Decorative Macramé: 20 Stylish Projects for Your Home

This haphazard and disorganized collection of macramé projects is likely to confuse beginning and even advanced practitioners of the craft. The book begins with a photo gallery of potential projects and directs readers to the back to find instructions. Though some of the images are lovely, the book doesn’t indicate whether the items, such as a hanging basket, a wall hanging, or a trivet, are appropriate for beginning, intermediate, or advanced crafters. Moreover, if readers decide to undertake one of these projects, they’ll have to flip back and forth between the picture in the front of the book to the directions in the back, which is annoying. The instructions themselves are also problematic and mostly use line drawings that fail to convey the intricacies of the knots involved. Finally, there is no list of vendors from whom to purchase supplies other than a reference to a single Japanese company with limited overseas distribution. With macramé enjoying a resurgence in popularity, crafters may be drawn to the admittedly attractive designs outlined here. However, this is not the book to guide beginners nor to help advanced crafters learn new techniques. (Sept.)