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Looking for reference guides
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Renee
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Dec 30, 2018 11:40AM
Hello, thank you for having me. Are there any reference guides for sewing, crochet, knitting, or even woodworking that lists recommended books, resources, and periodicals?
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Welcome, Renee. You might find some pointers in the "Catalogs, Magazines, & Web Sites" topic which is here:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Otherwise, specific topics sometimes have books mentioned. You could also ask for specifics. I'm not much good at sewing or crochet. I can only do simple stuff, but I'm a pretty experienced woodworker. It's a huge area with dozens of different disciplines. I like Roy Underhill's Colonial woodworking books, but I have power tools & like to use them. There are entire books on each power tool full of different methods & projects.
It would be helpful to know if you have a shop, what tools you have, & what sort of projects interest you. I do a little bit of everything, but spend most of my shop time turning bowls out of green wood. Still, I delved into making Inkle looms, am working on redoing a rocking chair, & just finished making a bunch of scrollsaw refrigerator magnets. I've got a good sized shop & tools I've collected for 50 years, so I can fiddle at a lot of things. Years back, my projects were often more limited by a lack of tools & space - especially heated space in the winter.
Thank you Jim. That's so neat about woodworking. I would be interested in making inkle looms. I was looking for something rather broad that would list recommendations of great books, magazines, on woodworking, crochet, etc. in general. Thank you again.
Renee wrote: "Thank you Jim. That's so neat about woodworking. I would be interested in making inkle looms. I was looking for something rather broad that would list recommendations of great books, magazines, on ..."You're welcome. I get a couple of woodworking magazines sent to me for free, but they don't interest me all that much.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/
is one decent magazine's site. Subscribe for free & you'll find plenty to go through. Eventually they'll send you a deal on their back issues on a CD. I bought one some years ago & occasionally search through them for different projects. Fine Woodworking & Wood magazine are 2 similar magazines.
For knitting & crocheting, I'd suggest joining raverly.com.
https://www.ravelry.com/account/login
You'll need to join which is free. They have some discussion groups, but I mostly use them for the free patterns. They rate projects on skill level. The only problem I have with the site is that there are too many patterns to choose from!
If you're interested in making Inkle looms, there are a lot of free plans on the Internet that mostly suck. I know since I built the first one for my daughter after reading several & it was awful. As far as I know, there is only one book about their design & construction. That's Inkle Loom Design Construction. I wrote it because I couldn't find another. You can read the first pages for free & the introduction explains. It's $4.95 on both sites & has plans for 9 different looms from lap-sized up to a really big one that's practically furniture.
I'd suggest getting it from Smashwords because you'll be able to get it in several formats - one for reading on a Kindle or whatever & a PDF to print for the shop. You'll also find a couple of free project books I wrote that teach basic woodworking through simple projects. They cost $.99 on Amazon since I can't make them free there. I wrote them as test for self-publishing. One was a lesson plan I wrote for my daughter who was teaching at the time.
