Lise Martin writes the guides on Tasty Crochet. The focus is narrow on purpose: accurate stitch instructions, honest yarn weights, and beginner-friendly patterns that name every abbreviation they use.
The site exists because most crochet advice online skips the part where you actually learn a stitch. Every guide here covers what the loop looks like, which way the hook turns, and how you know — visually, not by guesswork — that the row is right.
Every guide here is built around one rule: a beginner should be able to follow it without guessing. That means stating the yarn weight, naming each stitch, explaining what sc2tog actually means, and being honest when a pattern takes longer than a weekend. If a project needs four hours of tension-checking before it looks good, that is stated up front rather than left for you to discover on the last row.
The site is organised as a learning path: start with the stitch meanings, check your gauge before committing to a project, learn to read a pattern, then pick something to make from the beginner patterns or the amigurumi roundup. Yarn choice gets its own guide because it changes everything downstream.
What Lise writes about
- Crochet stitch meanings — a plain-English glossary of the abbreviations that trip people up.
- Single crochet, double crochet, and slip stitch — the three stitches most patterns lean on.
- Crochet gauge — matching your tension so a project actually fits.
- Reading crochet patterns — abbreviations, sizing, and the anatomy of a written pattern.
- Choosing yarn — weights and fibres, and what each one is good for.
Start here
If you have never finished a project, the fastest fix is not a harder pattern — it is a smaller one. Work through the single crochet guide, make the first dish cloth on the beginner list, and come back when it is finished. One finished object teaches more than ten abandoned ones.