Crocheted Sweaters "Print on Demand Edition" [Paperback]

This book I would classify as only OK,,,,,( nothing I would be excited about)
It has very few patterns I would like to try,,,,, in all fairness however, its because I truly prefer Melissa Leapman's book over this book,,,,and more recently have obtained some GREAT crochet patterns by a company called OAT COUTURES,,,you now see more knit pattern companies adding new lines of crochet patterns that are great!!!!( which benefits us all!!!)

I favor the M. Leapman book over this because she has sweaters that are reflective of the needleart of crochet ,,not crochet TRYING to look like knitted patterns,,,THIS,, is my main criticisim of this book, overall,,, there is only 1 pattern I would consider actually making up and wearing, in the other book,,,MOST of them I would consider making up (and wearing)

It is my desire to create a look that exemplifies crochet at its very best, not try to copy another needleart.

Specifically,,,, this reason I took it up in the first place!
I would check this book out from the library and see if its right for you before purchasing ,,,see if the amount of patterns that you REALLY would make up is worth having this book in your stitching library,,,you may find you like it far better than I do,,,its all a matter of personal preference. I plan to sell my copy of this book.

This rather poor rating of the book goes against something I learned a long time ago, if you cant say something nice,,,dont say anything at all,,,,,

My problem with the book is that all the designs use yarn that is not readily available. I do like using yarns that are higher-quality than the stuff you get at the craft store, but some of these are really obscure (and expensive). Some yarns do not even seem to be manufactured anymore, which is not necessarily the designers' fault. However they did make it much harder for us by not including key information like knitting gauge and/or weight (i.e. worsted, dk, sport weight, etc) for each yarn, so you have to do some digging to get enough information to make yarn substitutions.

In the back of the book there are two pages that are *supposed* to help you make substitutions. They have photographs of a strand of each type of yarn, fiber content, yardage, etc, but no information on gauge!! These pages are not very helpful because the photos of the strands do not seem to be to scale, so you can't just visually compare the yarn you're thinking of substituting.

What I ended up doing was this: I looked the yarns up in online yarn stores (when I could) to figure out gauge and yardage, and I made substitutions from what was available in similar fibers and gauges from Elann.com. So far my sweaters have turned out fine. But a word of warning -- if you're not comfortable making substitutions (and the inevitable adjustments you have to make as a result), you probably will not be able to make several of the sweaters in this book.