Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

I love Japanese crochet books. There is something different, dare I say, more refined and elegant about the way Japanese pattern makers use crochet stitches to create beautiful projects. The entire project looks designed. It doesn’t just stop at the edge, the edge is designed in such a way as to lend closure to the project with a balanced eye toward really understanding crochet.

When I find a new Japanese crochet book, especially one written in English, I will buy it. Heck, I’ll buy the ones in Japanese and trust in the diagrams or my phone’s translation powers. I got Amazing Japanese Crochet Stitches by Keiko Okamoto shortly after it came out, and I have used it for a few projects and some creative exercises. It’s full of the sort of refined and elegant stitches I have come to expect from Japanese crochet, along with some innovative colorwork. It was well worth the purchase price and I see myself using this book frequently. 

Let’s take a look!

First a quick overview, there are 19 solid stitch patterns, 39 lace stitch patterns, 70 motif patterns, and 31 edge patterns in this book. This number is 3 higher than what the cover lists. It is possible, very possible, that my count is off. If you have crocheted for any amount of time, you know that counting is, in horrifying fact, tremendously difficult and best done alone in a noiseless room. I was not, so take my count with caution.  

Colorwork! There is a lot of colorwork in this book. Whether you are after the blocks of color pictured on the cover, a scarf with stripes that curve, tapestry crochet, or just interesting ways to use color to emphasize the various elements of a pattern while still creating a harmonious look, it is here. There are 156 stitch patterns and motifs in this book, and 71 of them (give or take, counting is hard) feature color. If you are just getting into colorwork or worry about when and why to change colors, you could learn a lot from studying how Ms. Okamoto uses color. Crochet really lends itself to creative color use. This book is a good reference for it.

The lace and textured stitch patterns are interesting and many I have not seen in other sources. The author makes good use of love knots and broomstick lace in several stitch patterns, which is always fun to see. There are some standard meshes and even a dreaded pineapple lace, (I swear it’s like a disease.) but the way Ms. Okamoto combines different stitches to create new patterns in some of the lace stitch patterns is really worth studying. She does beautiful work.

The motifs in the book range from simple to very complex and would lend themselves to everything from a cool patch for creative mending to a motif garment or even an afghan. There is a wide range of motifs, varying from those with broomstick lace to puffy flowers to Irish crochet motifs and even doily looking creations. A word of warning, she produced her puffed centers in the traditional way with a padding cord, so if this is not in your skill basket, get ready to try new things. Although there are simple motifs, many are complex with intricate stitches and eye catching color changes.

The edgings range from rows of doubles and chains with singles between them to complex designs with separate motifs added on to really fiddly edges in which the motifs are worked simultaneously with the rest of the border. Personally, I love those types of borders. They look amazing but have few ends. The drawback, of course, is the fiddly aspect. I always find my palms sweating as I finish them up hoping it lays flat and connects correctly at the end. 

The directions are largely diagram based with helpful words of guidance and not fully written out, stitch by stitch instructions. Some stitch patterns or motifs have no written instructions at all; some guide you to the basic stitch instructions at the back; some actually have cursory written notes about how to work the pattern that might not be obvious from the diagram alone. They are, blessedly for me, in English. If you do not work well from only diagrams with cursory or no written instructions, this book is going to be hard for you to use. 

I have a few things I didn’t like about the book, but they don’t detract from its usefulness. First, the colors, while I love seeing how they can be used with different patterns and motifs, are, to my eyes, horrendous. I hate them. Beyond the quiet creams and beiges, the colors scream. Please do not let this turn you off from the book, though. The aspects of how to manipulate color the author demonstrates are useful and interesting, despite the fact that the colors she chose to do it with are hard for me to appreciate. Perhaps my own color choices would be utterly unappealing to her.

The pictures of the stitch patterns and motifs and their directions are not on  the same page. It’s easy to pop a bookmark in and flip back and forth, but I like to work such that I can see a picture of the finished stitch pattern or motif and the directions at the same time. This is a personal thing on my part and not really the fault of the book. This setup is common to Japanese crochet books and one learns to live with it. You can always tell what stitch patterns I have tried because there are post-its on them so I can flip back and forth from directions to finished product. If you, too, work this way, keep your post-its and your bookmarks handy. 

I was unfamiliar with a lot of the yarns used to make the samples, so I spent some time with the yarn guide at the back of the book. From what I can tell, the hook sizes listed with each yarn are pulled right off the labels. Given how I work, and how I think a lot of crochet people work, these hook sizes are too small and are going to produce sad, stiff projects. If you decide to try one of the luscious Japanese yarns listed in the back, make a swatch, block it, and play with the hook sizes until you get a fabric you are happy with. Do not ever follow the yarn label suggestions without making a swatch to test it. To be fair, this could have been something overseen by a publisher and not the designer’s work at all, though a quick glance seems to indicate that she stayed within the label guidelines in her own projects.

While I do not think I would ever make any of the actual project patterns in the back of the book, the stitch patterns themselves make this book well worth the price. Though this book has much to teach beginning to intermediate crocheters, I think it is best suited to intermediate to advanced crocheters who do not need extensive pattern notes to be able to understand a diagram. Or, of course, anyone damned determined enough to sit there with it until it makes sense. 

Happy crafting!