Toys to Crochet by Claire Garland

Published by: Potter Craft (Random House)

Available: December 11, 2007

So far, my book reviews have been mainly about knitting. That’s partly because that’s what the publishers are sending me, and partly because I do a lot of knitting.

I also crochet. Crochet has its place, but it creates a fabric very different from knitting, and isn’t as often applicable to what I want to create.

One thing crochet can do very well, though, is create three dimensional shapes. You’re only working with one live stitch at a time, and you can move in any direction you want at any moment.

Toys to Crochet presents patterns for easy to make, quick to finish, crocheted toys. These are not high art, but they are cute, and made with child’s play in mind.

How Does It Look?

One of the points I evaluate about any craft book is the visual appeal of the projects themselves. Are they attractive? Are the proportions pleasing to the eye? Is the technique executed in a way that doesn’t detract from the finished product?

I wish I could say that Toys to Crochet passed all these tests for me, but the truth is, I found more than half the projects visually unattractive. Whether poorly proportioned, or stitched so large and loose that the stuffing shows through, a lot of this book doesn’t work for me.

In some cases it was the choice of yarn and gauge - very large stitches in a fairly small project make for a grainy, low-resolution look. Take these Chunky Building Blocks, for example. The samples in the photograph seem to be made with different weights of yarn, to obtain different finished sizes. At only 6 stitches wide on each side, the blocks will work up quickly. But no matter what yarn size used, you wind up with a rough looking shape that more closely resembles a slightly deflated ball than a block.

I find Molly the Mermaid to be one of the better dolls in the book. But look at that flat tail - she looks like she was run over by a steamroller. Why wasn’t the top of the tail stuffed? It’s worked in the round, so there’s ample space inside. Lightly stuffing the tail would give it some body, while still leaving her supple and flexible for swimming the imaginary oceans.

Most of the dolls in Toys to Crochet are of the long-leggedy, tentacle-like arm variety that seems popular right now.* I have to say that’s a style that doesn’t appeal to me - I like my dolls to have more realistic proportions, and to have limbs that look like they could be functional if the doll came to life.

This Basic Bear is a good example. The head is a good shape, the ears well proportioned. The body works. But then the arms start off stringy and go way long, and the legs just seem to go on forever. I think they may even be longer than the head and body combined.

Add the large size of the stitches relative to the overall size of the bear, and the design loses all appeal for me.

What Did Work?

Some of the designs work better than others. The pigs on the cover of the book, for instance. Here are a few others that I liked:

Mama Horse and Foal - Cute, knobby-kneed baby and a hand puppet for mama.

Clover Cow and Calf - Baby looked wonky to me here, until I got an image in my head of a newborn calf trying to stand up. Then it felt like the artist perfectly captured that feeling.

Mama Duck and Pom-Pom Chick - I think this may be one of the best designs in the book. Although Mama suffers from SLLS - Stringy Long Leg Syndrome - her body is well proportioned, and I love the way her neck curves as she tends to her baby. I’d definitely stitch her with way less leg. Maybe even none, and attach the webbed feet directly under her.

About the Instructions

I’ve almost never used a written pattern for crochet. Most of what I’ve done has been either made up as I went, or worked from well-defined and common modules like Granny Squares.

I decided that the best way, then, for me to evaluate the patterns in Toys to Crochet would be to actually Crochet a Toy. What a concept, huh?

I chose a pattern that I found both amusing and reasonably proportioned, and that I could give as a Christmas gift. My father likes lobster, and I was stuck for what to give him this year, so I wound up making Larry the Lobster.

Larry the Lobster

The original Larry photographed in the book uses a bulky weight yarn (Lobster Pot Bulky) and a size N (10 mm) hook. I didn’t like how much of the polyfill stuffing showed through the stitches. And this was going to have to be a stash-buster. What I wound up using was Bernat Ping-Pong yarn in a brown color, and a size K (6.5 mm) hook.

Ping-Pong is a novelty yarn in a bulky weight. There is a strand plied in with little puffy balls of a lighter shade of the overall yarn color - in this case, brown - and another of an eyelash-like, tinsely material that gives a short fuzz and a shine to the fabric.

I found the instructions fairly easy to follow, only running into one slight delay as I tried to figure out what was meant by working a single crochet “in top of each sc around.” This wasn’t explained anywhere in the book, and it baffled me. After all, each single crochet is worked under both threads at the top of the stitch, right? So what was meant by in the top? I eventually puzzled out that they meant to work in the back loop at the top, rather than under both front and back together.

In the end, I had what passes for a reasonable looking lobster, glistening with the tinsel, and spotty and brown like an uncooked lobster fresh from the bottom of the ocean. I think I did miscount the rounds on one of his claws, making it shorter than the other, but that’s actually a life-like detail. Many lobsters wind up with mis-matched claws when they lose one in a battle and it has to re-grow.

Bottom Line

Toys to Crochet is my first real exposure to a crochet project book. While I find many of the designs personally unappealing, others may like the quirky proportions and characters. There’s no denying that these funky-looking dolls have personality!

The instructions are reasonable well-written, with few omissions. It should be fairly easy for even a relative beginner to successfully - and quickly - create toys from this book, and have them come out looking like the photos. The projects would also be easy to modify for personal tastes, as I might do with Mama Duck’s long, dangly legs.

The projects will work up fast enough that you could still, at this late date, pick up a copy at your local bookstore, and make some gifts in time for Christmas.

In the end, it’s not a complete hit - but there’s enough here to have me wanting to make more projects from this book, and to consider modifying others. I’d recommend Toys to Crochet as a worthy addition to a fiber craft library.

Related Links:

• Publisher’s site: Toys to Crochet at Random House
• Purchase at Amazon: Toys to Crochet

* I just discovered, in researching links for this review, why those spindly-legged, tentacle-armed dolls struck me as so popular. It’s because several prominent books lately have featured them - Knitted Babes, and Toys to Sew - and they’re all by the same author as Toys to Crochet, Claire Garland! (I even own a copy of Toys to Sew already, won in a blog contest.) I’d say that’s a testament to the popularity of both Ms. Garland’s books and design sense!

Posted: December 11th, 2007 under Crafts.
Comments: 2