knitting and Better Homes and Gardens. She is the author of Crochet Scarves!, Crochet Bags! and Hooked on Crochet. Candi lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (August 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580178421
• ISBN-13: 978-1580178426
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #602,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Girlie-Girl Tops are the Highlight, December 27, 2006

By 

fiber farmer (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Knitting Loves Crochet: 22 Stylish Designs to Hook Up Your Knitting with a Touch of Crochet (Paperback)

This book is full of shamelessly feminine sweaters for girlie girls--young ones. They're beautiful designs and the crocheted edgings and embellishments are perfect. After nearly a year of knitting hiatus, my teenage daughter looked through this book and started knitting and crocheting again. She gave loads of fingerless gloves to her friends for Christmas because they were so easy and quick and gave nearly instant gratification. This book has also given me the opportunity to knit a garment and pass it off to my daughter to finish with the crochet edging or flowers. We just started on the Tweed and Flowers Cardigan. She is pleased with that and I couldn't be happier. Thank you, Candi Jensen! For that reason, this book is getting four starts from me. I would have rated it lower otherwise.

I've never been a Granny Square fan, and the return of that motif isn't all too exciting for me. There are quite a few projects with Granny Squares, especially in the section on knitting for your home. (It's probably a personal quirk, but they remind me too much of the drawstring lunch buckets my Grandmother made for us out of crochet cotton and bleach bottles when we were in school.) As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Granny Squares. Also, the inclusion of a couple of projects for the family dog isn't of particular interest to me, but there are only two projects in the entire book like that. The other thing that bothered me about this book is that there are several patterns for pillows. I guess I've never considered pillows a pattern unto themselves, since I use gauge swatches and pattern stitch swatches to make pillows. For me, it's just not worth the space in a book to knit or crochet a square and then turn it into a pillow.

The child's white sweater with red cherries stole the show. Not only is the little cardigan charming, but the little girl who is modeling it is gorgeous. She made me laugh when I saw her picture. I'll surely make that sweater for several other little girls and laugh when I see them in it as well.

Overall, I wish the author had stuck with the sweaters and accessories and let the rest go. Happily, the sweater chapter is the largest and most extensive of the entire book. If the author had simply included a section on crocheted embellishments and given suggestions on how to embellish or alter a pattern and left the rest out, it would have been much better, in my opinion. As it is, about half of this book is appealing to me as a knitter. The sweater section is by far the best part of the book and I'll look forward to more from this author when she majors on her strength in designing romantic and feminine sweaters and garments for young women. However, my daughter's return to knitting and crochet is worth the purchase price and then some!

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars small sizes, October 30, 2006

By 

D. G. Van Velsen "- EDDIE" (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Knitting Loves Crochet: 22 Stylish Designs to Hook Up Your Knitting with a Touch of Crochet (Paperback)

I agree with the other reviewers that the book is worth buying and excellent to give you new ideas for using crochet with knitting. However, be warned that the sizing is fairly small. All of the womens patterns are either size 36 inch or 40 inch FINISHED measurements except for one pattern which is 40.5 inches.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extreme Disappointment, July 30, 2007

By 

J. Noverr "lady_n_thread" (Newton, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knitting Loves Crochet: 22 Stylish Designs to Hook Up Your Knitting with a Touch of Crochet (Paperback)

In the past year there has been a lot of exciting and interesting work created that combine both knitting and crochet. With the hope of finding inspiring and innovative designs and based solely on the book's description and intriguing cover, I bought this book to fill in an Amazon order and get the free shipping.

I was extremely disappointed. There are 22 "stylish designs" in this book and only 7 patterns are garments. The other patterns are accessories or home decorating and over half of those are simply crocheted flowers slapped on a knitting project or the tired basic granny square worked into one more design.

The knit i-cord dog leash with chain 3 crochet loops around the handle for "trim" is the worst of the book but others come very close. I wish I had been able to scan through this book because it would never have passed my buy test -- are there at least three patterns that I might be interested in or that inspire me? The pattern on the cover of this book was the ONLY one.