Free patterns are everywhere, so it is fair to ask what a book is still for.
The answer is that a pattern tells you what to do, and a good book tells you why. When a pattern fails – the fabric is too stiff, the shaping puckers, the sizing comes out wrong – a pattern page cannot help you, because it assumes everything went as written. A reference book can.
The kinds of book worth owning
A stitch dictionary. A few hundred stitch patterns with swatch photographs. Once you can substitute one stitch pattern for another, every plain pattern you own becomes several patterns.
A technique reference. Photographed, step by step, covering the things patterns assume you know: joining yarn, shaping, seaming, blocking, and reading charts. This is the book you reach for when a pattern says something like “work short rows to shape the shoulder” and expects you to know what that means.
A garment construction book, if you want to make clothes. Fitting is a genuine subject, and it is the difference between garments that look homemade and garments that look made.
What to look for
Good photographs, taken in light-coloured smooth yarn. A technique photographed in dark or fuzzy yarn is useless – you cannot see what the hands are doing.
A clear index. A reference book you cannot search quickly is a book you will not use.
Both crochet and knitting terminology if you do both, or check which convention the book uses. US and UK crochet terms differ in a way that will trip you up: a UK double crochet is a US single crochet.
Older books
Second-hand craft books are often excellent value. The techniques have not changed, and older books frequently explain them more thoroughly than modern ones, which tend to assume you will look up a video.
What dates is the styling and the yarn brands, not the instructions.
