Designed for crafters, puzzle lovers, and pattern designers alike, Crafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist provides methods, challenges, and patterns that offer a springboard for creative exploration. All are illustrated with beautiful color diagrams and photographs. Experienced bead crochet crafters looking for a project may choose to skip ahead to the pattern pages and begin crocheting from an abundance of unique, mathematically inspired designs. Those wishing to design their own patterns will find many useful tools, template patterns, and a new methodology for understanding how to do so even without using math. Puzzle lovers without previous knowledge of bead crochet will also find ample inspiration for learning the craft.

The first part of the book describes the basic requirements and constraints of a bead crochet pattern and explains what makes designing in this medium so tricky. The authors present their new design framework and offer insight on how best to approach design choices and issues unique to bead crochet.

The second part presents a series of bead crochet design challenges informed by colorful bits of mathematics, including topology, graph theory, knot theory, tessellations, and wallpaper groups. Each chapter in this section begins with a design puzzle accompanied by an introduction to the mathematical idea that inspired it. The authors then discuss what made the challenge difficult, present some of their solutions, and describe the thinking and ideas behind their approach.

The final part contains nearly 100 original bead crochet patterns, including solutions to all the design challenges. This part also provides a tutorial on the fundamentals of bead crochet technique.

Behind the deceptively simple and uniform arrangement of beads is a subtle geometry that produces compelling design challenges and fascinating mathematical structures. In color throughout, Crafting Conundrums gives both math enthusiasts and crafters an innovative approach to creating bead crochet patterns while addressing a variety of mathematically inspired design questions. Supplementary materials, including demo videos, are available on the book’s CRC Press web page.

Hardcover published in December 2014 by A K Peters/CRC Press