Nicki Trench, one of the leading figures in the revival and promotion of home crafts, has designed a series of patterns that will guide you from the initial crochet stitches to producing beautiful projects incorporating a wide range of techniques. Starting you off is Crochet Know-How, which explains all the stitches with clear step-by-step artwork and instructions. Next, there are three chapters packed with patterns to improve your skills. In Starting Out, you will find a simple springtime throw and a pretty hat for a toddler, both of which you’ll find amazingly easy and quick to create. Once you’ve mastered these, Practice Makes Perfect provides more of a challenge. Whip up some cute gifts for babies and young children, including baby bibs and blankets, or treat yourself to a pair of gloves in soft double knit yarn and a chunky seashell scarf to keep you warm on chilly mornings. Finally, Confident Crocheting has more advanced patterns, ranging from a family of adorable Russian dolls to a cherub dress with decorative picot stitching.

A Beginner’s Guide to Crochet  is the perfect starting point for anyone wishing to learn how to crochet. It is a structured course of 20 workshops and projects, which starts by showing you how to hold your crochet hook and leads you through all the techniques and stitches you will ever need to know. The Getting Started section includes advice on which yarns and equipment to buy, step-by-step illustrations which show how to work all the stitches and essential information on how to understand crochet patterns. This is followed by the workshops, each of which introduces new techniques and reinforces skills already learned. Each workshop finishes with a project which consolidates these skills. The projects range from items for the home, such as cushions, throws and blankets, through to clothes and accessories, including a striped sweater and a cute camisole, a beanie hat and a bobble bag. Experienced teacher Nicki Trench takes you by the hand and shows you the easy way to learn. And with plenty of projects to spur you on, you’ll soon work your way up from crocheting the simplest of squares to creating your own garments.

Nicki Trench has created her own garden farm from scratch, and now shares with you everything there is to know about growing vegetables, fruit and herbs, including making your own compost, growing in raised beds and protecting your crops from pests and disease. Nicki also explains how to rear chickens for eggs and bees for honey, and gives advice on keeping goats and pigs. The benefits of creating your garden farm are not just economic – the energy once obsessively expended on the exercise bike can now be channelled more productively by digging the vegetable patch, turning the compost or cleaning out the hen coop. Communities are reappearing over garden fences as neighbours share their harvest of courgette, spinach and eggs. Whatever you choose to grow or rear on your garden farm, this book offers a taste of the good life that is easy, satisfying and inexpensive to achieve.

Suddenly cake yarns and colour wheels are everywhere, and their popularity is no surprise. Not only do they make sewing in yarn ends at every colour change a thing of the past, they are also available in every shade of the rainbow. And because they usually contain two or three large stretches of contrasting colours, the effect is more dramatic than the repeated shade changes in variegated yarns. But knitting with cakes and colour wheels lends itself better to some makes than to others – throws and shawls can often be made from one large cake, while scarves and hats are perfect makes for smaller and finer yarns. To make the most of these exciting products, Nicki Trench has specially designed 35 projects, including homewares, accessories, makes for babies and things to wear, and many of them will only take one ball of yarn to make.