Review: Witch Crafts

Witch Crafts: 101 Projects for Creative Pagans
by Willow Polson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Witch Crafts / 0-8065-2247-X

To date, I have found about three guides on Wiccan craft projects, and these guides are all fairly disappointing; this one is definitely the most disappointing of them all; this is probably the best one of all.

"Witch Crafts" is organized around categories of crafting, such as candle making, and provides several projects, each with an increasing level of difficulty. This approach manages to make "Witch Crafts" accessible to novices and experts alike, without being too shallow. Color pictures are included for a few of the projects, although the pictures are always of the finished version of the project, and there aren't many intermediate stages shown for each project. For the most part, the written instructions are clear enough that the lack of more pictures isn't too crippling.

The quilting section is mediocre compared to a serious quilting book, but there is a gorgeous square-block quilt "painting" of antlers horns framing a full moon against a midnight blue sky. The instructions are clear enough and the color picture is helpful enough that this quilt makes up for any lack of variety. The same is true for the Greenman cross-stitch project - it's far better to have one really good project than 20 crummy projects, in my opinion.

This book does contain crafts made from animal by-products; I'm not a leatherworker, so I skipped over those, but the book didn't seem any shorter to me. What I'd like to see in a future edition would be more pictures (including finished pictures for *all* projects and intermediate stage pictures to explain the creation process), more "decorating" crafts like bed quilts and wall hangings and clothing and so forth, and fewer "ritual" crafts for things that I only use once a month. However, this is a good resource, and I recommend it if you can find it for about $10-15.

~ Ana Mardoll

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