Maggy Ramsay

This gets only 4 stars because I have yet to complete any of the projects in the book, but the "about the authors" page at the beginning of the book was the whole reason I bought it anyway.

In that section, the reader learns that Sondra Miller, one of the authors, had a "brief career teaching English." At the time I took up crochet and found this book in a used book store, I too had what I hoped would be a "brief career teaching English."

The other author, Maggy Ramsay, is described as "a show more fomer instructor and educational researcher," who then spent "two years traveling in Italy, where she studied crochet and began create her own designs."

In a superficial way, I was very much living a life that was very much like the authors' "before life," and I was looking for the kind of transformation that might land me in Italy crocheting.

In addition to having an introduction that fed all my crochet fantasies, the book is an excellent guide to the basics of crochet and cover the following in a series of 5 chapters:

1. Beginning Skills
2. Fancy Stitches
3. Special Crochet
4. Crochet Shapes
5. Shape Designs

Featured on page 150 is a table runner that I have vowed to make as soon as I find the table to go underneath it.

Even though I have not completed a project from this book, I have found it to be an invaluable resource for techniques and ideas, and for those crocheters who want an unusual and challenging project, there is a pattern for your basic copper wire birdcage.

Even though this book is out of print, it is well worth tracking down and buying. show less